Anyone Use ExpressionEngine?
Mon, 08/30/2010 - 2:15pm
Hey everyone,
I'm new here, but I was checking out the Forum postings and saw that there was a lot of love for Drupal/Joomla but I was wondering if anyone used ExpressionEngine, either 1.x or 2.x.
I run a design/development company with my business partner - both Catholic dudes. We do some work for Catholic organizations, and love the people and the work.
We were floating around ModX, Wordpress, and even Concrete5, and then we started using EE and never looked back. The best part for me (as the guy who cuts up my PSD files into semantic HTML by hand) is the control over the code that gets spit out, and the quality of the addons and system extensions. We can build something quick that does everything the client wanted, plus get clean, controlled code.
Also, I use CodeIgniter when I want to get down and dirty with PHP.
Adam
Mon, 08/30/2010 - 7:13pm
#2
EE
Yeah the tradeoff is that EE is a commercial product, so you are going to end up spending $250-$400 on the EE install and any commercial addons you may need. The good thing is part of what you are paying for is the support, which is fantastic. The product is really second to none, and the community is extremely helpful as well.
A lot of clients like that reassurance that their site is built on a commercial product, and the base is PHP and MySQL, so you can peek at the inner working, extend the core, and develop addons with their extensively documented APIs.
When we develop, we are happy to spend that money because it saves us thousands of dollars in our own time.
Mon, 08/30/2010 - 8:08pm
#3
I'm wondering... if EE is
I'm wondering... if EE is PHP, can you open up any of the core files and check out everything going on under the hood? With Drupal, you can grab the code and use it elsewhere under GPL, but how is EE with this kind of use? Also, does EE have any kind of multisite capabilities (one code base, multiple sites on top of it)?
Tue, 08/31/2010 - 8:32am
#4
EE Open Source
Yes, you can check out everything under the hood in EE. EE runs on CodeIgniter, which is completely open source, and something we use on a lot of projects. It is a fantastic PHP framework that abstracts organization into a Model-View-Controller design pattern.
EE is built on top of CI, so even though you can't re-release existing code from the EE application inside the codebase, you can always modify it as you see fit.
I've never had to modify EE's code though - you can extend the core using their system "hooks" and there is also an awesome API.
And yes, EE has a multisite version.
Tue, 08/31/2010 - 9:27pm
#6
Awhile back...
I took a pretty close look at it and REALLY liked what I saw. I was also impressed with some of the sites built from it.
2 things held me back though (if anyone is interested...I've moved from Joomla to WordPress: http://www.catholictechtalk.com/blog/40-5-reasons-why-i-switched-from-jo...)
1. EE is a bit pricey for the developer license. Plus, you'd probably want to get the multi-site features and other add-ons and like it's been mentioned...can reach around $400 all told. It's not a huge outlay, but was a factor.
2. Developer community. While I was impressed with the EE community, both the skill-level and the dedication, it just doesn't have the momentum that Drupal/WordPress/Joomla currently enjoy.
It was a really hard decision for me, and there's a chance I might review it again in 6-12 months. A couple of my favorite Catholic sites run on EE: www.ncregister.com and www.faithandfamilylive.com.
Hope to hear others experiences with it.
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 11:40am
#7
WP works too
We use WP for some projects - it's clean, developer-friendly, and very customizable. I totally agree with your 5 reasons from your post too. WP rocks the house.
I can definitely understand your comment about the price. Usually we just include that price in our development costs and label it a win-win because of the time saved. On other projects, though, it can be prohibitively expensive when you aren't working with a budget that will accomodate it.
On the EE community, I'd say that it has really gained a lot of momentum in the past 6 months or so - mainly because of the release of EE2. It is also split up between CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine guys, with a lot of overlap. We were at the EE/CI 2010 Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and had a great time with the community. Not as big as the others you've mentioned, but like you said, very talented and very dedicated.
Those are sweet examples as well, I didn't know faithandfamilylive.com was an EE site.
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 9:28pm
#8
Question for you...
Now that I've gotten comfortable hacking functions.php, 'the loop', and WP template tags...how would you compare it to working in EE.
I'm not a strong PHP coder (I usually have to hunt for examples or tutorials), so I'm wondering what the learning curve is like for EE.
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 10:19am
#9
PHP and EE...
Well, in EE you don't really have to deal with PHP if you don't want to. Everything works off of their tag system, which is well documented, so even though I am a PHP developer, when I am working on a site it is usually through EE tags.
We have developed a few open source add-ons for EE, and from that experience I can tell you that the experience level you need for extending EE is moderate. Nothing fancy, you just need a good understanding of functions and classes and how they work.
The thing is you can do an entire EE site and never touch a line of PHP. WP is all PHP. Not that it is hard PHP, but everything in EE is abstracted and pretty easy to pick up.
I think the main difference though is the loop. In EE, you have different content channels and they each have custom fields and field types. This makes it really flexible to basically do anything you can think of. I, personally, find that I have to bend the loop a little bit more to get it to handle different content types the way I want.
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 11:42am
#10
In EE, you have different
In EE, you have different content channels and they each have custom fields and field types. This makes it really flexible to basically do anything you can think of.
That, along with advanced user roles/permissions/access control out-of-the-box, is one of the things that makes Drupal shine... along with Drupal's amazing Views module.
As an example of its flexibility, I redesigned the entire front page of Life is a Prayer.com in about an hour last night, without a hitch, by creating a new view for it (no PHP necessary). And, Drupal is free as in beer :D
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 12:33pm
#11
EE is great
I've been using EE for a couple years now and highly recommend it. It's more of a build what you want framework than it is here's what you get "CMS" (a la Drupal, WP, etc.) Don't get me wrong, WP has its place in my tool kit. But if you're looking to "take it to the next level" then EE is the way to go. It's a proper full fledged CMS.
The upfront learning curve is somewhat steep. Don't start with too difficult a site (or two). But if you're committed to it then it will pay back nice powerful returns by site 4 or 5. Being able to make your dynamic scripts (e.g. jQuery) even more dynamic is when the fun really begins.
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 9:55pm
#12
OK...
Well...since the conversation is opening up a bit about the flavors of CMS'es ... ;) ... moderator...kibosh if it's too OT...
I started peeling back the layers of Drupal during my CMS comparisons and ran into 2 stumbling blocks...partly due to my lack of patience and unwillingness to commit to the endeavor and lack of time.
#1. Module dependencies. After finding a 'pre-packaged' installation, unpacking and connecting to a db, I started updating some of the modules. I started getting admin warnings that I needed update other modules first. I started breaking out in a cold sweat with vicious memories of Windows DLL's and Linux packages (one of the things I DON'T miss in Mac OSX BTW). I get frustrated enough with trying to wrangle updated modules as it is, but now I have to keep track of the dependancies? OK...yes, I understand the benefit of their distributed nature...but it was serious buzzkill...and a big reason I've moved to WP as a primary CMS.
#2. Flexibility. I was amazed at the flexibility that Drupal offers, but I found it to be a bit overwhelming and slowed down my 'creative' juices for aesthetics (ie design/layout). I felt like I had to put my 'engineer' hat on too often.
I think if I'd have started with a project that was less demanding, I'd have not gotten so frustrated. Plus, since I was so plugged into the Joomla way of doing things, I was having to 'unlearn' a number of things.
Anyways...Drupal's great and all...just relating my personal experience.
Kinda reminds me of an old Linux quote from back in the day when people would diss Linux for not being 'user-friendly'...
"Linux is user-friendly...it's just particular about who it's friends are".
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 1:20pm
#14
Regarding Drupal 7...
That was the thing...when I started looking at this...
Joomla was on the verge of 1.6 - big upgrade
Drupal was on the verge of 7 - big upgrade
WordPress was on the verge of 3 - and they released.
Like I mentioned in my Joomla>WP blog post, one of the issues was waiting for J1.6 while developer infighting was taking place and slowing down the release cycle.
It's almost like you need to have a point person like Matt Mullenweg or Dries Buytaert spearheading these things. But has Acquia pulled Dries out of the core development arena...specifically in regards to oversight?
It's amazing how much influence these guys...Matt W., Dries B., Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds, etc. - have on their products. I still think that's an issue Joomla needs to resolve. They came up with Open Source Matters, but that just generated friction when they went out pursuing litigation of copyright infringment. Chilling effect on the dev community.
Anyways...yes...looking forward to 7. :)
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 1:45pm
#15
Dries is still very much
Dries is still very much involved in Drupal core development—but he has, since version 5, set up a drupal core maintainer. Currently, webchick maintains the Drupal 7.x branch, and Gabor Hojtsy is the maintainer of 6.x.
This is a good structure, because there's a very clear heirarchy:
- Peons submit, patch, review, etc.
- Core maintainers commit, shepherd, provide insights.
- Dries gives general direction, has ultimate authority.
Dries also controls the Drupal registered trademark, and the domain names drupal.org and drupal.com (both). However, the Drupal Association provides a lot of backing and support to the project as a whole, and many DA members are very close collaborators with Dries and the core maintainers, as well as organizations and corporations involved in Drupal development.
It's a great model for Open Source, imo.
I've only had tangential experience with EE; a couple sites I helped theme ran on it. I've heard some good things about it, but would definitely need to take a more in-depth look at the inner workings before I could start to judge its relative merits :D
Of course, for a $99 starting fee, a lot of devs I know wouldn't care to even try it out.
Advancing the faith.