Who to Host Your ExpressionEngine Sites With?

The ever pertinent question of web hosting has resurfaced on the EE forums.

Who do you host your ExpressionEngine sites with? Add your 2 cents to this thread, and help out a community member!

Changelog Greasemonkey Script

This is an oldie but a goodie, especially when bug fix counts are in the hundreds. The ExpressionEngine Change Log is a marvelous place for seeing how ExpressionEngine has improved over the versions, but something it’s lacking is a link to the original bug report when one is fixed.

Bjørn Børresen addresses that with his Greasemonkey script that will link fixed bugs, to their original bug report. Sometimes those one liners in the change log addressing the fix doesn’t provide enough context. Linking to the original report is a handy addition.

This has been around for a while, but it’s still useful and until recently, I was unaware it existed.

In the Forums: Relative File Path Proposal

Over in the EE Forums, add-on developer Low proposed a new and better way to handle upload file paths when moving between server environments.

For us devs, working on local, staging and live environments of the same site is quite common. We can use the config.php file to set config items like Theme path or Template path based on the environment. This gets harder for file paths stored in the database, like File Upload Destinations. Making these relative like ../images/uploads/ kind of works, but only if you’re uploading from the CP.

Low proposes a solution that uses a base_path config variable that you can set to the actual path based on server environment.

Do you have a different idea? Want to add your support to Low’s proposal? Be sure to chime in on the forum thread.

Russ Lipton’s “EE and Content Management Systems”

You might remember when we posted about the document that Russ Lipton put out called ExpressionEngine and the Multiplier Effect. It’s a tool people can use when explaining the benefits of ExpressionEngine to their potential clients.

Russ just released a new document to go with it called “ExpressionEngine and Content Management Systems”. It’s a basic intro, to and history of, content management systems. Looking at Russ’s plans for these and future documents, this new one looks like the prequel, and the Multiplier Effect is part two. Parts 1 and 3 haven’t been published yet.

These documents are already great and very useful. When they’re all out there, I think we’re going to have a pretty dang handy tool on our hands.

Read Russ’s announcement and discussion of his plans in the Community News forum, and check out both of the documents on his site. Russ is looking for feedback, so feel free to hit the forums and give him some ideas.

ExpressionEngine and The Multiplier Effect

Russ Lipton posted a document to the Community News forum that looks to be a pretty useful tool in explaining the benefits of ExpressionEngine to potential clients.

In it, I share my take on why so many people report accelerated design and development productivity using EE - framed in words suitable for intelligent, but perhaps non-technical, decision makers.

I know there have been times where a potential client of mine wanted some more information to look over and share at their company to explain why I might be recommending EE to them for their website. This is pretty handy!

I’d like to see this expanded even further, or put together with another document or two that explain some of the technical aspects a bit more (some decision makers are very technical folks). I hope Russ either does this or decides to license this document in a way that people can take it and expand on it. Either way, this is a great tool for the community!

Read Russ’ post in the forums or head straight to his site to download the PDF.

In the Forums: Beta Testers Needed for RSVP Module

Adrian M from the ExpressionEngine forums posted that he needs some beta testers for his RSVP module which allows members to respond to events similar to how people RSVP to events on Facebook.

We are looking for a few beta testers who could use this on a live EE 2.x website, and provide feedback to us. Once this is complete we will be offering the module for sale in the Devot:ee store.

This could be an interesting module that could help fill out ExpressionEngine’s somewhat lackluster events support. If you have a site that you can test this on, send Adrian a PM or respond to the thread he started in the forums.

In the Forums: Disabling Autosave

ExpressionEngine 2 comes with a new autosave feature that is intended to keep you from losing work in the event of a browser crash or unexpected logout. User “goodcompany” asked about disabling autosave it completely.

I get a “autosaved data available” warning pretty often when returning to edit a post. It’s actually interfering with my workflow. Is there any way to disable this feature?

As Jamie Rumbelow pointed in the thread, there’s a config setting that allows you to change the interval between autosaves. Set that to 0 and you disable it completely.

Read the entire thread: Is it possible to disable autosave?

In the Forums: Snippets and Embeds

There is a lot to be written about Snippets (new in EE 2) versus Embed Templates. But for now, I want to point you to a thread in the archived forums from earlier this year where Lisa Wess (EllisLab) explains some more about snippets and how they differ from Embeds.

[W]e recommend Snippets over Embeds unless you need to do something such as pass variables.  Snippets are treated exactly as if that code was directly in the template, whereas embeds are treated as entirely separate entities.  Embeds are absolutely “heavier” than snippets.

For more about Snippets, read the documentation for the why and what.

EE Forums Changes

Last week EllisLab Director of Community Services Lisa Wess posted to the official blog about some changes coming to the EE forums. There are two parts to these changes:

The ExpressionEngine Support Forum Board, as you see it now, will be placed into an archive, read-only mode at a new URL. The forum board will still be searchable and accessible, but no new content will be added.

A new forum board will be present at the current location, expressionengine.com/forums. This new forum board places the emphasis on our Community and ExpressionEngine 2 while providing the legacy support EE 1.x deserves.

This seems like a simple way to keeping all of the resources so many depend on while also focusing on EE 2. With 99% of the information in the current forums being about EE 1, it could be difficult to find EE 2 information and problematic for newcomers.

The first step in this was last week when the forums went through a pruning. This is a clean up of old threads to keep the information in the forums current and relevant. Unfortunately, the pruning also deleted threads that were still being referenced, especially add-on threads. EllisLab reacted quickly and restored the Third Party Development area of the forums so add-ons that do not exist anywhere but in the forums are still available.

In general, I think it’s a bad idea to kill links on the internet. But as Leslie Camacho pointed out, almost all of the forum threads that were deleted were no longer being used (resolved support threads, etc.). This also isn’t the first time they’ve pruned the forums; it’s just the first time it hit some threads people still use.

Because of that, it’s great to hear that the old forums will be archived and searchable while the new forums will be a clean slate to post information and questions about EE 2. To make sure existing links to forum threads don’t break (like those on this site but more so those on devot:ee), EllisLab will be taking steps to do redirects and notifications:

We have worked with our Community Partners to ensure that important resources on their sites are preserved. We are also implementing 301 Redirects to ensure that links and bookmarks for EE 1.x support continue to function as expected.

In order to ease this transition, links will appear at the top of each forum; and a search on the primary Support Forums can easily be sent, via a link we will present on the Search Results page, to the archive.

No word yet on when the change will take place, but be prepared.

What do you think about this move away from the current forums and into a clean environment for final release of EE 2?

In the Forums: Can’t Update Config Settings

In my talks last year at the EE Roadshow and EECI, I highlighted how you can make your config.php file more powerful and your site more portable by overriding settings values that are typically stored in the database (Jamie Pittock at Erskine also covered this in his great talk at EECI in San Francisco). But this behavior can come back to bite you if you don’t remember that you set the variables in the config.php file (or someone else did it before you).

A thread in the EE forums highlights this problem for the throttling settings:

I’m able to change the “Custom Message”, but whenever I try to change any of these 4 fields (Enable Throttling, Maximum Number of Page Loads, Time Interval (in seconds) & Lockout Time (in seconds)), I get a success message at the top of the screen but the field values don’t change from the defaults.

Any time you change a setting and it doesn’t take (the page reloads with the old setting), then the first thing you should look for is if that settings value is being set in the config.php file. If it is, either change it there or remove it and store it in the database.

(For an entire list of the config.php overrides, see this EE Insider Tip.)

In the Forums: Caching embedded templates

An interesting thread about caching embedded templates and, in general, how EE template caching works. There are a couple of important morsels of information here. First, from EllisLab TSS Ingmar Greil:

Caching is done on a per-URL level, not a template level: if you have the same template that is used to power each of your articles you will have a copy for each URL, same with embedded templates, if you embed the sidebar template into each page and you cache the sidebar template, you will have a copy for each URL.

Ingmar also quotes Nevin Lyne of EngineHosting:

Unless you actually are seeing a specific need, for a specific template, to be cached, I would highly recommend to not cache unless you have to. That goes for query caching, too.

Wise words.

Read the whole thread: Caching Embedded Templates

In The Forums: Coda Live Preview for EE 2

We know many of you use Panic’s Coda as your primary developer tool and for good reason. In the ExpressionEngine forums, there was a question about getting the Coda Live Preview functionality working. PeeTer asks the following:

Hi, I’m using EE 2.0 and since I upgraded the “live preview” trick mentioned in this blog post has stopped working. Has anyone figured out how to make live preview work again with Coda using EE 2.0?

http://www.expressionengine.com/blog/entry/live_preview_with_coda_and_other_ides/

To find the answer (from Dr. Jones no less), read on.

In The Forums: CartThrob Is Looking For Beta Testers [Pro Network]

CartThrob, a new shopping cart add-on for EE, is looking for beta testers. I know many of you have been looking for a truly great integrated shopping cart solution. Here’s the description:

CartThrob is truly integrated with ExpressionEngine, extremely flexible, and offers full integration with payment gateway systems (including Authorize.net, and Paypal Website Payments Pro.) We’ve been using it on production sites for over 6 months now, and the front-end cart portion of the software is very stable. However, we’re in the process of simplifying the backend setup & installation, refining features and functionality, and finishing the documentation, so we still consider it beta and we’re looking for feedback and real world usage.

You can find information on how to join the beta in the forums.

UPDATE: Thanks to Erik for letting me know that this is Pro Network only invite. My apologies to those of you unable to sign up through the forums, but you can submit your application here

In the Forums: How to Set up Static Sites?

In the forums this morning, Janine (user “tidy”) posed a question about how to best set up sites in EE that are made up of mostly static pages.

I am still quite new to ExpressionEngine. While managing structured content (usually the tricky part) is a breeze, I struggle with how best to approach sites with many standard/static/information type pages along with a few more structured sections.

For example, say a site has a home page, an about section with a few pages, a services section with a few standard pages (not structured) and then news and events sections which are structured.

Janine goes on to list out a few approaches, but is seeking the advice of “a few seasoned developers.”

My first approach is always the simplest one (easy to build on simple, difficult to undo complex), so I’d start with her first option:

1) having one pages/general weblog for all the static/information type pages, with categories indicating the section the pages belong to.

I’d also give the Structure module a shot and see where that took me. I’ve not used it on a production project before, but it seems like an option Janine should consider.

Do you have some suggestions for Janine? Visit the forum thread and give your advice.

In The Forums: Pops Plugin

The ExpressionEngine forums are a very popular destination for all sorts of problems and issues. Over time, however, things get lost in the mix. Extensions, plugins, helpful tips: Not all are available easily in search results. This, and many other great reasons, are why we bring you: In the Forums

Forum user chronistin was struggling, like many do, with SAEF.

For a new project which makes excessive use of custom fields, I need the ability to

1.) Add and edit content from the frontend
2.) Customize the frontend forms (i.e. using the standard custom fields tag won’t work)

There was one major problem: she couldn’t “figure out how to get the values for the entry fields that have been defined as dropdown.” As with many of the downtrodden, sad and frustrated people that find their way to the EE forums, someone stepped in to help her. The result is the excellent Pops plugin.

To see usage examples and sample code, view wecreateyou’s excellent follow-up post.