Over a series of 8 videos, watch and learn as Ryan builds an entire ExpressionEngine website from beginning to end. Get started now.
EE Harbor released a new license type for their add-ons called the Mega Pack. You get all of their add-ons for unlimited use for an annual fee.
There are two types of Mega Packs (Basic and Premier) and the only difference is the level of support you get (and, of course, the price).
Learn more about the Mega Pack
Posted on Aug 30, 2016 by Ryan Irelan
The latest installment of the ExpressionEngine Conference takes place October 2-4, 2016 in Detroit, MI.
The schedule is packed full of talks on how to better work with ExpressionEngine and in your business.
Early bird registration is before September 1st and you’ll save $50 off the two day admission.
Posted on Aug 29, 2016 by Ryan Irelan
The add-ons that paved the way for so many others:
are now owned by EE Harbor.
From the Pixel & Tonic announcement:
Pixel & Tonic is best known for Craft CMS these days, but before Craft, we made a name for ourselves writing add-ons for ExpressionEngine. These add-ons are widely considered to be some of the best to ever grace the platform, and they’ve been influential across the entire EE add-on ecosystem—and even the CMS itself.
Over the years, we’ve continued to maintain and support them. But as Craft grows it’s getting harder and harder for us to find the time, especially for major efforts like porting them to EE 3. Frankly they deserve better than we can offer anymore.
It should be a smooth transition for current licensees, with support being handled immediately by the EE Harbor team (read their announcement for more details).
Posted on Jul 18, 2016 by Ryan Irelan
Mobile design. It’s complex. From the open nature of the web to the walled gardens of native apps, there is no one “right” way to design for small screens. In the latest CTRL+CLICK, designer Wren Lanier helps us navigate the nuances of mobile design, from the context of her experience designing the Highrise CRM product, originally created by 37Signals. Wren details the differences between native and web mobile design, and shares tips for deciding when a native app is the best fit vs. when responsive web makes sense. We also discuss the unique challenges of both native and web mobile design, and the overlaps between the two. Tune in now!
Thanks to Craft for sponsoring this episode!
Posted on Nov 05, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
Friends of EE Insider, Masuga Design, are on the hunt for a PHP developer to fill an open role with their company.
You will develop primarily with ExpressionEngine and Craft for client projects, and with Laravel for internal projects. You’ll work closely with the team to meet client requirements, help improve our SaaS app, and constantly refine our internal projects and procedures.
Previous experience developing with ExpressionEngine and/or Craft is a bonus, because we’d like you to hit the ground running on a number of EE and Craft projects.
Is that you? See the entire job listing.
Posted on Oct 23, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
Flat file CMS = small sites? Not always! In this week’s CTRL+CLICK Daniel Fowler makes the case for using Statamic at a larger scale for the University of Georgia College of Education! We talk about the technical benefits and limitations of Statamic at such a scale, and how he overcame some challenges and current issues he still faces. We also dive into the realities of managing a large project, juggling priorities and his team, and the interesting organizational aspects of large sites.
Tune in now! Thanks to Visual Chefs for sponsoring!
Posted on Oct 22, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
While all ecommerce projects have some commonalities, they tend to span a wide range of needs … from different types of “saleables” to different checkout workflows to different content management requirements. Further complicating things, developers (and clients) have even more options than ever for their ecommerce needs.
To help us navigate this complex ecommerce landscape, Pixel & Tonic’s Luke Holder joins the show to talk about the forthcoming first-party Craft plugin, Commerce. But first, we talk about ecommerce in general: commonalities, challenges, gateways, shipping and taxes (oh my!). We then turn to Craft Commerce, discussing why Luke joined P&T and how the process of building Commerce has been. Luke shares what makes the Commerce plugin unique (flexibility and an elegant UX, to name a few) and the types of commerce it supports. Tune in now!
Thanks to Craft for sponsoring this episode!
Posted on Oct 08, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
In this week’s episode, front-end developer Megan Zlock and art director Owen Shifflett talk about how to make designer-developer work more harmonious. Long story short: empathy. Long story long: tune in to hear how to make conversations more productive, how to collaborate, common issues between designers and developers—and how to fix!—while emphasizing the need for empathy not just for the project and client, but with each other.
Tune in now! Thanks to EllisLab for sponsoring!
Posted on Sep 24, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
Traditional wireframes can be an important part of the UX process, but they lack one key ingredient essential for a website: they aren’t interactive. Enter Live Wires, a framework for web-based wireframes that introduce the interactive experience sooner in process.
For the latest CTRL+CLICK CAST, we talk with Travis Gertz, creator of Live Wires. Travis shares how Live Wires came about, and we all share the benefits we’ve experienced using them. We also discuss the pros and cons of frameworks in general, and why Live Wires is so powerful because it is intentionally flexible and non-prescriptive. And we have a broader conversation about the “sameness” we see in the industry, and how we all can push our creative boundaries. Tune in now!
Thanks to Craft for sponsoring this episode!
Posted on Sep 10, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
In this week’s episode, CodeIgniter vet turned Perch convert Phil Smith joins the show to discuss why he chooses to almost exclusively develop CMS projects in Perch. We talk about the types of sites Perch basic is best for, when to move to the more robust Perch Runway, and discuss an actual client project where Phil uses the upcoming Shop ecommerce plugin. We also discuss what we, as developers, generally look for in a CMS.
Tune in now! Thanks to Visual Chefs for sponsoring!
Posted on Aug 27, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
This coming Tuesday, August 25, 2015, I’ll be live as part of the ALA: On Air online event series. This event will cover CMSes; learn what we’re excited about, what we love, what drives us crazy, and some things we’ve learned along the way.
CMSes help and hinder; they inspire rapture and incite table-flipping. I’m thrilled to moderate the next ALA: On Air event, where Karen McGrane, Jeff Eaton, and Ryan Irelan will join me to discuss what they love about working in CMSes (administrative UX!), what drives them to frustration (decoupling!), and what meaty problems (integration with design systems!) they hope to dive into next.
The event will stream online (via Google Hangouts) and is completely, 100% free.
Learn more about the On Air event and then register for the event.
See you there!
Posted on Aug 23, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
Oh, how far we’ve come. Not just in the EE world just also in what’s available for e-commerce.
This post from the first day of EE Insider, about 7 ½ years ago, asks how you do e-commerce on EE? I offered up two options. Now we have a half dozen.
From E-commerce with ExpressionEngine:
It’s a popular question on the forums: How can I do e-commerce with ExpressionEngine?
The only built-in way to do e-commerce is using the Simple Commerce Module (SCM), a first-party module from EllisLab. This method is, of course, limited to using PayPal as a payment gateway and some clients are hesitant to do that because they (incorrectly) perceive PayPal to be an amateur solution and not secure. Also, SCM has limited functionality; it’s called Simple Commerce Module for a reason.
This is pre-CartThrob, pre-Store, pre-Brilliant Retails, and even pre-Stripe.
Posted on Aug 20, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
Pixel & Tonic released a new version of Assets that improves Grid field compatibility and other add-on support.
Read the release notes and update your sites.
Posted on Aug 19, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
Solspace CEO Mitchell Kimbrough writes about their EE AfterCare program:
First, we love the ongoing relationships with our clients. We don’t like to build something, launch it and go away. Some developers like that. They like to have a fresh new challenge every couple of months. We like new challenges too, but what we like much more at Solspace is a relationship. We like that we like our clients. We like that we care about them, their families, their careers, their wellbeing. It makes our lives much more rich. So with this part of our company DNA in mind it made perfect sense to have a formalized maintenance program. In fact, it made great sense to have such a program that even allowed us to inherit the work of other more project oriented developers. That’s why there’s EE Aftercare.
Posted on Aug 18, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
Today EllisLab released DP7, the developer preview of ExpressionEngine 3.
One of our fastest builds yet, with just two days worth of fixes. Continuing to chase down bugs and stabilize all parts of the application.
You can read the notes for all of their releases on the blog the EE3 releases are only for developers right now.
The three goals for the upcoming developer preview are to modernize, stabilize, and move forward.
This includes a responsive control panel, proper data models, removal of CodeIgniter, unit tests, and more.
All of this leads them to their goal to move forward:
These foundational changes all work in concert to move ExpressionEngine forward. Some are visible to end users, some are invisible. All allow us to iterate faster and to remove legacy code while being confident that there are no regressions. The benefit for everyone is continuous improvement and new functionality on a more regular basis. Whereas ExpressionEngine 2.0 was something of a monolithic release, ExpressionEngine 3.0 is a base that will evolve continuously and rapidly. We have big ideas for ExpressionEngine, and this will enable us to deliver them without setting finish lines years apart.
Posted on Aug 18, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
In this week’s CTRL+CLICK, we tackle professionalism in the web industry with creative director and SuperFriendly founder Dan Mall. We talk about definitions and standards, how employee professionalism is different compared to an owner’s, as well as communication styles based on context and purpose. We all share anecdotes of where we’ve failed to behave professionally, how we behave now and what we consider important as professionals. We also share resources that help raise the the bar of professionalism for our web industry. Tune in now!
Thanks to Craft for sponsoring!
Posted on Aug 13, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
An accessible website is one that benefits everyone! In this week’s episode, accessibility advocate and developer Greg Tarnoff educates us on the benefits of accessibility for developers, designers and project leads … not to mention users! We discuss scenarios and examples where accessibility is needed, along with myths regarding accessibility practices. Greg also shares resources that will help you make your site available to a larger swath of people!
Tune in now! Thanks to EllisLab for sponsoring!
Posted on Jul 30, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
It was soft announced a couple days ago in the ExpressionEngine Slack account (and on Twitter) but it’s now official: CartThrob is saved.
From the blog post from Vector:
We’ve got some exciting news: Vector is now the proud owner of the #1 ExpressionEngine eCommerce add-on, CartThrob!
For years, CartThrob has been our choice for implementing eCommerce on ExpressionEngine sites we’ve built for clients. We’re fans of its flexibility, data model, usage of native EE concepts like channel fields, and extensibility. We loved that no matter what a client needed, CartThrob could do it — including custom (and complex!) tax and shipping rules. We’ve also used CartThrob’s amazing API to integrate with every acronym you can imagine: CRMs, ERPs, DAMs, PIMs, and fulfillment vendors like warehouses and logistics providers.
Among the acquisition package is CT Admin and a handful of other add-ons.
Vector is a great company and employs a former developer of CartThrob and other add-ons. I’m sure this will be a good future for the e-commerce add-on.
Posted on Jul 24, 2015 by Ryan Irelan
Knowing what your CMS is capable of is essential for not only choosing the right CMS for your projects, but building the right solutions within that CMS. For the latest CTRL+CLICK CAST, we take a deeper look at Twig, the templating language for Craft CMS with special guest Andrew Welch. We discuss some of the features that developers should consider for faster, more efficient development … namely filters and macros. Andrew shares real-world cases for using both, including localization and logic for complex looping. And while Craft/Twig is the focus, we also talk about best practices for any developer: working through a solution in advance of building it, documentation (then more documentation), and taking time to practice. Tune in now!
Thanks to Visual Chefs for sponsoring this episode!
Posted on Jul 16, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
As web developers, we often love to dive straight into planning and implementing the structure of a website. But all of that is meaningless without the right content to bolster user experience and further business goals.
In this week’s episode, content strategist and expert Steph Hay drives home the importance of content-first design. She gives real-world examples of questions and conversations that have you understand the client or customer’s language better, and how content-first design ultimately makes us get our work done faster, while simultaneously communicating more effectively.
Tune in now! Thanks to Craft for sponsoring!
Posted on Jul 02, 2015 by CTRL+CLICK CAST
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