Expression Engine
Around weblog publishing and content management programs, whole flame wars can erupt. Everyone has his or her favorite and more often than not defends it as is life depended on it. Without wanting to start one of these flame wars here, I would like to tell you why I used Expression Engine (EE) for this site and what my experience was, now that I am somewhat done with programming this site.
The reason why I use EE for my site is simple: I was around from the start and watched Rick Ellis’ programs grow. Several years back, I used Ellis’ initial publishing program, pMachine (pM), to design my sites and when EE was rolled out as a successor, I virtually jumped on it. It wasn’t free anymore, but the $200 for a license were spent knowing about the quality and the dedicated support offered by the pMachine support team. I had watched bugs and errors get ironed out, sometimes within minutes, I had seen the support’s stoic patience when users were frustrated, and I had experienced the sense of community emanating from the site and its forums.
EE is not an easy program to learn and it can be quite frustrating at times. The reason for that is not really its complexity, which can at times also be confusing, but the fact that EE can be used and tweaked to do just about anything aside from switching the TV on for you. Users attack problems in very unique ways and often two, three or more solutions can be found to the same problem. EE knowledge is growing exponentially and both on-site and off-site resources are of great help when attacking more complicated sites.
EE is template-based. That means that you have to design a template (or use one of the rather bland out-of-the-box ones) and then simply “stick” EE tags in there. So far, one of the deficiencies has been that more interesting and challenging prefabricated templates are hard to come by, thereby limiting the user base to more advanced designers and programmers, but in my experience, most people started like I did - without any knowledge whatsoever and with a bare template which I began to tweak, bit by bit.
On top of that, I am not a fan of the documentation, which in light of what I said before, can be quite confusing, but the pMachine staff are aware of this caveat and are working on getting a substantially improved user guide completed.
On the positive side, EE probably has as many functions as your average Word or Office program, and when you start attacking a site, you can really roll out the functionality. Categories and sub-categories, forms, newsletters, referrers, SQL queries, modules, plugins, breadcrumb navigation, flexible database field layout with custom fields, upload of images, image gallery - you name it, EE has it or can be made to do it. From weblog to the a complex news site, everything is possible.
If you find a function not included in EE, you can either construct it yourself with PHP and SQL, or you can start looking for a plugin someone might have written or a module by the pMachine programmers themselves or third parties. One of the highlights is then EE’s extensibility with modules (for example, a forum module is available at an extra $100) and plugins (there is already a large number available, some of which come with EE’s initial install).
If you are looking for a place to host your sites, Rick Ellis’ team set up pMachine Hosting, if your site turned out well you can try to get it featured on the pMachine/EE site, if you need help, there’s a pro network to help you out, and if you are happy about EE, you can join the affiliate network.
From what I’ve seen these past years, EE’s future looks very bright. With version 1.4 about to be released and additional people hired to shoulder the programming and support work, new and exciting things are looming on the horizon. I, for one, will continue supporting EE. I think you owe it to yourself to at least have a look.
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