Blog Entry
Jesse Bunch describes a problem that you’ve probably faced before. You have a great workflow set up with Git, SVN or another VCS and then someone goes into the EE Control Panel and edits the templates, completely bypassing the workflow.
Obviously, this is a huge problem because our production severs don’t commit changes back to the repository for obvious reasons. So when someone edits a template on the production server, nobody knows it happened and when we deploy a change to that template, it is very likely that the change will be lost or our working copy will become out of sync (depending on how we deploy the project).
To help fix this problem, Jesse created an extension that disables the template editor in the Control Panel.
This extension makes the templates and template groups in EE read-only. It doesn’t affect things like synchronization, PHP input/output parsing, and access control.
You can get the extension at Devot-ee. It’s only available for EE2 right now (although a EE1 version is planned) and is free to download.
Blog Entry
Today the United States Congress begins hearings on a new proposed law called the PROTECT IP Act (how does it work?). This law is aimed at protecting intellectual property and preventing copyright infringement online. Without surprise to you I’m sure, this law has been spearheaded by the entertainment industry. The same people that tried to kill VCRs, MP3 players, DVRs and more. The same people that sued grandmothers and little kids.
To make it worse, the law is also supported by politicians who, to be frank, don’t know shit about how the internet works, what makes it so successful and just how damaging an over-reaching law like PROTECT IP would be.
This video sums it up nicely:
I’m in a unique position because I would actually benefit from this law. The ExpressionEngine training videos I create at Mijingo are widely pirated online. Fighting the people that pirate the videos (and, sadly, those that do are part of our community) would be a full-time job. So, I choose to do everything I can to protect the videos without ruining the experience for legitimate customers (or treating them like criminals). That’s why my videos don’t have DRM or a complicated scheme to protect them from being copied.
I don’t think, however, that it’s worth ruining and censoring the Internet to prevent my videos from being pirated. And that is exactly what the entertainment industry wants to see happen; a nuclear option to protect their latest cream puff blockbuster movie from being pirated online or streamed in parts on video sites.
For those of you who live in the United States, please take the time to learn more about these proposed laws and how they can hurt you and the Internet.
Blog Entry
The annual A List Apart Web Design Survey is up and waiting for you to share your experience as a web professional. The goal of the survey is to gather as much information about our industry and the people who make it work. The data is analyzed and the findings will be presented in a future issues of A List Apart. Additionally, the data is released its raw form, so anyone can take it and make cool graphics, charts or–most importantly–teach us something new about our industry.
Here’s the pitch from the ALA article about why you should take the survey:
Just who are these people who make websites? What are their titles? What kind of education have they had? What skills do they possess and what skills do their employers imagine they possess? How do they stay current? How happy are they? How well are they paid? How mobile are they, creatively and economically?
That’s where you come in. You are the world’s foremost expert on the topic of you. Only you know how you do what you do, who you do it with, how well you do it, and how satisfying (or otherwise) you find it
Take the survey now.
Blog Entry
- Format (for EE2) by Brad Morse
Format text, uppercase, lowercase, italic, bold
- VL Date Selects (for EE2) by Viget Labs
Return select options for months, days, and years.
- Messaging (for EE2) by Yuri Salimovskiy (IntoEEtive)
Messaging is the module for ExpressionEngine 2 that brings all power of Private Messages, Bulletins (public messages) and Buddies/Blocked lists to frontent templates - even with AJAX support!
- File Directory (for EE2) by Brad Morse
Lists all the files from the directory you pass it, which are linked to automatically.
Blog Entry
EE Podcast has Marcus Neto, the Director of Services at EllisLab as our guest today! The EllisLab Q&A defines “enterprise services,” talks at length about private support services and response times, product evangelism and what it means for sales calls, general EllisLab updates and more! Listen in!
Blog Entry
In a blog post, EllisLab CEO Leslie Camacho announced today that as of December 5, 2011 ExpressionEngine 1 will no longer be offered as part of the download when you purchase an EE license. Additionally, public support for EE 1 ends next April.
There was no mention if they’ll continue to update EE1 with any needed security releases.
Read the entire announcement.
Blog Entry
Yesterday, Barrett Newton Interactive announced that their add-ons will now be available under the MightyBigRobot brand. From the About area of their new site:
MightyBigRobot is the software development branch of Barrett Newton Interactive, a highly creative web design and development shop with deep roots in the ExpressionEngine community. Our addons have won awards, and our team itself was runner-up developer of the year in 2011, as voted on by our peers. In addition to our addons that we build, support, and maintain, we are also available for customization work, including the development of custom EE addons and ecommerce software.
The new site includes the add-ons: Profile:Edit and Affiliator.
Congrats to Barrett Newton!
Blog Entry
Darren Miller put together a list of ways to protect entries from being accidentally deleted. If you’re like me, you probably already take some of these measures (like enabling versioning or properly setting member group permissions) but Darren took it a step further using a config variable and a simple extension to protect a set of entries. Very clever!
Is this necessary?
It may seem unlikely that someone would go through a double-submit confirm procedure to delete the home page of the site but somehow it does happen. So how to stop it?
Read the entire write-up from Darren to find out how he does it.
What do you do to protect entries for the sites you build? Do you have a different approach?
Blog Entry
A couple of weeks ago I pushed live a minor tweak to the look of EE Insider. The focus of the change was to eliminate the stuff that was barely used (as deemed so through analytics) and make the site easier to read. I eliminated almost everything on the sidebar of the site and made it the new home for the ads that support the site and share some awesome products and services with the community.
I also eliminated everything but the most useful stuff from the navigation. We’re a savvy bunch, so there was no need to highlight things like the RSS feed. The biggest change was removing navigation access to the EE Insider Tips section of the site. The section is still around and completely functional and you can get a link in the footer on any page of the site.
One complaint I received was that readers had to hunt for the search box. I moved it to the top of the sidebar and simplified it: no submit button and the label is hidden. Again, we’re savvy and can handle buttonless search forms.
So, right now EE Insider is focused on three areas: the blog (this), the how-to articles (have one? you get paid to publish here) and the videos section. It feels better and looks better. What do you think?
Blog Entry
A new service is available that allows you to share your code snippets with others. It’s called EE Snippets.
At first (and up until a few minutes ago), I thought the site was about sharing your Snippets (with a capital S) but it’s actually about sharing your code snippets (lowercase s). This is how some people used my EE Insider Tips service I launched in May 2009. The Tips section was never widely used but there are some great ideas, code snippets, tips, tricks and ideas in there. Here’s to hoping that EE Snippets can pull off this same idea on a dedicated site. Having a central place to share this type of information could be a great resource for the community.
Blog Entry
Next week on November 11th, the latest installment of the LA Meetup takes place at kleverdog coworking. From the announcement:
Ben Parizek will be presenting this month on customizing EE.
1) how to customize the default EE install at the file level, and how to manage settings at the file level
2) a variety of techniques to customize the control panel to create a better user experience for your clients. The first part will be more focused at developers but hopefully give some designers insight into how EE works. And the second part will be more focused on designers and making the client experience all it can be.
If you’re in the LA area, sign up to attend.
Are you running an EE meetup? Get in touch and let me know.
Blog Entry
This is a on-going series of entries where I highlight EE experiences.
Another win for #eecms over Wordpress. I especially love helping out a fellow dev make the transition. Pro bono evangelism is the best!
Christopher Kennedy via Twitter
Blog Entry
A few weeks ago, EE Insider published a multi-language website with ExpressionEngine how-to article by Christofer Sandin. In the article, Christofer mentioned that he used an internal Republic Factory EE add-on created call Republic Variables. Well, that add-on is now available as a free download from their website.
What is Republic Variables?
Republic Variables hooks into ExpressionEngine’s global variables and give you an easy way to view, organize and edit all the variables you use on the site in one place.
The add-on doesn’t have to be used just for multi-language websites on EE but Republic Factory says Variables “really shines when used on sites with multi-language content.”
Republic Variables is a free download from their Labs website.
Blog Entry
In a blog post today, James Mathias announced that EllisLab is looking to add a designer to their ranks. James was hired this year as the Chief Creative Officer and this new position will bring a second designer in-house at EllisLab. This is, I think we can all agree, a good thing.
EllisLab is looking for a full-time production designer and developer to work on a wide variety of amazing projects, from ExpressionEngine to the EllisLab family of websites, and a bunch of fun things in between. The position provides variety and experience to help you grow and hone your craft.
Read the the entire job announcement the details and the email address you can use to apply.
Blog Entry
- Freeway (for EE2) by Doug Avery
Routing for ExpressionEngine — separate your URLs from your templates for smarter, cleaner code. Freebie’s tougher older brother.
- Iterate (for EE2) by Pixel & Tonic (Brandon Kelly)
Iterates through one or more pipe-delimited strings, passed in as parameters.
- Dev Docs (for EE2) by Focus Lab, LLC (Erik Reagan)
Dev Docs was born from a desire to have project-specific, developer-based documentation available within a site’s Control Panel.
- Member Segments ($, for EE2) by Isaac Raway (Airways)
Searches through URL segments for member_id, email, username, or screen name and provides additional member info as {segment_n_*} global variables.
- Spyglass ($, for EE2) by Isaac Raway (Airways)
Spyglass performs a text search on entry titles and custom fields.
- Structure Monthly Archives (for EE2) by Sean Delaney
Creates a monthly archive list based on Structure pages by passing an Entry ID. Most useful for blog or news monthly archive lists. No need to rely on Channels to separate your entries. You could consider this simple plugin as an alternative to the Archive Month Links tag. Requires the Structure module to be installed.
- Developer Info (for EE2) by Marc Miller (Big Ocean Studios)
This is an EE2 port of the EE1 SL Developer Info module. It also improves upon it, bringing a lot more information into the Channel page view.
Blog Entry
I found out about this newly launched EE site from a forum post by Brandon Richards of Brand Rich Media. He announced the new EE2 site for the Western Carolina Rescue Ministry.
For the past 30 years Western Carolina Rescue Ministries have been faithfully serving the poor, homeless and addicted in our community in Asheville, North Carolina.
Beautiful site.
Blog Entry
Couchable put together a list of beginner EE resources, which includes dozens of links that will help you install ExpressionEngine and get started building your first site.
I’ve put together a collection of tutorials, books, articles and videos for ExpressionEngine newbies and novices. Smashing Magazine had a similar collection but it is now pretty dated being from 2008. I tried to find as many free examples as I could but ultimately I went with the resources I felt were the best, paid or otherwise. So this list will have some paid stuff but you can learn ExpressionEngine for free if you so choose.
Missing from the links is my free HD video on installing ExpressionEngine (also available on YouTube).
Great list and if you need help learning about ExpressionEngine, check out the weekly EE Help Chat.
Blog Entry
I have a post planned on the new documentation from EllisLab but until then, read this tutorial from Exp:resso on how to document your CodeIgniter and EE add-ons using the same tool that EllisLab uses: Sphinx.
The beauty of using Sphinx is that you can write your documentation using ReStructuredText, a text format similar to MarkDown. You can then easily generate your docs in a variety of output formats, including HTML and PDF. It also helps to keep your content separate from design, and automatically handles repetitive tasks such as generating a table of contents / navigation, and linking between your documents.
The blog post walks you through the entire process of installing Sphinx and styling it like the official ExpressionEngine documentation.
Read the full tutorial: Documenting ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Add-ons
Blog Entry
Jacob Russell follows up his EECI 2011 talk, “EE, Faster,” with a visit to EE Podcast! EE & Speed Optimization goes through the key points in getting your site “up to speed.” We discuss best practices in template creation, add-ons that help boost EE site efficiency, and other things to keep in mind in order to have the fastest EE site possible. We also touch on our EECI 2011 experience! Tune in!
Blog Entry
Sorry for missing last week, but we were attending the incredible EECI conference in New York and were too busy schmoozing to sit down and write a weekly devot:ee post. But we’re back this week, and of note is the new Better Workflow add-on for EE2, which looks to address the entire workflow process which is more or less lacking in the current version of ExpressionEngine. They’ve obviously struck a chord with the EE development community because Better Workflow is a very strong seller. Congrats to Electric Putty for releasing such a useful add-on!
- Better Workflow ($, for EE2) by Electric Putty
Better Workflow is an ExpressionEngine add-on from Electric Putty that adds inline preview, entry drafts and approval processes to the EE control panel.
- Entry Data (for EE2) by Sean Delaney
This simple plugin takes any given Entry ID and returns the corresponding Entry Title or URL Title.
- Image Directory Gallery (for EE2) by Brad Morse
Supply the directory/folder on your server that contains the images and it will display all images on your template
- Nearby (for EE2) by Blake Walters
A simple ExpressionEngine plugin that uses the GeoNames API to find places near a known zip code.
- Title Master ($, for EE2) by Marc Tanis (BlendIMC)
Title Master puts you in control of your Channel Entry’s Titles and URL Titles. Stop working against your titles, and start letting your titles work for you.
- ProForm Drag and Drop Form Builder ($, for EE2) by Isaac Raway (Airways)
ProForm is an advanced drag and drop form management module for ExpressionEngine 2.0, designed to make creation and management of forms easier for developers and end users.
- Color Picker (for EE2) by Noah Kuhn
Very simple Color Picker Fieldtype using JSColor
- DraftEE (for EE2) by iain
Module/Fieldtype combo for creating/publishing drafts of Channel Entries.
- Nostalgia (for EE2) by iain
Control panel theme for EE2, with a hint of EE1.
- Control Panel Welcome Email (for EE1) by Nathan Pitman (Nine Four Ltd)
Automates the process of sending newly registered CP members a welcome email with username and password.
- Social (for EE1) by Nathan Pitman (Nine Four Ltd)
A module which facilitates social interactions such as friendship and messaging
- Custom Typography ($, for EE1 & EE2) by Laisvunas
This plugin invokes ExpressionEngine’s typography parsing on the content. Might be useful when you retrieve some data using Query module and need to display that data formatted.
- Category Entries (for EE2) by Isaac Raway (Airways)
Extends the Channel entries tag to order entries by a given set of categories.
- PrecEEdence (for EE2) by Protean Web
This plugin returns the first non-empty parameter, or the first parameter that meets a specified condition or regular expression. The plugin also supports get, post, global, and stash variables.
- EE ShareThis ($, for EE2) by Protean Web
Provides an easy way to add ShareThis buttons (including Facebook like, google plus, and Twitter buttons) to an EE site.
- Jimmy (for EE2) by iain
Image tracking module that logs user data whenever an image is called.
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