ExpressionEngine 2010: A Year in Review
I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to say that 2010 was a huge year for ExpressionEngine. It wasn’t necessarily all good, but as a community we should be satisfied about where we are and hopeful to do better next year.
What follows is my take on 2010 in our community and my wishes for the next year.
ExpressionEngine 2 Beta (and beyond)
The year started off with the public beta of ExpressionEngine 2 in full swing after a early December 2009 release. After a long, long (long!) time in development, EE 2 was finally ready for the public. Or was it?
Anytime expectations are high there is bound to be letdown and the public beta of EE 2 was no exception. The software wasn’t as polished and bug-free as some came to expect from EllisLab; it was, after all, a beta. Many were still irritated about the whole thing taking so long. I was writing a book on EE 2 at the time, so I shared that frustration.
The public beta lasted until July of this year and throughout saw small, incremental improvements that added polish and some fine-tuning. The release of EE 2.1 in July was the launch of EE 2 and the first step into moving away from the old EE 1 software.
There has been a lot public handwringing about EE 2: the bugs, the pink control panel and the long delay. I can’t say I disagree with any of this but I do think the public complaining isn’t productive and makes the people whining look like, well, whiners. Do I love the new control panel design? No. Am I happy that EE 2 releases seems to always contain fairly major bugs? No. But I also want to support the company that has helped foster the small ecosystem in which we are able to work. Bitching on Twitter isn’t supporting anything except your own desire to be heard. Let’s use the new year as an opportunity to change this.
ExpressionEnigne 2 Wishlist for 2011
Bitching on your own website is similar, so let me try to be productive and make a wishlist for EE 2. This isn’t a complete list but just some of the more important items.
First, I’d like to see the Control Panel be continually streamlined and revised. Let’s do away with all of the unnecessary jQuery bling in the UI. It feels wrong and makes the Control Panel seems more complicated to use than it really is.
My second wish is for easier theming and that has been mostly addressed in a recent update called “cascading control panel themes” that allows you to only include the code you need in your theme files instead of the entire default theme with your changes.
Third, I’d like a simplification of add-ons. Let’s do away with all the different types and just call them add-ons. This also requires reducing the Control Panel interface to reflect the simplification. Erik Reagan has already made a feature request for this. EllisLab, please consider this!
As a fourth wish, I’d like to finally see enterprise support implemented. When you’re trying to sell a $300 CMS to a client for a project that has a large budget, eyebrows are raised. Price means something and so does the level of support. Posting to a public forum for support simply isn’t acceptable for a lot of people used to working with enterprise software. EllisLab needs to implement a private, ticket-based enterprise support system in 2011.
Finally, and this this is also posted at the top of the Forecast page, is improved QA and testing and, hopefully, the implementation of regression testing.
Some large bugs slipped through into EE 2.1 releases. It’s tough on people who upgrade immediately (tip: never upgrade immediately and never, ever do it on a live site) and each buggy release erodes away the trust we have that the software is stable.
Regression testing is a testing method that makes sure you didn’t introduce new bugs while fixing others or adding new features. I used to do software testing in a past life and I know firsthand that regression testing is time consuming and demanding; but it is also necessary.
Those are my top wishes for 2011. Now onto the rest of the year!
EECI 2010
This year there were two installments of EECI, the conference started last year by Whoooz! Webmedia. The first one of the year took place in San Francisco and the second back in Leiden, The Netherlands. After three conferences—and another one planned in 2011—the EE community now has a regular event to meet in person to share information.
The 2011 conference will take place in Brooklyn, NY. The conference website and final list of speakers will be posted after the new year.
Add-ons Volcano
One of the greatest side-effects of the new EE 2 is that we’ve seen a huge growth in the amount of add-ons that are available. So many of my add-on ideas have been done quicker than I could get to them. It’s a great problem to have! Coupled with coming of age of Devot:ee and their jump into the add-on resale business, it seems easier than ever to find the add-ons you need to get your project done on budget and on schedule.
Devot:ee is arguably the most important EE site on the web. Now, mind you, I say this on my own EE site; but as a person who also tries to serve a community, I know a good thing when I see it. Ryan Masuga and his sidekick Jacob Russell have created a wonderful one-stop add-on shop. The only big add-on developer still sitting on the sidelines is Solspace...I wonder when they will join in and make it easier for customers like me to get their add-ons while buying others.
EllisLab, Our Leaders
In 2010 EllisLab made a big push to include the community and its resources into their operations. At EECI in San Francisco, they announced official community partners, which included this humble news site and a few other resources. This means EE Insider news is streamed to the homepage of the EllisLab site and they work with us to make sure the community is aware of what’s coming and what to expect.
EllisLab also had a small breakthrough in communications this Fall. They were guests on the EE Podcast with me and Lea Alcantara to answer community questions in an attempt to be more transparent. I think that went well.
You can now follow what they’re working on their Forecast page. This will hopefully give everyone in the community a glimpse into the work the EllisLab development team is doing. Adding the Forecast page was a great response the community asking for more transparency.
In the title of this section notice that I referred to EllisLab as “our leaders.” This is true in the sense that EllisLab creates and maintains the product that allows all of us to do at least part (if not all) of our business. Whether you’re an add-on developer working full-time on ExpressionEngine add-ons, an author creating training materials for people looking to learn ExpressionEngine or a web design agency building client sites on ExpressionEngine, we all rely heavily on EllisLab to produce and maintain a stable and great product. Because of this I have a few wishes for EllisLab for 2011.
First, I want to see even more communication between EllisLab and the community. What we’ve seen this Fall is a great start but there are still times when I feel like there’s a weird veil of corporatism being dropped between us. In my mind, this makes EllisLab look timid. There are more people now bravely basing a large part of their business on ExpressionEngine (myself, Brandon Kelly of Pixel & Tonic, Solspace, Ryan Masgua of devot:ee and hundreds of web agencies). I know almost everyone on the team personally and I can’t say that they’re timid people but as a whole the company feels like they’re leaning back instead of into the wind.
Second, EllisLab needs to advertise more (the participation in the Fusion Ads Bundle is a big first step) and get their name out into the same spaces as other similar products. It’s disheartening for me to see every other CMS advertised throughout the web but almost never ExpressionEngine.
This is especially important for businesses that rely on growth of the ExpressionEngine user base to grow their own EE-based products and services. If ExpressionEngine grows by 10,000 users one year, that’s 10,000 potential customers for my training materials or for Solspace’s add-ons. Additionally, the more ExpressionEngine users there are, the more ideas there are for add-ons and the more motivation there is for people to create top-notch add-ons with excellent support.
It’s been a great year to be in the EE community. That’s my review and my wishes for 2011. What are yours?
Posted on Dec 30, 2010 by Ryan Irelan
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Brett — 12:00 on 12.30.2010
Enterprise support is a great feature request. I use EE on a federal website and during a hosting transition all players were shocked that support only happened through forums. The quick and useful responses from the forums were surprising to them, but in another situation with less amiable staff, EE could’ve been tossed out.
Todd — 12:34 on 12.30.2010
I agree with you, Ryan, on every point. If I wrote this article it would not have been as polite in regards the control panel for EE2. However, you kept your civility and made excellent points and hopefully Ellislab will give some weight to your thoughts here.
carvingCode — 13:41 on 12.30.2010
‘Whiners’? Really?
I know EE is a great piece of software, but it’s caused customers a lot of grief this year. And until the ‘whining’ started, EL was not interested in the communications changes you outlined.
Instead of calling folks ‘whiners’ perhaps you should congratulate them for jump starting EL’s Heart.
Just sayin’...
Erwin Heiser — 13:59 on 12.30.2010
Agree with most of the article, but not the part about “bitching”.
EE is a commercial product after all, so complaining when it’s buggy is hardly bitching.
Let’s not forget it took an article by Kenny, stating what a lot of us were thinking for the last year, before EL took notice. Having said that I hope the newly found openness and communication continues unabated. I look forward to seeing everyone at EECI 2011
Valon Sopi — 14:09 on 12.30.2010
Enterprise support is a must for EE. Media Temple (@ roughly 500
Leslie Camacho — 14:27 on 12.30.2010
Hi Ryan (and the rest of you fine people),
Thanks for the write up on EE Insider. I’m working on my own review of 2010 (yes, for public consumption on the EE Blog) and what you wrote definitely hits home from my perspective as well.
The short version is that 2010 has been a very strange year. As a company we’ve arguably taken the worst public beatings ever (some rightly deserved, others not), had our most success ever in terms of EE (despite the criticisms, we’re super proud of what we’ve accomplished with EE, MM, and CI), its easily been our best year in terms of growth (both in revenue and number of new people in the Community).
Plus, it goes without saying that the Community Partnership and the surrounding maturity has been awesome. Its been a pleasure to watch people succeed and humbling to be a part of it.
So the good news is that EllisLab is an excellent shape heading into 2011 with a lot of resources and energy to tackle what needs doing and lean into it!
I also want to say that there is a big difference between whiners and people giving criticism. We are blessed to have a majority of people capable of constructive, heart-felt criticism. And yes, it very much does “jump start EL’s heart”. We come to work to make people’s lives better and letting us know how we can do that in terms of EE or anything we make/do always helps.
Cheers & bring on 2011!
ps - Corporate/enterprise support is most definitely on 2011’s high priority agenda.
Tony Geer — 14:30 on 12.30.2010
While the bitching comment is a bit harsh I tend to agree with it. Pointing out problems is always easier than coming up with solutions, I guess that’s why people tend to do it so much.
Ryan Irelan — 14:40 on 12.30.2010
Erwin et al,
I went back and re-read the part about whining and I meant to write that in the context of Twitter. While I did mention twitter, it wasn’t untl a couple of sentences later (The Management regrets the error).
Kenny’s blog post and other similar thoughtful writings are not what I was referring to. I wrote here in support of what Kenny posted (a few minor quibbles aside). There has also been a lot of productive discussion in the forums (remember when EL pruned the forums?).
I follow every tweet about EE and believe me there is a lot of one-liner bitching that is never meant to be productive. That’s what I’m referring to. Negative discussion about EE is definitely an important part of the process but there has been a lot that just isn’t productive.
My comment about the motivation of bitching on Twitter still stands.
Bj — 14:59 on 12.30.2010
My hope for 2011 would be a proper feature request / bug tracker that would make it easier to follow up on these things.
Kenny Meyers — 15:05 on 12.30.2010
All,
For the record Ryan Irelan has always loved and supported me in everything I’ve done, unconditionally.
I’m pretty sure he was just talking about Stephen Lewis. Who we all know is a whiny British person.
Love Always,
Kenny
carvingCode — 15:47 on 12.30.2010
Chances are those who use Twitter to post praises and gripes about EE know full well they get read. That’s probably more the point than your assertion of simply a ‘desire to be heard’.
In a blog, you’ve got plenty of room to work out all of the back peddling so that what you just said to air disappointment only sounds like that to those directly involved.
John Faulds — 16:04 on 12.30.2010
And I agree. It’s the reason I spent so much time searching for a new Twitter client so that I could mute those people from the #eecms stream.
Ryan Battles — 20:31 on 12.30.2010
I will look back on 2010 as the year that EE doubled in cost. Not the core product alone, but all of those add-ons, some that used to be free, that the client now pays for…and are worth every penny.
We launched Director-ee this year, and it has helped me to see just how many of us there are, what people specialize in, and who I need to grab lunch with when traveling. Andy Johnson and I are looking forward to an exciting 2011, and hope to roll out a new feature or two for the community on that site.
Finally, I want to give another kudos to EllisLab for coming on the EE Podcast and addressing community concerns. I look forward to seeing more of that in the future.
John Macpherson — 05:24 on 12.31.2010
Great post.
EE has a very interesting positioning within the CMS space. In almost every review or overall opinion the price comes up. Competing against free, yet good products is incredibly tough to do. Its a testament to the quality of EE and the community that it seems be gaining market share incredibly quickly. I remember when mentioning it to other agencies only a few years ago, just about all had not heard of it. Now you not only get a response of awareness but a lot are actually using it.
The whinging bit is true i guess, nothing is perfect but on the web a storm in a tea cup happens daily. If you listen to some of the stories from 37Signals its actually quite amusing that the bashing they have taken for the smallest of things. You would have thought the world ended, when something had simply changed or been upgraded.
Thanks Ryan for your great work within the community, especially the podcast ( kudos to Lea + Dan too) which is another fantastic EE resource.
Onwards and upwards in 2011.
Grover Saunders — 10:14 on 01.02.2011
“Bitching on Twitter isn
Ryan Irelan — 11:20 on 01.02.2011
The option you have is to post in the forum, on your blog or a bug ticket clearly explaining the problem you’re seeing and why you’re running into it. A one-line zinger on Twitter isn’t that and isn’t helpful.
“So I think a bit of whining is entirely justified. Especially when, with many companies, it
Ryan Irelan — 11:27 on 01.02.2011
Kenny wrote:
“For the record Ryan Irelan has always loved and supported me in everything I
Grover Saunders — 12:17 on 01.02.2011
@Ryan
I’m not talking about notifying them of a new bug. People don’t whine on Twitter because they’ve got an axe to grind, it’s because they are running into a problem RIGHT NOW and venting their frustration. Not everyone has time for fully formed blog posts and if it’s a known issue posting on a forum or bug tracker isn’t going to help either. If there’s too much whining on Twitter about a particular problem, it’s an indication of the size of the problem. That’s neither my fault, nor Twitter’s. You’re basically asking me to censor my own Twitter feed to spare the feelings of EllisLab.
I agree that “EE blows.” is probably not a productive tweet. But “The *EXPLETIVE* EE update that was supposed to fix my last problem just broke my *EXPLETIVE* publish forms.” is entirely justified if that just happened to you and it means you’re going to spend an evening fixing it, working around it, or announcing that the upgrade didn’t work. If EllisLabs doesn’t want people tweeting that, then they’re going to have to improve the reliability of their updates which have been pretty poor lately. Public perception is the only tool a post-sale consumer has to affect the quality of the product they’ve purchased.
Again, not trying to bag on EllisLabs. I love EE and I understand that they’re going through some growing pains that could happen to anyone. But part of that is that they have to take some “verbal” abuse for awhile. And we’re all going to keep posting angry tweets until we aren’t angry anymore and we’re back to loving EE on a daily basis (as I know we will).
Todd — 14:26 on 01.02.2011
Funny how these threads take on a life and subject of their own.
We all have to make choices. Yet here we are sticking with EE. Why?
From my perspective, EE2 and the way it was released was a major bump in the road - tons of bugs, a control panel that is embarrassing to show clients and frustratingly little communication from Ellislab about where everything is going.
All this drove me to make the decision to reassess and test other CMS platforms to see if I could find a better alternative. After a good amount of testing, research, reading and the like… I made the decision to stick with ExpressionEngine with all its problems. There are other platforms I use from time like Wordpress which already has an incredibly good control panel and stupid silly simple updating processes for both the core and add-ons. In my opinion, Wordpress is the most likely challenger to ExpressionEngine in the days ahead. They are already making great strides towards functionality that is very similar to ExpressionEngine and have huge momentum with a large user base and their add-on development community. However, even though WP excels in many areas… it still is not ExpressionEngine in flexibility and ease of use when it comes to development.
While you don’t really need to know any PHP with ExpressionEngine to take full advantage of the software… with Wordpress you do need to know at least some PHP to fully customize your templates.
Regarding the EE front, Ellislab appears to be addressing several of the major issues we have complained about. The communication is improving and the bugs are being squashed while new developers are being brought on. So hopefully we’re at the tail end of this bumpy portion of the road and, I’m hopeful, in the coming months we’ll be on much more solid ground with the product and the direction the community is moving in.
My point with this long winded post is that we all have options… but yet we still seem to stick with EE by and large… since there isn’t really anything else to buy into YET. However, with options like WP, Concrete5 and Modx hot on the heals of Ellislab, we should be confident that they will HAVE TO make decisions that will keep them competitive as a commercial product in an ocean of relatively good free software. If Ellislab doesn’t make the right decisions going forward… it will become increasingly obvious to developers who use EE that there are better options available.
I’m putting my money on Ellislab. I believe the issues are being addressed and that 2011 will have a much happier story line than 2010.
Brett — 18:04 on 01.02.2011
What am I missing about the Control panel that everybody hates? I think it’s pretty nice. Serious question: what are the gripes?
Leslie Camacho — 20:39 on 01.02.2011
I feel I should chime in here on the “bitching on Twitter” topic. We’ve come a long way in how we view Twitter.
Ryan writes that EllisLab made a “small breakthrough in communication.” I beg to differ. We made a huge breakthrough.
We hired Leslie Doherty as our Community Architect. Part of her job is to listen everywhere the community is talking and take the highlights straight to us so we can roll that info into every product, service, and project EllisLab works on.
This means that in 2010, for the first time ever, we were genuinely capable of taking feedback from Twitter and turning that into actionable information.
What Twitter is best at, from a company perspective, is identifying trends. If there is a lot of “whining” we know something is up. It often doesn’t tell us what (sometimes it does though), but at least its a heads up that there is something important that we should dig deeper into.
What Twitter is terrible at is having a meaningful conversation that actually explores an issue. 140 characters is great for “listen to me please” but its terrible at letting you actually say something in depth and allowing the party you’re speaking with the opportunity to work it out and explore it.
“Forums” are still king in that realm, which is why we stick to forums for feature requests for the time being.
So, if your intent is to get our attention and point us in a direction, Twitter works for doing that. If your intent is to actually talk with us and explore an issue, you have to blog it, post on the forum, do something long form that allows you to do justice to the issue.
Not all issues require that of course, but I hope I’m getting my point across a bit.
Bottom line is, thanks to the Community Architect, if you say it publicly in some way, shape, or form (Twitter, Facebook, User Voice) and it gets some traction, we’re very likely going to know about it. Of course, if you really want to make sure it reaches us, email is still king.
That’s a huge communication break through and one that I think we as a company have not made clear enough.
Whatever communication issues exist are entirely my fault. I’m the President, I’m aware of them, and we’re already taking steps (in addition to hiring a dedicated position) to make that aspect even better in 2011. This comment is a start.
Ryan Irelan — 21:01 on 01.02.2011
Thanks, Leslie.
There you have it, folks, right from the mouth of the prez.
Leslie Flinger — 21:21 on 01.02.2011
Hi. I’m a twitter addict. I read everything and then process, articulate, and provide feedback to the dev team.
Some days they hate me for it but I do it all for you.
And also the free cookies. Oh, did I mention? I get free cookies.
Craig — 22:16 on 01.03.2011
I watched a lot of the mess with interest - while staying with older and more stable versions of EE which have worked well. I’m a patient person - but on the other hand, don’t want to be left using a horse when everyone else in using a car!
The web has been marching on and it remains to be seen whether EE can keep up. The long road to EE2 sapped resources, people, mojo and reputation. This a very real stuff, and despite the platitudes, from the outside nothing much has changed.
Sure, everything is getting more expensive - and that will allow for more revenue for everyone…sort of like Windows consultants just LOVE Microsoft, because it pays their bills. I’m all for add-ons and plug-ins, but there are certainly dozens of features which should have been added into EE instead of left to 3rd parties.
And, of course, my biggest gripe - is the lack of any update of the Discussion Forum and Wiki. Massive updates were promised (I can point to the thread) and yet have not been forthcoming and/or the plans or road-map presented.
It’s a complex thing to separate the business model from the application and community. EE could make millions - as many companies have, by selling to the corporations and agencies who want to pay big bucks (expensive must be good!) - that is a certain strategy.
But it is an entire different thing for EE, the programmers, the designers, the users…and the internet community in general, to look at the total app and say “yeah, we have the best wiki module and the best discussion module, and the best member module and the fastest code, etc.”........
I guess I have high standards - which is why I picked pmachine and then EE in the first place!
And Leslie, since I might have your attention…and since you mentioned the word Forums…and also noted the importance of such, would it be possible to comment on a potential timeline for a rewrite of the Forum Module?
(You certainly don’t have to answer here…...but I do have to find out sometime relatively soon)....
As my Dear Old Dad likes to say, there are too big problems in business.
1. Not enough business
2. Too much business
I sometimes fear EE suffers from the later.