One hallmark of this year’s EE Conference is the offering of extra workshops and classroom sessions. There six topics to choose from and the cost ranges from $175 to $650. These sessions are in addition to a conference ticket.
Conference tickets are on sale for the event in Portland. There are two tiers of tickets: $275 and $450.
Posted on May 16, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
Peers conference is taking place at the end of June this year (not far away!) in Chicago and features speakers covering topics on Laravel, ExpressionEngine, Craft and business.
We’re going beyond the same old slide deck: we’ve curated a diverse group of speakers in development and business tracks bound to keep you on your toes. Want to learn something new? Come and be challenged in our coding workshops. Sit in on a roundtable and hear what’s really going on in your industry. At Peers we’ll engage attendees with our panel discussions and leave plenty of time to network and chat.
It boasts a nice speaker lineup covering a variety of topics. The event takes place at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Tickets are on sale now for the early bird price of $299.
Posted on May 01, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
Along with the new website, EECI 2013 also released the full schedule and lineup for the latest installment of our community’s annual gathering. This year the conference is being led by Brad Parscale of Turner Parscale and DevDemon.
Over two days the conference packs in 34 speakers and 46 sessions. The conference takes place at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon.
I’ll have a lot more to say about it as we get closer. But for now: check out the schedule and register to attend.
See you there.
Posted on Apr 21, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
If you’re in the UK or EU and want to attend a EE conference that doesn’t require a bunch of travel to the US, then please take a look at EEUK 2013, a stellar ExpressionEngine conference in Manchester, UK May 16th and 17th 2013.
The conference is two days, one day of an EE add-on workshop by Low Schutte (Low also did a great ExpressionEngine add-on development tutorial for Mijingo) and one day of eight conference talks packed to the brim with knowledge.
Tickets are still available. Go get ‘em now.
Posted on Mar 19, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
EE add-on developer (of the year!) Low Schutte is teaching a class at EEUK on add-on development. The class takes place the day before the main conference. Here’s the description:
You’ve built your fair share of EE sites and have used third party add–ons on multiple occasions. You’re pretty sure what the difference is between an Extension and a Module. Perhaps you’ve read a “Hello World” plugin tutorial online somewhere, and maybe you’ve even downloaded a template package from pkg.io. But, as you might have found out, one does not simply build an add–on.
Following his EECI talk and recent screencast, Low will explain the thought process behind building an add–on. What choices have to be made, what resources can be used and how to write clean and efficient code. We will build an add–on from scratch, covering the basics and slightly more advanced topics.
I worked with Low on his ExpressionEngine add-on development screencast and I can vouch for his excellence as a teacher. Low can organize and explain difficult concepts with ease. If his video and past conference talks are any indication this class at EEUK should be a must-attend class for anyone that is interested in learning about ExpressionEngine development.
You can attend the conference and learn from Low for only £399. It included lunch during Low’s class and during the conference plus the after-party fun.
Learn more and register at EEUK.org.
Posted on Feb 20, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
It’s time to give your feedback! EECI organizers are looking for your opinion on conference class and session topics.
Take a few minutes and vote on the topics you want to see be part of the conference.
Posted on Feb 19, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
Announced last Friday, the news is out that the next EECI will be this Fall in Portland, Oregon.
The dates are October 14-15 and the rest of the details are still yet to be announced.
Mark the date, tell your boss, take vacation or book your conference time. See you there.
Posted on Feb 19, 2013 by Ryan Irelan
Today it was announced that Turner Parscale, a partnership that invests in web technologies, purchased “the assets and rights to EECI.”
In short, this means that EECI will go on and it is backed by a company that has the resources to continue EECI and grow it. And the new owner (Brad Parscale of DevDemon) is right from our community.
I will reiterate what I said in the press release: I am very excited by this. I wasn’t sure if anyone would take on organizing EECI again because of the capital investment required to reserve conference spaces, hotel room blocks and more. I know I couldn’t do it.
Here’s the entire press release:
San Antonio TX – Oct 26, 2012 - Turner Parscale LLC, a technology investment firm, has purchased the assets and rights to EECI, the Community run conference for ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter conference, from Whoooz! Webmedia for an undisclosed amount.
Turner Parscale, a partnership funded by Tom O. Turner and Brad Parscale, invests in emerging web content technologies. Brad is the President of Giles-Parscale, Inc and DevDemon Add-Ons. Tom is the CEO of Pisces LP, a San Antonio-based private equity and venture capital firm. His portfolio includes Akimbo Financial, www.akimbocard.com, which he co-founded in 2009.
Brad Parscale stated, “It is exciting to take over the reins for the EECI Conference. Turner Parscale’s goal is to make EECI the best conference it can be. We have already started to plan for amazing things in 2013.”
Turner Parscale is actively searching for and investing in web content technologies and sees the ExpressionEngine community as a highly successful source for growth opportunities.
Ryan Irelan with Mijingo said, “After the last EECI in Horseshoe Bay, Texas, I wasn’t sure if someone would take over and continue running a large community event every year. I’m excited that the conference is again going to be run by someone from the community. Large multi-day conferences take a lot of time and resources to put on. It’s exciting that Brad and his team are taking over EECI.”
For more information: info@turnerparscale.com www.turnerparscale.com
Posted on Oct 26, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Blake Walters talked on “Practical Tips For Writing Custom Plugins”this morning at EECI.
He started off the presentation with this great quote:
EECI Helped Changed How I Build Sites.
I remember EECI in Brooklyn last year, where Matt Weinberg, Rob Sanchez, and many others highly emphasized jumping into the source code, and getting into add-on development.
This year Blake helps those who’ve never written add-ons, and those with little experience in add-on development, learn the very basics of getting started.
Compared to last EECI, Blake’s process for how he built sites changed:
For those who don’t write add-ons, their first thought is to enable PHP in their templates. Here’s why you shouldn’t:
When using PHP in templates, parsing on input and output are different. Blake shows us how each method is parsed in relation to when ExpressionEngine tags are parsed.
So why would you want to build a custom plugin?
Breaking down the tag:
Email
Comments
Post to Twitter
Post to Deliciousexp:eeci:present style="keynote" parse="inward"
Where can you go for information?
Places to go for info:
You can build add-ons as either:
ExpressionEngine is a platform we can build stuff on.
Blake then walked through the anatomy of a plugin. (It was really code heavy)
Here are his slides so you can see all the wonderful code.
Update: Blake has posted his code and examples on Github.
Posted on Oct 16, 2012 by Kyle Cotter
What do you get when you take Ryan Masuga, Mitchell Kimbrough, Brandon Kelly, Lodewijk Schutte, and Eric Lamb, and put them all in the same room? Hilariousness to say the least.
This developer round-table, moderated by the amazing, tall, and fantastic Ryan Irelan (I was paid to say that) was a source for hearing straight from the horses mouth about the world of add-on development.
Notable statements from the round table:
Q. “Have you considered reevaluating the price due to widespread adoption?”
We’re pretty much breaking even, with our sales and support, lowering them for more customers would increase support and not make it beneficial . - Brandon Kelly
Q. Is support something you’re concerned about?
All: Yes. Low: No. Support isn’t the main time hog at the moment.
Brandon and Mitchell have dedicated support staff.
Q. Is main support from newbies?
Pretty wide range. Some on a weekly basis. Easy to think their taking advantage. Then the others who have put a ton of effort into it, with the one little thing they can’t figure out. Majority, it’s newbies. - Brandon Kelly
We’re supporting people with complex problems, or supporting complex add-ons. Supporting edge cases. Doing it again, we’d release fewer things, simpler, more focused. 1/4 payroll dedicated to support - Mitchell Kimbrough
Q. Trends with numbers?
It’s not a steep curve. Things are flattening out. - Mitchell Kimbrough
We’ve been flat at every stage of the game. When I released Playa, week to week basis when selling it. When Pixel and Tonic came out it raised the ceiling. When we released Assets, the total revenue didn’t change at all. Matrix, Wygwam, Playa took a dip. - Brandon Kelly
Fairly flat. About a year ago, I saw a steady increase. That went on for about 9 months. About 2 months ago it’s gone down again. Too early to tell. - Low
Every time I have a record month, the next month it goes down, then the following it goes up. I don’t know what to make of that. - Eric Lamb
Q. About 2 years ago, add-on devs made the migration to ExpressionEngine 2. What do you see about the future of add-on development?
We have a pricing problem as a community. We need more and more difficult challenges to keep the team engaged. We want to build a bunch of difficult stuff. But the volume of sales and price point would support the stuff we want to do. Unless there is drastic change of core tool, not much else I can do. - Mitchell Kimbrough
There are things not possible at moment I currently work around. Better APIs with channel entries. But actually fetching channel entries [needs improving]. If I didn’t have to do this “hackish” trick, it’d be better. Really depends on what EllisLab’s priorities are at the moment. Would love custom field approach applied to categories and member fields. Really up to EllisLab. - Lodewijk Schutte
It’s a limited API. Holds us back from doing some of the cool stuff. The API is the problem. - Eric Lamb
5 years from now. At this point I have been releasing add-ons for 5 years. Back in 2007, ExpressionEngine back then was a lot more prominent in the workflow then it is today. Back then it was ExpressionEngine plus a few add-ons to fill in a couple gaps. Today, the add-ons have exploded, and you start with ExpressionEngine then build your site from there with add-ons. It doesn’t look like ExpressionEngine out of the box anymore. And that all happened in 5 years. So 5 years from now, the trend will continue. Like iOS the built-in software is nice, but it’s the apps that make it. And that’s probably the model that ExpressionEngine is looking at right now. 5 years from now we’ll be looking at ExpressionEngine as more of a platform and add-ons will be needed more and more. - Brandon Kelly
Q. I noticed add-ons need to work with each other more and more, how do you handle add-on compatibility?
My add-on expected something, another add-on expected something else. I don’t lose sleep over it. But when it comes up, the add-on community is great, they respond well. It’s always an easy fix, you kind of just work through it, it’s not really been a big problem for me. With Updater, for example, it was a simple fix, nothing that required me to do anything above and beyond. All these things come up anyhow, between ExpressionEngine versions. It’s the nature of development. - Eric Lamb
As far as proper compatibility, you have to add a couple of methods to your fieldtype, same thing with Matrix, Low Variables, etc you need to add a couple of methods. That’s kind of like writing an API. Emailed Brandon on what to do to make it work. Decided to name stuff generically so we can use the same hook. Try to keep it open. Always open for suggestions. - Lodewijk Schutte
Communication between developers is key, and strongly encouraged.
Q. How do you work with EL to make sure a new ExpressionEngine release doesn’t break functionality.
The lead time we get on a preview isn’t enough time for proper Q/A. Our library is too big. For add-on devs with 1,2, maybe 3 add-ons, the preview gives them enough time to update. - Mitchell Kimbrough
Q. Have you considered a different support model? - Rob Sanchez, Mighty Big Robot
Yeah, forum support is not sustainable. We want to help people succeed. Unfortunately, people sometimes take advantage of that. A team of three people, you spend all day catching up on support from the weekend. We have some ideas we’re considering. Moving more towards a private support model. Maybe, a pay per instance, monthly subscription. Then just pimp the community forums for people to go there to get help. It has to be adjusted. - Brandon Kelly
Q. When people don’t read, do you have a solution for getting these people support fast.
A lot of questions are RTFM type questions.
Again, I think that falls under the “people taking advantage of us” category. Maybe having to pay up front will make them think twice. - Brandon Kelly
And that’s a wrap.
Posted on Oct 15, 2012 by Kyle Cotter
Want to get a new ExpressionEngine project up and running in 26 seconds? Carl Crawley of Made By Hippo walked us through how to do just that.
Why is a bootstrap needed?
Carl listed three reasons:
Some main points from his presentation:
Now for the fun part. Carl has quite the setup for getting your new project up and running in no time.
He has a bash script that pulls your base install from the repo, sets up the database, handles renaming of system folders. sets permissions, and cleans up unnecessary files.
The best part, Carl has posted his bash script and standard config and database file. So, go check it out now! It’s certainly useful.
Posted on Oct 15, 2012 by Kyle Cotter
Ben Croker, during the development track at EECI, showed a demo of a new ExpressionEngine add-on he has been working on.
“Continuum” allows for real time logging of how users interact with your ExpressionEngine sites. This add-on logs actions of users, be it visiting certain pages, filling out certain forms, and more. Continuum keeps track of it all.
Ben’s talk, geared towards add-on developers,highlights why you as an add-on developer need to be responsible in developing your add-ons.
Be it how you write your privacy policies, to how you follow the developer guidelines, the power is in your hands.
You need to think of ExpressionEngine as a platform, and your add-ons as a means to extend ExpressionEngine for the better. Adding hooks into your own add-ons for other developers to extend is a great point that has gained a lot of steam lately.
We make the assumption of how people will use our add-ons. And I don’t think we should.
The logic behind Continuum is built around a “progressive development”thinking pattern.
Continuum will be released at no charge in the near future.
Posted on Oct 15, 2012 by Kyle Cotter
So, Christopher Imrie just blew our minds, to say the least.
The typical project setup for Moresoda is something along the following:
Chris mentions that in development, features are created from the dev server, pushed to the staging server, and then to production. But, in terms of content, the flow is reversed.
Chris highlighted 5 typical ways to keep databases in sync:
Well, today Chris introduced a sixth way to handle content across environments.
Site Manager solves many of our problems.
Site Manager gives you the ability to see all your sites, view configuration information, and best of all, sync content structure between sites.
It’s literally a one click process for taking fields from your local dev install, and transferring them to production.
Site Manager Alpha will be live today, for free.
Update: Chris has posted the alpha to github.
Posted on Oct 15, 2012 by Kyle Cotter
EECI 2012 is underway! And it’s off to a great start.
Ryan Irelan started the day off and talked about the circus that is the ExpressionEngine community.
The point of this talk was to promote the awesome that is the ExpressionEngine community.
Ryan makes an important point that I completely agree with:
As a community, be it through client services, add-ons, training, conferences, or whatever we do, we create great things and charge money that support the economy surrounded by ExpressionEngine.
There is an economy surrounded around ExpressionEngine, and it’s affected by each and everyone of us. So keep making awesome!
Our community’s goal is focused on creating a great and flexible CMS.
Ryan showcased great members of the community including:
In conclusion Ryan ended with these points.
Go build it. Do great work. Don’t worry about anything else.
Stay tuned for more EECI updates.
Posted on Oct 15, 2012 by Kyle Cotter
Robert sent a tweet out regarding shuttle information for arriving EECI attendees.
Pickup location is outside exit #1 which is across baggage claim #1. http://t.co/YvwdV8I4 Be their at given times. http://t.co/ZdTziN1T.
Look forward to seeing you all!
There’s more information on the conference site. Double check your flights and double check the bus schedule and hopefully everything goes as planned.
Posted on Oct 13, 2012 by Kyle Cotter