EE Harbor released this past week a new add-on for EE2 to help with making multi-language websites with ExpressionEngine. It’s called Transcribe. Creating a multi-language site is, without a doubt, still a task that has many, many solutions. EE Harbor and their Transcribe module are trying to be the solution.
From the product page:
Transcribe is a fully featured solution for creating multi-lingual websites in ExpressionEngine. Transcribe handles everything from word/phrase translation to channel entry translations and even url translation/routing!
Here’s a video walk-thru of setting up a site to use Transcribe:
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.”
It’s an interesting approach to permissions management in ExpressionEngine by John de Beer and his HooKan Permissions Manager add-on.
Screenshot from the HooKan website
Instead of clicking in and out of different member groups and access areas, you have a grid (member groups are the columns, permissions the rows) where you can click circles to enable certain access.
HooKan is in beta right now but up for sale for $17 (this is noted as an introductory offer until October 15th). The normal price is $34.95.
It’s been talked about a lot over the last year: will add-on developers offer volume discounts or some way perk for people who buy multiple licenses? So far there have been a couple of developers offering that type of volume discount.
Today, EE Harbor announced unlimited licenses for their Safe Harbor add-on and service. For $200 you can back up unlimited sites using the add-on. So, if you’re needing to back up more than 5 sites, you’re better off getting the unlimited license.
Web agency Packet Tide posted an EE module template to Github. The module template gives you a starting point for your own module without having to write all of the basics from scratch.
You can find something similar at Pkg.io, too, which allows you easily create packages for all types of EE add-ons. The EE module template from Packet Tide, however, includes a couple of extras that you might find useful, like settings code and some breadcrumbs.
Packet Tide is also behind EE Harbor and the EE add-ons Safe Harbor, Polls and Transcribe.
Disclaimer: EE Harbor is an advertiser on EE Insider.
Tucked into an announcement to developers about some upcoming changes to EE, developer Robin Sowell mentioned the “Discussion Forums 4.0 currently in development.”
I couldn’t tell what this meant. A new version of the Forums? A complete rebuild?
I reached out to EllisLab for clarification and they told me that the Discussion Forums 4.0 is an upgrade to the current Discussion Forums (version 3.x) module and includes some new features. It is not a rewrite or redevelopment of the module. There isn’t a release date set yet for the upgraded forums, so stay tuned to EE Insider and the official EE Blog for more information.
Yesterday, add-on developer Exp-resso released Store, another offering for doing e-commerce on ExpressionEngine.
Two years ago we had very few options for e-commerce. Other than the Simple Commerce Module we didn’t even have a solution that worked with and inside of ExpressionEngine. In the last year and a half we’ve seen a mini explosion of options, like Cartthrob (released last April) and BrillianRetail, which was released earlier this year .
So, while they felt it necessary to explain why you might need another e-commerce app for ExpressionEngine, I don’t think there’s any explaining to do. There’s room for more, and the more options we have, the better. We now have three robust e-commerce options. That’s hardly too many.
One of the marketing points of Store is ease of use. From their write-up:
We also felt that the template tags should be easy to learn and remember. For this reason, we have only 7 tags to learn, and most sites will only need to use 3-4 of these. We have also included a full set of example templates with the install, which you can use as a basis for your checkout process.
Just like with, for example, Cartthrob, Store is fully integrated into ExpressionEngine and uses Channel Entries to store your products. It also includes support for inventory management (pretty cool).
This release is a paid beta ($20) but they consider is stable and production-ready.
James talked about how the user voting for features works and how they solicit and listen to community feedback. He even talked about some features that will be coming in the future (but you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out). All in all, it was good insight into the work that he’s doing in his first month as the Chief Creative Officer at EllisLab.
About 15 minutes into the podcast they talked about the built-in file manger and the Assets module from Pixel & Tonic. As is fairly well-known, Assets was released to much acclaim and the native file manager in EE was (justly or unjustly, depending on your viewpoint) heavily criticized online, especially on Twitter. Some of the criticism, I think, went too far. People forgot what it is like to be civilized and constructive.
With that in mind, it was interesting to hear James talk about how EllisLab views Assets (they think it’s really nice) and their approach to the file manager now that the expectations for it have been raised by the release of Assets (this isn’t just my conjecture, James says as much in the podcast).
Here are a couple of choice quotes from James during the podcast (these happen between 15 and 18 minutes into the episode). In reference to their work on the file manager for EE 2.2, James bluntly said:
Brandon Kelly’s Assets set us back a little bit.
James acknowleged that the bar has been raised but then softened that stance a little by lobbing some criticism about the user experience (UX) of Assets:
I think the way that Assets was approached is a good UX. I think there are some inherently wrong things about it, like mimicking Finder. Finder is a great tool and great UX but it’s unfamiliar to a large portion of computer users. So it’s not necessarily the best solution.
Lack of familiarity does not mean bad UX. It just means unfamiliar. If you take the two extreme positions, you could make a file interface either like Windows Explorer or Mac OS X Finder. Choosing either of the two will exclude the other, so no good choice could be made, according to that stance. Trying to come up with something entirely new is very difficult indeed and will very certainly be unfamiliar to all of your users. And this idea is true for any kind of interface, not just a file manager.
Low is correct here and I would agree with him that “it’s wrong to dismiss an interface/design/UX, just because it’s unfamiliar to a certain portion of your users.”
While I did describe it as “Finder-like” in my Assets First Look video, I think the calling it flawed because it mimics parts of the Mac OS X Finder is misleading and generally incorrect. There are indeed elements of the Assets “window” that do look “Finder-ish,” but the general interaction with the folders on the left and the files on the right isn’t anything specific to OS X (just take a look at this screenshot of Windows 7 ).
I would argue (and, yes, I realize I’m being pedantic) that there’s not even a lack of familiarity with the UX in Assets. The general function of a list of folders or groupings in a left pane and a detail list of files in the right pane is a common UI and UX across both Windows and Mac (and even some flavors of GUIs on Linux).
It’s actually surprisingly simple to create a really awesome calendar in ExpressionEngine 2 if you have about 15 minutes and $79.95 to spare for the amazing Calendar module from Solspace. For the most part, it’s almost a no-brainer but there’s a few small tweaks you’ll want to make
It does require that you have the Calendar Module from Solspace, jQuery and a jQuery plugin. After that, just follow Adam’s instructions and you’ll be set.
Leevi Graham and folks at Newism released a public beta of their newest EE2 add-on: Publish Plus Workflow. Some of you may know Publish Plus from the EE1 version. For those that don’t, Publish Plus is a workflow tool to help automate content production (email updates, entry workflow states and more).
The original Publish Plus add-on did a lot and, at times, more than some scenarios required. Newism is taking a different approach by slowly porting Publish Plus to EE2 “in chunks.” Leevi wrote in an email to EE Insider:
Each chunk will be an independent addons which are focussed one or two functions. This is the first of such addons.
This is great news and hopefully will make using Publish Plus easier because I won’t have to install a giant add-on but instead only the parts I need. This public beta is for the first add-on (called “Workflow”) and hopefully there are some more on the horizon.
The features list from their site:
Set configuration options on a per channel basis
Use select template tags in your email notifications
Manage an entry’s state and next review date using the Workflow tab
Have your website tell you when content needs reviewing via a CRON job URL
Find the content that needs reviewing all in one place using the module’s dashboard
NSM Publish Plus: Workflow doesn’t affect your website database or template tag data
We are supporting it, but have no cause for further development at this point. Given the extensive support we’ve had to provide, we barely break even. When we have another project for which it requires further development then we will certainly do so; as a stand alone project it can not come close to justifying the kind of effort that you might expect from other add-on makers such as Brandon Kelly or Solspace. Our company is focused on client development, not selling modules.
Update: this isn’t really any different than what developers of many add-ons do, so Socialee isn’t an exception here. However, they do charge a premium for their add-on and some customers assume that means it will be updated. We regret the implication otherwise.
Social Login enables people to log in into your ExpressionEngine site using their account in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.)
Currently only Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are supported. Other sites/providers can be added in the future on demand.
Yuri posted some more information on the add-on at his site and is apparently giving free copies to people in the Pro Network (clever idea)Update: the free copies was only during the beta, which is over.
So, Socialee goes the way of the add-on graveyard is no longer being developed, which is a concern for some people, but a new one rises to replace it. This, I believe, is what one would call an “active and vibrant development community.”
Update: See comments for clarification from Socialee developer.
Late last week DevDemon released Channel Images 5. This new version of their add-on that “simplifies use of images within ExpressionEngine entries,” boasts a bunch of new features, including Amazon s3 and CloudFiles support for uploading.
What is Channel Images?
Channel Images simplifies use of images within Expression Engine entries. With ExpressionEngine’s default install you must upload individual images one at a time to individual fields or worse embed them into your text fields. Channel Images removes this default process and simplifies image management.
Here’s a video DevDemon posted on the basics of Channel Images:
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Screenshot from the HooKan website
