Over the next few months we’ll be rolling out new content and features on EE Insider. The first part of this is our new “Ask the Pro” monthly column.
In this column EE Pro Fred Boyle (of nGen Works) will answer as many of your questions as possible. But before we can start we need your help by submitting questions about how to do something on ExpressionEngine.
In the next few months there are a couple of opportunities to gather with your fellow EE users, talk shop, learn some cool stuff and drink copious amounts of {your_favorite_beverage}.
SXSW Interactive - March 12-16
The annual gathering of internet nerds from around the world, SXSW is a broad technology conference. It takes place in hopefully warm and pleasant Austin, TX. This year they have agreed to host panel discussion on ExpressionEngine. Led by Kenny Meyers, with myself, Mark Huot, Brian Warren and Jenn Lukas, the ExpressionEngine 2.0: Total Domination! panel will cover, well, EE domination! Actually, we’ll be discussing cool things you can do with EE and share some of our experiences.
The panel takes place on Monday March 15th at 12:30 PM in Ballroom B.
ExpressionEngine Summit - March 30
An online-only conference that will feature a full day of speakers talk about ExpressionEngine. I’ll be speaking at this virtual event about advanced templating techniques.
EECI 2010 - May 31-June 2
The follow-up to last year’s inaugural event in Leiden, Netherlands takes place in San Francisco at the end of May. In short, EECI is the event for our community. If you have budget to attend any event, this is your baby.
The speaker list is features Rick Ellis, Leslie Camacho, Derek Allard and Derek Jones of EllisLab, Structure module creator Travis Schmeisser, Brandon Kelly, Leevi Graham and a lot more.
As I occasionally do in this space, I want to thank the fine people and companies who sponsor EE Insider through their advertisements. Unlike a lot of sites you visit and read regularly, EE Insider doesn’t bombard you with ads about hair care products, toothpaste or some other crap you don’t care about.
We do, however, accept advertisers that relate directly to your work with ExpressionEngine, like:
EECI 2010: The latest iteration of the ExpressionEngine & CodeIgniter conference takes place 5/31 - 6/2 in San Francisco. Early bird tickets end on March 1st.
Increasingly more and more people are using Twitter—instead of a feed—reader as a way to find news and information. To this note, I’ve started publishing out all of the latest EE Insider content to @eeinsider on Twitter.
The account will contain some tweets that aren’t about new content, but will be the majority of what will be posted. This is meant for people who prefer Twitter as their content aggregator.
If you want to keep up with the latest ExpressionEngine news, follow us on Twitter!
Over the last six months, Kenny has been instrumental in helping me keep this site alive and kicking while I was heads down finishing my book. He was responsible for the very popular ExpressionEngine 2 Week we put on last October and has been dutifully posting news and announcements—with wit and humor— since last Summer. Thank you, Kenny, for contributing to the site and the community! Security will escort you out of the building. —Ryan
What’s the Boyz II Men song? The one you all sing to yourself when you’re leaving a loved one? That’s right.. Motownphilly. Sing that while you read this heartfelt goodbye.
This is the end of my brief but fulfilling stint at EE Insider. Its been a real pleasure, a damn sincere pleasure to serve the EE community in this capacity. So as all self-important goodbye posts must go, I have to say my thanks in way too many characters.
I really want to extend my heartfelt love to the good people at EllisLab. I’m a pretty loud critic at times, even on this site sometimes, but whenever I’ve approached them with an interview or question they’ve been forthcoming. That kind of professionalism is really hard to find in such an ego-centric industry as the indie software front. Especially when the stakes are so low with something like a fan site. I’d especially like to thank el jeffe, Leslie Camacho for always being a good point man. I don’t always agree with their decisions, but they’ve built a hell of a community.
However, their community wouldn’t be half as strong as it is right now (nor as public) without the fine contributions of this site’s fearless, pale leader Mr. Irelan(d). There’s no side-stepping, Ryan took me on and subsequently helped my career. For this, I will always be extremely thankful and appreciative. He’s a smart, opportune, generous and great person. Its been an honor working with him and this site, brief as it is. So, Mr. Irelan(d), sincerely thank you. Buy his book.
The rest of you are pretty awesome too. Its been fun getting feedback and working on this little EE community.
So what’s next? I’m still working at Virb a job I love with good people. I’m also excited to start my freelance on the side business. Finally, you can hire me to help with your EE or CodeIgniter project and I’ll rock it. I’ll also be a sometime contributor to EE Insider.
So there you go. Thanks. *refresh to white screen*
SXSW got a little more funky-fresh this year, with the announcement of the EE/CI pre-party.
The premier ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference - and your cool friends from Ellislab invite you for a night out @ SXSW. Join us Monday night at The Library together with your friends from the EE & CI community. We’ll serve you beer and pizza and even give away some free tickets to the EECI2010 conference.
You can sign up for the party here but be quick, spots are limited!
EllisLab have updated the blog with their SXSW plans:
Over the course of the last few years we have gradually changed our approach to SXSW, preferring to move toward a small-group discussion format.
This is a great move for EllisLab and for the community; there is an immeasurable value to this discourse. This year we are excited to continue with this format and to add to it; this year, you, through the services at UserVoice, will have the opportunity to choose where we meet and what we discuss.
First we will be offering Lunch with EllisLab to exceptional contributors to the community, including those who run ExpressionEngine or CodeIgniter community sites, third party add-on developers, and Pro Net members. This is your opportunity to tell us what we can do to support your endeavor while enjoying a meal on our tab
The ‘Labs have so much in store that if you’re going to Austin this year, it’s a must read.
Our weekly EE Help Chat takes place tonight at 9 PM Eastern (GMT -5) and you’re invited! If you’re new to EE, a long-time expert or user, please join us for the one-hour chat session where we help each other EE questions and problems. There is no admission fee; it’s free for everyone!
Want to learn more about the EE Help Chat? Visit our EE Help Chat page to read up on all of the details or read transcripts from select past chats (select meaning when I remembered to post the transcript).
A special thank you to Natural Logic and their Champagne add-on for sponsoring this week’s EE Insider RSS feed. Champagne is a brand new add-on for EE 1.6.x that allows you to easily integrate ExpressionEngine and CampaignMonitor. And I really mean integrate; Champagne lets you send emails via CampaignMonitor right from your EE control panel. You can even use EE templates and reuse your existing content for your email sends.
Don’t make your clients use two different tools for managing content and sending email. Use Champagne instead.
Infamous ExpressionEngine add-on developer, Brandon Kelly, has written an article on paid upgrades.
The new fad in ExpressionEngine Land appears to be paid upgrades. EllisLab is charging $50 to upgrade EE1 to EE2, and what’s more, they plan to charge for some 2.x upgrades as well. Following EllisLab’s lead, Solspace has announced that they will start charging for major upgrades as well. They’ll begin with User 3, which will cost $9.95 to upgrade from User 2.
SPOILER ALERT: Brandon Kelly is not charging for upgrades.
Continuing their ongoing series, Devot:ee has spotlighted developer Anna Brown. The article goes into, as previous articles, what tools Anna uses to get the job done and what she has built. Who is Anna?
Anna Brown is a wildly successful web developer and the owner of MediaGirl, Inc. Among many other projects, she developed Zocalo, a Spanish language daily newspaper that is the fourth largest ExpressionEngine site on the internet according to Hop Studios’ yearly round-up. Her sites push the boundaries of ExpressionEngine in scale and capability, and she shows the rest of us what’s possible with ability, hard work, and over 1 million unique visitors a month.
Last week, if you missed it, 2.0.1 of the ExpressionEngine public beta was released. In a follow-up to this release, el jeffe Leslie Camacho has blogged about it on the ExpressionEngine blog. The post is mostly about the distinction between a version and a build.
A Version, also called a Point release, is considered a substantial update and can be identified by a change in the Version number.
ExpressionEngine 2.0.0—> ExpressionEngine 2.0.1
Version updates typically contain fixes, updates, and possibly new features. The bigger the change in Version number, the more substantial the changes.
A Build is an update to ExpressionEngine within the same Version/point number. For example, ExpressionEngine 2.0.0 has Build 20091207 and Build 20091211
Mr. Camacho also goes on to point out the excellent Build Forums whose RSS feed you can subscribe to by clicking here
Hop Studios has updated their list of the top-trafficked (via Alexa) ExpressionEngine sites. Much to our relief, celebrity news and Canadian deals have all made the list. It really is great to see the diversity of ExpressionEngine and we really do mean diversity: pornography, change and gadgets. Do we even have to make wise-cracks at this point?
Third cousin site, Devot:ee, is starting a series called Spotlight to discuss how developers build their websites. Their first Spotlight is with the infamous Brandon Kelly.
The spotlight discusses Brandon’s first EE site Navigant Consulting and Brandon’s use of add-ons in the project. The “Spotlight” series holds a lot of promise and we look forward to more from Devot:ee.
Over the next few months we’ll be rolling out new content and features on EE Insider. The first part of this is our new “Ask the Pro” monthly column. 
Email
Comments
Post to Twitter
Post to Delicious
