Blog Entry
Whether it was a homegrown hack or one we found somewhere to work around a limitation or bug in ExpressionEngine, we’ve all done it at some point. The thing with hacking the EE core files is this: if you hack it, you own it.
You own the responsibility for letting those that come after you know about the hack. If it’s your site or one you will always maintain (unlikely), then you own the responsibility to always re-patch the core files with your hack when upgrading to a newer version of ExpressionEngine.
Rob Sanchez had a good response and technique for making upgrading site with hacks a little easier (this is only applicable to people who use Git or other version control system):
If you hack the core EE files, where do you document those changes so developers that come after you can know about them?
Blog Entry
- Code Pack (for EE1 & EE2) by Solspace
The Code Pack module’s purpose is to install preconfigured ExpressionEngine data into a website. This could be anything from pre-coded templates to sample channel entries to preconfigured member account. This module allows anyone to create packages of sample data, and works great as a supplimental help resource for addons by loading a fully functioning set of data.
- Nice Time (for EE2) by Pv Ledoux
This plugin converts a date in relative time. It will output ‘now’ if the date given is less then 5 seconds ago, ‘xx unit ago’ will be outputted for longer intervals (where unit will be seconds, minutes, hours, days or weeks). If the date is greater than 4 weeks, it will return the full date formatted with the parameter format.
- Markdown Field (for EE2) by Fideloper
This is a Markdown custom field for ExpressionEngine. It updates as you type!
- Trigger (for EE2) by Parse19
Rapid site development tool for ExpressionEngine 2.
- MC Plain (for EE1 & EE2) by Michael Cohen (ProImage)
This plugin allows you to bypass EE’s forced javascript obfuscation of email addresses in member profile fields.
- Minimalist ($, for EE2) by Seamus Holman
Minimalist is a completely overhauled look and feel for the ExpressionEngine control panel. Everything has been stripped down to it’s bare essentials, designed to help optimize the experience of managing and creating content.
- Devot:ee Monitor (for EE2) by Masuga Design
The devot:ee add-on keeps you up-to-date on what add-ons are out-of-date on your ExpressionEngine sites.
- Single Entry ($, for EE2) by Viget Labs
Have you ever had a channel in an ExpressionEngine installation that required its own set of custom fields, but only needed one entry? Perhaps a homepage or an “About Us” section that needed its own custom content but wasn’t a traditional list of posts? Single Entry can help. With a few simple settings, your control panel can be set up to easily create and edit these posts without the risk of adding new and unnecessary entries to these channels.
- VZ Average (for EE2) by Eli Van Zoeren
VZ Average is a flexible and minimal framework for rating or tallying anything in EE that you can identify with an ID: a channel entry, a comment, a Matrix row, or anything else. A few possible uses for it include: star ratings, thumbs up/down ratings, flagging comments as offensive, voting on entries, etc.
- CE Cache Breaker for Low Variables (for EE2) by Matt Fordham
This simple ExpressionEngine extension will break any CE Cache item tagged with the tag “low_variables”
How-to Article
I’ve been working with the new add-on HelpDesk from Krea and I want to share my experiences so far.
This review is based on my own effort to create an integrated, single location for supporting my own ExpressionEngine add-ons. I’ve considered using a number of other existing packages, most of which do not have any integration with ExpressionEngine, as well as the possibility to build my own support add-on. I also considered building a support section on top of an existing tool such as my ProForm module. I even considered building something from scratch using ExpressionEngine’s core capabilities. While I do think that these other options could certainly do the job, HelpDesk has given be a huge head start on the job and because of it I’m nearly finished with this new section of the site after only a few days of concentrated work with HelpDesk.
If you’re looking for my one line recommendation, it is this: buy a copy of HelpDesk.
Now let’s get into some specifics.
Read the Article
Blog Entry
Last week I teased the new Minimalist override for the ExpressionEngine Control Panel. This week it is available to purchase and install on your EE site.
Minimalist is a completely overhauled look and feel for the ExpressionEngine control panel. Everything has been stripped down to it’s bare essentials, designed to help optimize the experience of managing and creating content.
Check out the screenshots and description at Devot:ee. The add-on costs $25.
Blog Entry
If you have a product or service that you want to get in front of the smart, funny and passionate ExpressionEngine community, EE Insider has a premium ad spot available for the month of May.
Interested? Get in touch.
Blog Entry
From EllisLab CEO Leslie Camacho:
And that makes for a better community, too.
Blog Entry
Fresh off their release of Link Vault yesterday, the chaps at Masuga Design unveiled another add-on today: Devot:ee Monitor.
The devot:ee add-on keeps you up-to-date on what add-ons are out-of-date on your ExpressionEngine sites
[…]
A great free developer tool for use on any size ExpressionEngine site. View what is installed on your site at a glance, and see what add-ons need updating. You can view release notes, and click right over to devot-ee.com to download updated versions.
[…]
This add-on was a joint effort between Masuga Design/devot:ee, EE Coder, and Antistatic Design. Many thinks to EE Coder’s lead coder Aaron Kuzemchak (@akuzemchak) for the initial development, Shawn Maida (@eecoder) for support and feedback, and Mark Wells of Antistatic Design (@antistaticdsgn) for the design and layout.
The Devot:ee Monitor add-on is free and available from Devot:ee.
I’ll definitely be installing this!
Blog Entry
Working on the web automatically means we’re all some type of remote worker. But, what about when you expand your network? How does working in a distributed company differ from a solo situation? What are some benefits and pitfalls in structuring a company where none of your co-workers meet in person or share the same space on a regular basis?
EllisLab CEO Leslie Camacho joins EE Podcast this week to answer those questions and more about remote teams. Leslie fills us in on organizational structure, communication protocols, collaboration tools and legal considerations when working in a distributed company. Tune in!
Blog Entry
- Link Vault ($, for EE2) by Masuga Design
Link Vault allows you to protect your local and remote download links, track all downloads, track and block leech attempts and disguise any other link URLs you’d like to protect. There are also hooks available so you can extend Link Vault’s functionality.
- Nolan (for EE2) by iain
Nolan enables a very simple matrix style field within a Pixel & Tonic Matrix field
- Evo Google Weather ($, for EE2) by EEvolution
Display weather updates on your ExpressionEngine templates from the Google weather API.
- Sight (for EE2) by Electric Putty
Sight is a plugin for enabling/switching between certain accessibility CSS file options.
- String Injector ($, for EE2) by KMD
Ever wanted to add a <br> only after the first word in a text string ? Or ever wanted to split a text by 2 <p> with different classes ?
Blog Entry
Two sites recently launched on ExpressionEngine that I want to tell you about. The first is a site for locating dog walks in the UK.
It’s called Walkiees and was built by an officer in the UK Border Agency. He previously had no web development experience but learned as much as he could about EE and just went for it. He wrote about the site in the EE Forums:
A buddy of mine, who is a web designer, said that they had recently switched all their site builds to EE, and that I should look into it.
I started consuming as much tutorials, podcasts and information as I could. […] I’ve never touched EE before, and I had VERY limited knowledge of HTML/CSS, but with the great support that I received here, Solspace, gwcode, and many many more support forums, I finally managed to get the site ready for its initial launch.
The site uses Solspace User and Favorites, Navee, SEO Lite, CP Analytics Settings, Accessible Captcha and more. Read the forum post for all the details.
He also notes:
I doubt very much that I have put the site together in the most efficient way, and its somewhat simplistic at the moment, but I think I have a good base to keep working and developing on.
Well, that’s how everyone starts. My first site is an embarrassment. Hell, there are things on this site that I wince at. Welcome to ExpressioneEngine and congrats on the launch!
The second site is Gallery System, a site that sells picture hanging systems. The site was developed by Versa Studio. In a forum post they listed the following add-ons in use: Structure, Wygwam and Matrix. UltraCart powers the e-commerce part of the site.
Interestingly, this site was originally done in EE1 but completely rebuilt in EE2. From the forum post:
The site was a from-scratch rebuilding of the previous EE1 site. Since we were changing a lot of information, we found it easier to start fresh than try to adapt what we had, especially since we switched to Structure for the new site.
Blog Entry
Masuga Design (who owns and runs Devot:ee) released a new add-on today called Link Vault. This is a classic case of taking what you built for your own site and turning it into something everyone can use.
Link Vault is what powers the Devot:ee add-on downloads and how they are able to protect those downloads from leeching and link sharing and track downloads.
Link Vault allows you to protect your local and remote download links, track all downloads, track and block leech attempts and disguise any other link URLs you’d like to protect. There are also hooks available so you can extend Link Vault’s functionality.
Link Vault will let you create download links or download buttons and it tracks the downloads for you so you can create reports.
The add-on is available now and costs $25 per site license.
Congrats to Ryan and the team!
Blog Entry
The weekly EE Help Chat is tonight at 9PM EDT. Every week a group (that is getting larger each week) gathers together to chat about ExpressionEngine and whatever else comes up related to web development and design.
For the last several weeks we have reached capacity in the chat room. It was previously limited to only 25 simultaneous chatters. Last week EngineHosting stepped up and co-sponsored the chat, along with Mijingo for the next year. That means we get cram up to 60 people at once into the chat room for the next year. Thank you, EngineHosting!
So, there’s plenty of room now. No excuses. Won’t you join us?
At 9 PM EDT go to: mijingo.com/go-chat
See you there!
Blog Entry
Publish Layouts in ExpressionEngine are a great idea. But they haven’t been reliable for a lot of people…myself included. As I read through the Twitter streams about ExpressionEngine I see a lot of comments about having to reset Publish Layouts after an upgrade, after removing fields and more.
Marcus Neto of EllisLab put out a call to get some more bug reports and steps to reproduce:
Have you run into the Publish Layouts problem? Get in touch with Marcus or file a bug with steps to reproduce the problem.
Blog Entry
I don’t know if he’ll make it publicly available but the sneak peek on Dribbble of the “ExpressionEngine Minimalist Override” by Seamus Holman was enough to pique my interest. Clean and simple and definitely not pink.
Let’s encourage him to keep working on it: ExpressionEngine Minimalist Override
How-to Article
The state of add-ons in ExpressionEngine as an embarrassment of riches. Since the launch of Devot-ee, EE users now have thousands of add-ons to browse through. As new add-ons appear which duplicate the functionality of already existing add-ons, deciding which one is the right fit for your project has become more and more complicated.
When it comes to WYSIWYG editors this is especially true. I want to do my small part to help you find the add-on for the job. In this article, I don’t pick a winner of the bunch. Instead, I want to see for myself how the most popular editors stacked up and to share what I’ve found so you can pick the right add-on for each job.
I’m reviewing the following editors, focusing on for-pay editors since I expect a different level of support when I’m paying for software.
Wygwam is probably the market-leading commercial editor for EE, with a solid history of improvements and updates. Wyvern and Expresso are newer kids on the block, with Wyvern taking a feature rich approach while Expresso seems to be aiming for a simpler and more lightweight tool set.
Before I begin I want to note that with version 2.5 of ExpressionEngine due out soon with its own WYSIWYG editor and constant updates from the developers of each of the above add-ons, I will try to keep this article as up-to-date as possible. If any errors or omissions are present, please leave a comment.
Read the Article
Blog Entry
- MSM Member Group Switcher ($, for EE2) by Yuri Salimovskiy (IntoEEtive)
Switch member’s group depending on what MSM site is he at.
- Text Captcha (for EE2) by codeTrio
Replace ExpressionEngine default graphic captcha by logic-based textual questions by taking advantage of the textCAPTCHA.com service.
- Meetup ($, for EE2) by mithra62 (Eric Lamb)
Meetup allows you to pull meetup.com data into your ExpressionEngine site. Meetup comes with a plethora of template tags that makes it possible to display groups, events, member info, and more.
- VZ Range (for EE2) by Eli Van Zoeren
A numeric range fieldtype for Expression Engine 2. Output just the minimum and maximum, or every step in between.
Blog Entry
Over at Meta Q front-end developer Terris Kremer wrote up a tutorial on using the Stash add-on to create entry previews.
Wait, what’s Stash?
Stash allows you to stash text and snippets of code for reuse throughout your templates. Variables can be set dynamically from the $_GET or $_POST superglobals and can optionally be cached in the database for persistence across pages.
Stash variables that you create are available to templates embedded below the level at which you are using the tag, or later in the parse order of the current template.
The premise of the tutorial is that existing methods for creating entry previews are too complicated.
There are a few add-ons and methods out there that let site admins preview their ExpressionEngine entries and they all stink.
I disagree with the premise (the solution with Stash ended up being more complicated) but the tutorial is a great demonstration of what you can do with the Stash add-on by Mark Croxton.
Blog Entry
Github maintains a list of .gitignore file templates for different frameworks, CMSes, languages and applications. Wes Baker added his own for ExpressionEngine.
.DS_Store
# Images
images/avatars/
images/captchas/
images/smileys/
images/member_photos/
images/signature_attachments/
images/pm_attachments/
# Caches
sized/
thumbs/
_thumbs/
*/expressionengine/cache/*`
There’s also a template for CodeIgniter.
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Kaboom.
Instructional Video
Part of the EllisLab how-to video library
A 2-minute demonstration on how to remove the index.php file from your ExpressionEngine site.
Get the Video
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