All entries filed under “ExpressionEngine 2”
The latest release of ExpressionEngine features a lot of bug fixes (always a good thing), a few snacks for everyone, and a few treats for developers.
Before you update, you should read the changelog so you know what’s different (and if it impacts your installation; it shouldn’t). The highlights blog post from EllisLab is also good.
One new snacks for everyone:
Added allow_pending_login config override to allow the Pending member group to log in.
With EE 2.9.3, the Pending member group (that comes with EE) is now allowed to log in. You have to enable this as a config override.
$config['allow_pending_login'] = 'y';
This is a small but nice feature, especially if you’re doing heavy member sites that have different states of access.
For developers, there’s now an easier way to get access to the password reset routine:
Added hooks for additional processing after a user resets their password. member_process_reset_password for front end, and cp_member_reset_password for the control panel.
For developers, these handy password reset extensions are great if you are creating SSO solutions.
There you go, EE 2.9.3. We’re only seven point releases away from EE 3, right?
In what looks to be a useful service offering (and a clever differentiation strategy), Columbus, Ohio-based Anecka is offering a flat price to upgrade an abandoned add-on that you rely on.
There are a lot of add-ons we all rely on and sometimes (okay, far too often) they are stuck in the past. They’re not updated and no longer work well (or at all) with newer version of ExpressionEngine. This is especially true after ExpressionEngine 2.8, which made add-on breaking changes.
This puts ExpressionEngine developers/designers who want to upgrade to the latest version of ExpressionEngine in a tough spot as replacing these add-ons can be an expensive and time-consuming process.
Anecka wants to help you update those old, abandoned add-ons so you can keep moving forward with your project.
(The broader lesson here is: choose your add-ons wisely.)
Since 2008 smart people have been using my ExpressionEngine video tutorials to get started with the CMS.
It’s still a great time to learn it. I’m putting it on sale through Monday November 17, 2014, for $20 off the normal price. It’s as close to a steal as I can get.
Save $20 now.
The thing I love about learning from video tutorials is that I can do it on my own time, pause when I need to take a break or step away, restart when I have time. I’m not bound to the schedule someone else set. I’m not stuck in front of the computer when I don’t want to be. I can fit my learning around my already busy schedule.
Time-shifted learning is the best way to learn.
Okay, with that said, did you already grab the discounted course?
P.S. If you have a team and you want to get everyone a copy, email me and I will give you a special team discount (more special than the normal).
EllisLab is collecting links to reviews of ExpressionEngine.
Have you recently published a review to your company or personal blog? Send it over to EllisLab and they’ll consider it for inclusion on their Reviews page.
Over the weekend, EllisLab release ExpressionEngine 2.9.2, just one day after the 2.9.1 release.
The release is noted as a “stability fix.” If you’re already running 2.9.1, the upgrade can be done by just changing out two files and manually updated your app_version config item. No database changes or migrations.
Fire up your update ExpressionEngines!
Today, EllisLab released ExpressionEngine 2.9.1. This is a security and stability release (meaning no new features).
This nugget at the end of the company blog post about the release should interest you:
This release contains quite a bit more security fixes than normal, but it shouldn’t cause alarm. We’ve recently opened ExpressionEngine up to white hat security researchers to report even the smallest issue. Most of the potential attacks found involve attacking yourself or the existence of a malicious admin, but we still recommend this update for all users. We’re committed to the hardening of our software to keep your data safe and remain one of the most provenly secure web platforms out there.
Read the changelog for the details on what was updated or check out their announcement blog post.
Marcus Neto of Blue Fish Design Studio has a YouTube Channel with demos of websites built on ExpressionEngine.
There’s also a demo of ExpressionEngine 2.9 (the latest version as of this post) and one of how they built a business directory in EE.
Idea: a community channel of video walk-thrus of websites/features you built on ExpressionEngine.
A couple of relevant updates for you on the changes with how ExpressionEngine 2.9+ handles conditionals.
Yesterday, I wrote:
Conditionals are parsed better, simple vs. advanced conditional is now a thing of the past, and there are some nice new operators; you can do simple math and more robust comparisons.
I was, admittedly, glossing over a big change in EE and one that impacts some third party developers. Fortunately, because of the Developer Preview Program all developers who participate had plenty of warning on this change. But it doesn’t mean that this will be a simple transition.
(A month ago, EllisLab wrote a good explanation of the changes to conditionals that is required reading for anyone working with EE.)
Already developers are posting updates for their add-ons to support the new conditional handling and they are trying to get the word out about how their add-ons are affected.
Low Schutte pondered:
As I wrote in last week’s Content Mgmt Outlook email:
The forever problem of moving forward versus not leaving people behind.
Low also wrote up some instructions on how to use his Low Search add-on going forward:
And Mark Croxton, the wizard behind Stash, tweeted:
Stash in 2.9 still works the same but Mark highlights an important workaround.
Mark also has an excellent explanation of the conditional parsing:
In 2.9 EE attempts to parse if/else conditionals before each pass and after the very last pass (or you can think of it as after each pass and before the very first pass), and will do so only if they are “ready” - the variables being evaluated actually exist. Previously, simple conditionals were parsed just before the first pass only, and advanced conditionals were parsed at the end of the very last pass only.
Some add-on updates may be backward incompatible (i.e. not support EE prior to 2.9), so always check the release notes before upgrading an add-on and not EE.
The changes were enough that EllisLab bumped the version a full point release. ExpressionEngine 2.9, available today, includes an overhaul of the conditionals parser.
Conditionals are parsed better, simple vs. advanced conditional is now a thing of the past, and there are some nice new operators; you can do simple math and more robust comparisons.
A few other nuggets:
- The hidden template indicator is now an underscore instead of a period.
- A software license page in the control panel
- Better Markdown support using Markdown Extra (yay Markdown!)
- EE requires PHP 5.3.10 now
Read their blog post for all of the changes and, if you’re into that kind of thing, I’d also recommend perusing the changelog.
John D. Wells posted the slides from his GeeUp talk called “Partials: A DRY template pattern. Now part of EE core.”
That about says it all. John gives an informative walk-thru of how partials will help you. Even without seeing John give the talk, the slides are very helpful.
The addition of real layout support in EE is a huge step forward. No more hack arounds needed. And, layouts even support dynamic variables that you can set similar to embed variables. But better because it’s not embeds.
The update to my ExpressionEngine training course (coming out tomorrow) covers layouts and it was a joy to be able to teach that instead of the old embed way, which was easily abused at the expense of the performance of your website.
Page through John’s slides to learn more about layouts
On Friday EllisLab released EE 2.8.1, a minor update that fixes a JavaScript bug.
Even though installations without add-ons are likely unaffected, we are considering this a required update for all 2.8.0 users because of the impact it has on so many popular add-ons.
You don’t have to run through the full update process and the EllisLab blog post about the release details how to manually update.
A new addition to the EE documentation is this full list of System Configuration Overrides. The overrides–in the past documented in the wiki and other places–allow you to override default values or values set through the control panel and saved in the database right in your config file. This is handy if you need those values to differ between environments (local, dev, production).
From former EllisLab employee Kevin Smith:
From their blog post:
Because it seems to happen often enough that ExpressionEngine release cycles significantly affect third party add-on compatibility, we have created an EE compatibility chart on our site that displays a grid of EE support.
If you use Solspace add-ons, bookmark the compatibility chart and then refer to it before each EE upgrade you do.
Smart move by Solspace.
Today EllisLab released EE 2.7.2, which they note is a security and stability release and addresses a bag of bugs, including some work on the publish form and page.
Full changelog here.
Earlier this week EllisLab released ExpressionEngine 2.7, which includes the new Grid field type, New Relic support, Markdown parsing, and more.
There is already information posted about these additions to ExpressionEngine but here’s a quick recap.
Grid, a new field type that makes it simple to include tabular data in a single field, is essentially a native implementation of Pixel & Tonic’s Matrix add-on. I will leave it up to Pixel & Tonic and EllisLab to convince you which you should use (I personally prefer Matrix). It is encouraging that EllisLab is starting to add features and make the out-of-the-box experience of ExpressionEngine more complete for how people are using their software in 2013. However, the way they went about it wasn’t exactly ideal.
New Relic, a service that makes application performance monitoring services, also gets support in ExpressionEngine 2.7. In order to use this feature you do need a New Relic account. This is very much a nod in the direction of the upper scale enterprise market.
Markdown, my favorite way of writing text for the web (and how I’m writing this post), also gets some attention in EE 2.7. Previously, you had to use the excellent Smartdown add-on from Experience Internet but those add-ons have been set free and are no longer maintained or supported. Markdown is now a native formatting option so there’s no need to install another add-on to get that functionality. Very nice.
There’s more in EE 2.7, too. Read the entire blog post by EllisLab] to get the scoop.
So, should you upgrade now? Well, that’s tough to answer.
I always wait a bit before updating so I can let some bugs shake out. EllisLab’s releases have gotten a lot better compared to earlier releases of EE 2, however there could still be bugs in there that haven’t been caught. Be careful and always back up.
Over at Mijingo I am running ExpressionEngine but I try to keep slightly behind the current version because it’s ecommerce and, well, I’d rather not have a bug interrupt my customers’ ability to get the learning materials they need.
Evaluate your situation, carefully measure and assess the risk involved in upgrading and then make your choice.
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