Coverage of interesting new EE Add-ons that are released.
Today, the fellas at Devot:ee added a new Add-on Quick Store, which is a single page listing of every add-on they currently have for sale. 282 add-ons at the time I’m writing this.
A quick ⌘f in your browser to search for what you need and then add it to the cart.
Very nice!
Posted on May 16, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Along with the EE 2.5 release, EllisLab also released a new first party module to help EE developers make their websites compliant with the EU cookie legislation.
The Cookie Consent Module gives developers the option of disabling all cookies unless the site visitor specifically opted into them. Without the Cookie Consent Module disabling all cookies was not possible.
Without consent for cookies, visitors are unable to register for a member account or log in to their account.
Visitors can grant consent to cookies in two ways (from the docs):
The module makes two means of granting consent available: a direct link that can be used anywhere and form field that can be included on login and registration pages. Removing permission to set cookies is also provided for via a link.
You can find code samples and the available variables in the Cookie Consent Module documentation.
No. It is a free download from the ExpressionEngine Add-on Repository.
Posted on May 08, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Speaking of comparison charts, Exp:resso put together a comparison chart of e-commerce options on ExpressionEngine.
The apps covered in the chart are: their own Exp:resso Store, Cartthrob, and BrilliantRetail. It is a comprehensive chart and even includes Buy Now links at the bottom for each add-on.
Awesome.
Posted on Apr 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
I don’t know when this was created, but via Twitter I found out about a EE search comparison chart on the Solspace Super Search product page.
The feature comparison puts side-by-side the built-in ExpressionEngine search, Low Search, and Solspace Super Search.
Very handy if you’re researching which search module is the best one for your site.
Posted on Apr 30, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Last week I teased the new Minimalist override for the ExpressionEngine Control Panel. This week it is available to purchase and install on your EE site.
Minimalist is a completely overhauled look and feel for the ExpressionEngine control panel. Everything has been stripped down to it’s bare essentials, designed to help optimize the experience of managing and creating content.
Check out the screenshots and description at Devot:ee. The add-on costs $25.
Posted on Apr 24, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Fresh off their release of Link Vault yesterday, the chaps at Masuga Design unveiled another add-on today: Devot:ee Monitor.
The devot:ee add-on keeps you up-to-date on what add-ons are out-of-date on your ExpressionEngine sites
[…]
A great free developer tool for use on any size ExpressionEngine site. View what is installed on your site at a glance, and see what add-ons need updating. You can view release notes, and click right over to devot-ee.com to download updated versions.
[…]
This add-on was a joint effort between Masuga Design/devot:ee, EE Coder, and Antistatic Design. Many thinks to EE Coder’s lead coder Aaron Kuzemchak (@akuzemchak) for the initial development, Shawn Maida (@eecoder) for support and feedback, and Mark Wells of Antistatic Design (@antistaticdsgn) for the design and layout.
The Devot:ee Monitor add-on is free and available from Devot:ee.
I’ll definitely be installing this!
Posted on Apr 19, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Masuga Design (who owns and runs Devot:ee) released a new add-on today called Link Vault. This is a classic case of taking what you built for your own site and turning it into something everyone can use.
Link Vault is what powers the Devot:ee add-on downloads and how they are able to protect those downloads from leeching and link sharing and track downloads.
Link Vault allows you to protect your local and remote download links, track all downloads, track and block leech attempts and disguise any other link URLs you’d like to protect. There are also hooks available so you can extend Link Vault’s functionality.
Link Vault will let you create download links or download buttons and it tracks the downloads for you so you can create reports.
The add-on is available now and costs $25 per site license.
Congrats to Ryan and the team!
Posted on Apr 18, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
I don’t know if he’ll make it publicly available but the sneak peek on Dribbble of the “ExpressionEngine Minimalist Override” by Seamus Holman was enough to pique my interest. Clean and simple and definitely not pink.
Let’s encourage him to keep working on it: ExpressionEngine Minimalist Override
Posted on Apr 17, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Over at Meta Q front-end developer Terris Kremer wrote up a tutorial on using the Stash add-on to create entry previews.
Wait, what’s Stash?
Stash allows you to stash text and snippets of code for reuse throughout your templates. Variables can be set dynamically from the
$_GETor$_POSTsuperglobals and can optionally be cached in the database for persistence across pages.Stash variables that you create are available to templates embedded below the level at which you are using the tag, or later in the parse order of the current template.
The premise of the tutorial is that existing methods for creating entry previews are too complicated.
There are a few add-ons and methods out there that let site admins preview their ExpressionEngine entries and they all stink.
I disagree with the premise (the solution with Stash ended up being more complicated) but the tutorial is a great demonstration of what you can do with the Stash add-on by Mark Croxton.
Posted on Apr 10, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
In April, Erik Reagan will teach a 4-day class on ExpressionEngine add-on development in Savannah, Georgia. As a former resident of the Southeast, I have to say that April is a wonderful time to visit the area. Everything will be in bloom and the temperatures hopefully still mild.
If you’re already experienced with PHP (the class isn’t an intro to PHP course) and want to learn how to write EE add-ons from Erik, you should definitely consider attending the class in April.
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
The folks at .net Magazine asked different ExpressionEngine developers to submit the add-on they find themselves using the most. The title of the piece of “The top 12 ExpressionEngine add-ons”, which is a little misleading but the article does have some great recommendations.
“Among all of the ExpressionEngine add-ons, which one do you find yourself/team using the most, which is the one you can’t live without?”.
I saw some critcism on Twiter that some people listed add-ons they developed. If that’s the add-on they use the most or find the most useful, I don’t see the problem with that. A lot of add-ons are created to scratch an itch or solve a recurring problem. If they solved it, why wouldn’t they use it?
Read the entire list of 12 to see the answers that were give by the 12 developers.
Posted on Mar 14, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
People ask for it a lot from add-on developers and some already support it. One of the biggest add-on sellers out there, Pixel & Tonic, is now offering a discount for EE users who purchase 10 or more licenses at once:
Many of you have requested that we offer some sort of discount on large purchases. We’ve always liked the idea, and today, we’re happy to announce that if you buy 10 or more licenses of a product at once, we’re going to knock 10% off the price!
Posted on Mar 09, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
In short, Detour Pro gives you a GUI to manage your website redirects (301, 302, wildcards). It supports simple redirects (don’t get too fancy, cowboy) but that’s usually the kind that you need.
One thing I’d like to see is an option to turn on a layperson’s interface that masks the methods (301, etc) and just labels them as permanent, temporary, etc. The idea being that if you’re going to abstract .htaccess rules into a Control Panel interface, make it so people who have no idea what redirects are can use it. They just need to know that they want this old page to go to this new page. Boom. Done.
That being said, I like what I see with this add-on from Mike Hughes. Read the Detour Pro documentation for all the information about the add-on.
The add-on costs $22 from Devot-ee or you can buy a developer license for $100 and use it on unlimited sites. The developer license is only available from the Mike’s Cityzen website.
Posted on Feb 21, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Over the weekend, CartThrob 2 was deemed “production ready” in an announcement on the CartThrob website.
CartThrob2 is now production ready and available for purchase here at CartThrob.com. Though it’s been fun building a Google-style perpetual beta, CartThrob2 has really grown and is ready for release. Over the last few years we’ve refined every feature and interface, added tons of features, updated docs, templates, and everything in between.
The sweetheart of a e-commerce system for ExpressionEngine was first released for ExpressionEngine 1 and has been revamped for EE2. If you haven’t used CartThrob before, check out the video walk-thru(.mov file) for a general overview.
If you were one of the customers that particpated in the paid CarthThrob 2 beta, then your license is automatically upgraded to the production ready version.
CartThrob is also now bundling their add-on will other add-ons, like CTAdmin, Export it, Securit:ee and Backup Pro.
CartThrob 2 is $149.00 and available now.
Posted on Feb 21, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
Here are the results of the poll I put up earlier this month. The idea behind the poll was to find out how many people are publishing with third party tools and how many just stick with the Control Panel.
The response rate was lower than what I had hoped for but the data still gives a glimpse at how people are publishing content to their ExpressionEngine sites.
I suspected that the majority publish their sites via the EE Control Panel and not with third party publishing tools like MarsEdit, Ecto, Textmate or even iExpression. My suspicions were proven true with the results.
As you can see, some do use external tools to publish content but their lack of support for mimicking the Control Panel publishing interface is surely whey they’re not more widely adopted. Additionally, with the introduction of customized publish layouts (no matter how fragile they still might be, 2 years later), developers and users of ExpressionEngine can now tailor their publish forms to be exactly what they need to them to be and therefore the entire Control Panel experience becomes more useful. This, perhaps, diminishes the need for another editor.
The biggest reason, of course, is that the web browser is cross platform. I can post content to my site from any computer or device with a web browser. Ultimately, this is the most flexible solution (and the most realistic if you’re building sites for clients).
However, the EE Control Panel still fails miserably on mobile devices (maybe one day EllisLab will create a responsive theme by default; until then, check out this one by Ben Croker) If you really need to post to your site from your iPhone, you should also check out iExpression, a native iOS app that lets you publish content to EE. For what it’s worth, the Control Panel works okay on the iPad if you just need to jump in for a quick tweak or edit. Anything beyond that will probably result in furstration.
I asked for the primary operating system just to use it as a data point to measure the other results (like the use of MarsEdit, an OS X only application). Surprisingly, the usage of OS X among the respondants was almost 80% while the use of MarsEdit (any use at all in the past) was only 5%. That means even Mac users, despite such a great app like MarsEdit, are still favoring the Control Panel. That was surprising to me.
The last question I asked in the survey was why the respondent preferred the Control Panel over other methods of publishing. I got a lot of responses that said they didn’t know about other offerings. Some felt that the Control Panel was the “easiest way” and “good enough.”
It’s readily available once EE is installed, and doesn’t require any extra configuration/development. It’s also the most “guaranteed to work” way to post content.
The ability of external editors to support fieldtypes also came up, like this one:
Full fieldtype support. No external editor supports fieldtypes like Matrix, Assets, Playa, etc.
and this one:
Why not? It’s a good overall experience with all the custom fieldtypes, publish page configurations, entry revisioning, etc. Keeping to just the Control Panel means I can jump on any system anywhere to post/edit content. Hooking up external sources is just another cost/hassle to install & keep up with as both platforms evolve.
This response addressed another tool I use but didn’t mention in the poll:
I actually use the control panel, but use QuickCursor to send any long content bits to my editor-of-choice, in this case MacVim. The reason I use the control panel is that in my experiences with other methods, it wasn’t always easy to get all the custom bits working properly when you go beyond just a simple blog. And now that I’m using the Structure plugin, I don’t think an external editor would be of much use to me at all.
I love QuickCursor and use it whenever I have to write something of length (like a message in Basecamp) in the web browser.
With publish layouts and Zoo Admin, I can quickly make a user-friendly workflow that’s easy to maintain.
I’ve used Zoo Admin and it is indeed a nice way to customize the CP for those who will be maintaining the site.
That was only a sampling of all of the responses but the general trend was that either people didn’t know about external editors or those that did thought it was just too much of hassle (or tradeoff ) to set one up. A few people even suggested I further cover external editors and how to use them. That sounds like a great idea, so look for something in the near future.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey!
Posted on Feb 20, 2012 by Ryan Irelan
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