Over a series of 8 videos, watch and learn as Ryan builds an entire ExpressionEngine website from beginning to end. Get started now.
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Pro Tip: When submitting test data, use it to memorize other things. Cranial nerves, knot names, foreign languages. #eecms #multitask
— Paul Burdick (@reedmaniac) December 27, 2011
Excellent advice!
Posted on Jan 06, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
We’re nearly a week into the new year and it’s already been a little crazy. I’m just now thinking about my ideas for ExpressionEngine in 2012.
The last two years have been pretty big for ExpressionEngine: EE 2.0 beta, EE 2.1, all of the problems in between, and then the big EE 2.2 and 2.3 releases. There’s certainly a lot to be happy about and all of us probably wish for something else.
I am not into predictions but I do have wishes. And I certainly have wishes for ExpressionEngine. But I’m just one person. You, dear readers, are multiple persons. What’s on your mind?
What do you want to see from ExpressionEngine in 2012?
Posted on Jan 06, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Posted on Jan 06, 2012 by Ryan Masuga
Lea and Emily at the EE Podcast are collecting stories about your first ExpressionEngine website. From a tweet:
What was your first #eecms site? How did you get into EE? What did you learn? We want to hear your stories! Email feedback@ee-podcast.com
Back in July, I wrote about my first ExpressionEngine site, the mistakes I made and how I didn’t really understand how EE worked so I underutilized it. I’m sure my experience wasn’t any different than a lot of people, but what’s your story? Write it up and send it to Lea and Emily.
Posted on Jan 05, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Whenever ExpressionEngine renders a page, a variety of things happen. A parsing engine runs through the code, database calls are made, variables are replaced, conditional statements are evaluated, third party add-on scripts are run and more. While servers are amazingly fast at doing all of this, sometimes all of these processes can make a page take too many valuable seconds to load.
While it is always best practice to write your code so that the page loads as fast as possible, there are times where caching can come in and save the day by providing lighting-fast load times even for pages with a lot of processing needs. However, there are also times where caching can work against you and actually make the page slower than loading the page without it. I’ll cover the basics of caching in ExpressionEngine, including when not to do it.
Posted on Jan 04, 2012 by Ryan Battles
Despite stealing my name, I’m a fan of Ryan Masuga and what he has built at Devot:ee. What started out as a collection of add-ons and links to download them has grown into the place to buy add-ons for your projects and find out what is best through ratings and reviews. It’s also given add-on developers a turnkey storefront to sell their own software.
So, it’s no surprise that 2011 has been a great year for Devot:ee. In a year end roundup (thankfully not called a YERP), Ryan talked about the steady growth at the site and how 50 add-on developers each month get paid by Devot:ee and they added a new developer to help work on some new projects.
Congrats to Ryan, Ben and Jacob!
Posted on Jan 02, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Mike Boyink explored on the consequences and challenges of taking on a “failed project.” This isn’t a project that you take on and somehow it doesn’t work out. This is picking up the scraps of someone else’s failed project and fixing it. That, in two words, is tough work.
Mike says he receives a lot of emails asking for help on failed projects:
Over the years I’ve responded differently, from simple one-line “no thanks” to more involved responses declining the work. I thought I’d write up a more detailed blog post both to record my thought process in responding and as way to have a link to send out in the future when these requests come in.
Lots of great advice in the article, especially about increased costs. I’d recommend you charge a higher hourly (or project) rate for these types of projects simply because they’re riskier and, as Mike points out, more difficult to assess.
Read Mike’s entire article: Taking On a Failed Project
Posted on Jan 02, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
While we were all watching sports or recovering from too much partying ringing in the new year, Low (who lives on a boat) released a brand new version of his popular and clever add-on Low Variables.
In a blog post, Low said this is his biggest update to the add-on and it features some new functionality that I think is pretty damn handy:
Read that first bullet again: you can now save your variables as files. Yes.
Low Variables 2.0 is available now and costs €35 (or around $47 US).
If you’re not familiar with Low Variables and what it can do, browse Low’s articles and sample code for ideas on how the add-on can be implemented.
Posted on Jan 02, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Hope everyone is having a happy and safe holiday season. See you 2012!
Posted on Dec 29, 2011 by Ryan Masuga
Posted on Dec 23, 2011 by Ryan Masuga
For our last podcast of 2011, we look back on the past year and discuss the news and events that affected the EE community. In this extra-long episode, we also pick our favorite add-ons for the year, and mention our favorite episodes since our re-launch. And for you last-minute holiday shoppers, we’ve got suggestions for geek gifts!
Many thanks to EE Insider, as it was a great resource to help compile some of the notable moments for 2011!
Happy holidays! We’ll see you next year!
Posted on Dec 22, 2011 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
Today, Jack McDade (Lobster War Machine and Structure) posted a sneak preview of his new module Striper. I know what you’re thinking because I was, too. Jack has been rocking out to some 80s glam rock. But that’s not the case at all. Jack has been working on a simpler e-commerce module that has more features than the Simple Commerce Module but not as much as other tools like Cartthrob or BrilliantRetail.
I haven’t played with the module myself yet but judging from the video this looks very nice. I’m looking forward to trying it out.
Posted on Dec 21, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
Today, Devot:ee announced the annual “AcademEE” awards and the winners named in a handful of categories. Devot:ee intern Jacob Russell wrote up a short blog post about the awards:
2011 has been another great year for add-ons in the ExpressionEngine community, as developers around the world continue to write great code for the benefit of all of us. We’re happy to see a mix of add-ons by established developers and a lot of ‘new blood’ creating awesome add-ons.
Developer of the Year was awarded to Rob Sanchez who works for Barrett Newton and Big Mighty Robot. Better Workflow by Electric Putty was named Extension of the Year. Read the entire list of add-ons and you might find one that you haven’t used yet.
Congrats to the winners!
Posted on Dec 20, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
EllisLab Product Evangelist Marcus Neto will be presenting at the January meeting of the Bay County Florida Web Pros to talk to them about ExpressionEngine.
Learn how you can use EE to build dynamic websites without knowing how to program! Marcus Neto (@marcusneto) is driving here from Alabama to introduce us to this awesome content management system. He’s the Director of Enterprise Services at EllisLab (they created Expression Engine).
On the surface this may not seem like a big deal. But members of local web professional groups like the one Marcus is visiting would probably (and surely already do) choose tools like WordPress instead of ExpressionEngine. I see it as an important step to help grow the community and number of people that use ExpressionEngine. If it were up to me, Marcus would spend 2012 on an airplane (sorry, Marcus), traveling to speak and evangelize at dozens of web meetups across the country (and world). Only so many people follow the #eecms hashtag or search around for alternatives.
Posted on Dec 20, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
EllisLab alum and web developer Derek Allard shared a snippet he uses to have a “delete and ban” link next to comments on the front end of his site. When he gets a spam comment he can easily dispose of the problem and ban the user.
When spammers do sneak comments through my blog, I have a very simple one click* snippet to ban them similar to the way the EE forum’s “ban member” option works. Essentially, beside every comment, I have a “delete & ban” link. This saves me needing to fire up my control panel, and navigate to the proper place. It just saves a bit of clicking around.
The snippet is similar to other code you may have used before that code direct links to the Control Panel in your template and use the entry_id variable to point to the proper entry or comment.
Read Derek’s post for the code and details.
Posted on Dec 20, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
Posted on Dec 15, 2011 by Ryan Masuga
Speaking of add-on sales…
Yuri at intoEEtive is offering a bundle sale of his add-ons for $99. This includes 11 add-ons like Threaded Comments, rEEservation, and Member Categories.
The sale is only good until the end of the month, so if you’re a regular user of Yuri’s add-ons, this a good time to save a little cash.
Posted on Dec 14, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
Tomorrow, the final An Event Apart of the year wraps up and leaves behind some amazing talks. I attended the conference in October in Washington, D.C. and, as expected, I was treated to some passionate individuals sharing great information.
If you haven’t attended the conference this year, one of the best places to go for conference talk notes is Luke Wroblewski’s website. Luke speaks at many AEAs and takes compact, thoughtful (and bullet-listed) notes on the other talks.
In his archives, you can see all of the AEA notes he’s written. Go through, find your favorite topics and then read through the notes.
Posted on Dec 13, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
Last week, I posted a video about the LiveReload utility for web developers. Another similar (and more flexible) app available is CodeKit.
Like LiveReload, the app is currently in beta but expected to be available for around $10 on the App Store soon. The beta will expire next week. If you’re interested in trying out another tool like LiveReload, definitely download CodeKit and give it a shot.
Posted on Dec 13, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
The gentlepeople at Solspace are offering a bundle discount on their User Module and Friends Module. They’re calling it Fuser. If you get both of them together you only pay $99, saves you about $70. That’s like two trips to Starbucks.
It’s a logical combination because many of the sites that need the User module also need the Friends module. How do I know this? Other than because of my magical powers, it is because I just helped build a site that used those two modules together. Hand, meet glove.
They say it’s limited time only for the discount, so if you need the bundle you better take advantage.
Disclaimer: Solspace is an advertiser on EE Insider but this is not a paid advertisement.
Posted on Dec 13, 2011 by Ryan Irelan
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