About two years ago, I was searching for a Content Management System (CMS) that was easy to learn, supported, flexible, feature-rich and had a level of popularity that would help provide longevity for the platform. My journey led me through a cacophony of solutions, most of which were very similar to each other and did very little to convince me of their superiority over one another.
Eventually, I installed and tested several options I deemed worthy. Drupal, Joomla and Mambo were all open-source solutions that generally garnered excitement in the community and sometimes awards for their efforts. The problem with all three of these for me was not that they don’t work but that it’s hard for me as a front-end developer to get excited enough to want to use them. The main problem was that it’s hard to use and hard to learn and once that frustration turns into resentment — we’re done with it.
The matter finally came to a head last year as my company needed a website refresh. This time, I asked around and tried to do actual research as to what web design firms actually use to make sure I made the right choice. On a popular technology forum I frequent, somebody suggested Expression Engine (EE) which I had never heard of at the time. I went to the website and I immediately knew that this was something special. My exact words in the thread was:
wow, expression engine looks very promising…
and then later…
I checked out all the Experience Engine videos and looked into the demo…
This looks like what I was dreaming about. Pretty simple, flexible, easy-to-use, supported and the admin has a tailored feel to it. Too bad it’s not free… but since I’d be recommending it to customers with money, that’s not a deal breaker for me.
[Notice how I called it "Experience" Engine... haha!]
Eventually, I choose it and have been using it as my CMS of choice ever since and have only experienced minor setbacks due mostly to growing pains. Expression Engine is straight forward to use and learn, supported very well, extremely flexible, feature-rich and has been adapted by big and small companies alike. Whether or not it’s the right one for your project is up to you to decide but I want to share why I like it:
Straight-Forward Learning and Ease of Use
Looking back, there was two major factors that really impressed me about Expression Engine. The first was the website. No big deal for a CMS right? WRONG! Go to drupal.org, mamboserver.com or joomla.org and you just don’t see the potential that is within their product and you certainly aren’t inspired by their product.
[Left: Expression Engine homepage] [Right: Expression Engine Tutorial Videos]
With the EE website, you see it and feel it with every click. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but I really think it’s an important factor if you’re trying to woo web designers and developers by showing them how great it can be. So needless to say, the EE website showed me that I can do great things with this product and to not settle for a CMS that will restrict me with limitations.
The second factor was that they put together a set of well-made video tutorials. They assumed I knew nothing and showed just enough so that I understood the general idea of what makes EE great. Compared with what I went through the year before where the trifecta I was investigating made me feel like it was my fault for not being smart enough — EE made me feel at ease. If you were new to the CMS world like I was, you would understand how great a wall that initial starting point can be. These four videos, show your pretty quickly how to get started while at the same time slowly hinting at how powerful this will be once you get the hang of it.
Since it was for my job’s website — we went through with the $10, 30-day hosted demo to put it through it’s paces. I followed the videos and the written documentation online — EE has a well put together User Guide, useful Wiki and a responsive Forum community that’s all search-able.
Online resources outside of the EE website include:
http://www.train-ee.com/
This website offers free training as well as paid training (in the form of workshops) and consulting. They’re based in the mid-west (Michigan) sadly for us coast clingers but they are a great online resource. I personally think this blog tutorial series on how to build a small business website is a great place to start once you’re comfortable with the basics.
http://devot-ee.com/
This is a newer website that is more geared toward the experienced EE developer. They offer more advanced tutorials, review add-ons and is a quality resource for EE developers.
At that time, my co-worker pointed me to a Smashing Magazine article as well:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/29/expressionengine-developers-toolbox/
Smashing — as always — gets straight to the point and rounded up very useful EE tidbits from around the web. I still come back every so often because I forget what other popular things people are doing with EE around the web.
Quality Support
At some point everybody with any CMS platform will experience a problem whether it be big or small. How well and how quick you can get solutions for your problem is a great sign of what the community is like for your platform. With EE, they have a support forum that is patrolled by a staff of full-time moderators. As with any user community, there are outside resources as well depending on the problems you are having such as with 3rd party add-ons and extensions.
I recently had issues with a WordPress (WP), which is free software under a GNU General Public License. Unfortunately, WP left me completely hosed when we encountered a technical problem. One of the reasons we love WP is that it has such a strong community behind it but seeing how my specific technical issue (who others also had) had not been resolved for months and with no response in their official forums… you really understand the reality of free software.
I’m happy to report that from my experience, EE is not like that. Their moderators on the forum are always lurking the forum and helping and strive to resolve your issues. I had a RSS question and of course posted with as much information as possible and although they didn’t specifically answer my question — they pointed me to the right knowledge base entry. Other times, they have answered my questions outright or linked me to other forum posts that didn’t show up in a search.
Granted, I’m sure there are plenty of cases for EE developers who have been less than satisfied but from my experience, I truly believe that if I have a problem — there is help.
Visit Expression Engine’s Support Forum…
Extreme Flexibility
“Themes” and “Templates” are two features publishing platforms try to push on you to disguise the fact that you are forced to use their product in a certain way. Sort of like buying a car and then customizing it at the end by picking out some custom elements. At the end of the day, you’re driving a Toyota Camry albeit yours has 19 inch rims and a huge spoiler.
EE doesn’t work like that. Although you can start out by editing their basic default website that comes with installation… you’ll eventually want to harness the true power of EE and exploit it’s true potential for your customers.
Currently, I’m working on a website with my client where I’m designing their website with thoughtful consideration to solve their marketing and business goals. There are several components that a CMS will have to handle for me, two of which are dynamic content and a control panel for updating… I don’t need to think about how EE can make this work for me. I think about how I can make EE work for me.
If you didn’t follow that — EE has a easy to learn tag system that allows you to custom build the solution as you need it to work. It was created with flexibility and versatility in mind so you don’t have to build cookie cutter websites. Each client is different and EE allows you to customize for them without learning a new development language. The tag system is straight-forward, logical and easy to become productive with. Here’s an example snippet you embed directly in the HTML:
{exp:weblog:weblog_name weblog="gst_blog"}
[Above example taken from EE Quick Start Guide Page 7]
Expression Engine Video Tutorials:
Introduction to Templates
Weblogs and Custom Fields
Weblog Template Relationship
[Save the drama for your mama... each video is around 5 minutes or less.]
Feature Rich
There are more CMS options today than ever and the feature lists are looking more and more similar. Look closer and you’ll see EE offers the features you expect but with more sophistication. This is what you’d expect from a company and platform that has had time to mature rather than some of the new and trendy options available today. [It's original incarnation was called p-Machine, for Publishing Machine but officially debuted as Expression Engine in 2004 under EllisLabs]
One of the features I like most is when I design a custom field for content (as part of a set), I can control if that one particular field has HTML capabilities or not. That’s just a single example of the attention to detail in EE. Throughout the whole product you’ll see they the care that went into it’s core functionality — web publishing but they also built in high-end features for content writers and the developers. EE is often popular as a blogging platform – they have first rate commenting and spam features. They have add-ons and modules that handle forums, multi-website support and a myriad of other functions.
Visit Expression Engine’s Full Feature List…
Adopted by Companies Big and Small
Sometimes when I introduce EE as a CMS to client, the easiest selling tool is to tell them who else is using it. It quickly shows them that it’s not a limited shelf-life, fly by night product that has a limited lifespan.
http://change.gov/content/home
http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter
http://veerle.duoh.com/
Veerle has gained notoriety from being picked as a frequent “Top List” website.
A complete list at Expression Engine’s website…
Interested? Give It A Shot!
There are a lot of options out there for publishing these days and I understand the thought of “the right one is the one that does the job” but I also believe that what clients want is a moving target at times. A year later, they often come back to you asking for this and that trying to gain an edge on their competition. Expression Engine allows you to grow your websites on platform where you can grow as well. With every EE website I build now, it’s better than the last!
The pricing for a personal license is $99 and you can upgrade that to commercial for $150 more. For the type of clients at my studio, this is not an issue but it’s understandable for some of the clients out there you do work for with razor thin budgets.
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I’ve been lurking around EE for about a year, but have recently taken the plunge and now have 5 EE-powered sites in various stages of development. I love it (barring the oddities, which you get with every system) – the flexibility it gives you to build sites exactly the same as the static templates you create is a lifesaver. I’m not going back to anything else (WordPress aside for blog-specific sites) for CMS-powered sites.
EE is a robust, easy to use CMS that is perfect for projects that need a lot more than WordPress can offer. Hands down, my first choice for serious development.
Matthew
Signalfire
http://www.SignalfireProductions.com
http://twitter.com/_Signalfire_
EE is truly a wonderful tool that one can easily come to love like a cute puppy. Every time i start up a project in EE i know from the outside it’s going to be a pleasurable and exploratory journey. Getting there is _more_ than half the fun. chEErs
Thanks for a great article. So often people come out and say xyz CMS is fantastic but without saying exactly why they hold that opinion. But you’ve gone into great detail about why you think that’s true, and I think that is very helpful.
I’ve used EE for a number of projects and I’d agree with your points above. I’d say it has a few weaknesses too (although a number of these will hopefully be addressed in the forthcoming EE 2.0 release). I’m thinking of three in particular. The first is that it’s not so easy to cusomise member forms and output member info into the front-end display pages. So from that point of view it takes a bit of effort to do members directories. Although there’s the excellent Solspace User module to address that shortfall, I’d like to see it in the core product. Secondly, there’s no real support for subscriptions without putting in a reasonable bit of extra work. Lastly, the ecommerce options are a bit limited at present with the Simple Commerce module at the bottom end and eeCommerce at the top end (offering tight Magento integration) but no killer solutions in the middle ground (IMO).
Anyway, thanks again for a great post…
Thanks for your time and effort in writing this article. Very interesting read. I still remember the pMachine days.
I’ve now developed and designed three sites which utilize Expression Engine. The template structure and tags are extraordinary. It’s nice not writing a single bit of PHP or SQL for once. It’s also simple for my clients to grasp and maintain their site. $99.00 for the personal license is well worth the money for what you get out of the box. Photo gallery module, pages module, ecommerce module, etc are all worth the cost.
Clients also love the fact that they have to pay a lower development cost due to the reduced time it takes to develop a site. Helpful to me as well so I can go onto the next project.
The look and feel of the administration side is easy and simplistic for anyone. I prefer its interface to WordPress.
The number one reason I chose to use Expression Engine is the flexibility of the system. Definitely worth the money and I’ll continue to use ExpressionEngine for myself and highly recommending it to clients and anyone else.
I can’t wait for the public release of ExpressionEngine 2.0.
Once again, thanks for the great read. You’ve definitely outlined some great parts of the system.
Hi Luc — Thx and I wanted to say that some people have commented (on EE forums) that I am using WordPress for this website. My answer to that would be probably similar to yours… I consider WP to be different in that it specializes for blogs. Also, my workplace specifically builds WP communities for clients too, so it’s good to know both really well (and there is nothing like “knowing” like actually “using”).
Hi Matthew, thx and you’re right — I wouldn’t pressure a client who didn’t need the functionality of EE to use it. Some of our smaller clients would bristle at an additional monetary expenditure without just cause… especially these days!
giovanni — I agree! I’m proud of the fact that I know I thoughtfully considered the implementation of EE to meet my clients needs and it warms my heart to know that when we check up on them they seem to really love it!
I agree with you that EE is not perfect… but I think I’ve tried to curb my enthusiasm enough to say that they offer support and there is a quality community behind it. You outlined some specific black marks, but it’s a good thing they don’t apply to core functionality. BTW, I’m actually decently happy that they are carefully and thoughtfully developing EE 2.0 with a thorough testing plan. I hope EE 2.0 will address your issues!
Thanks Drew, when I was writing it — I definitely thought I should take it seriously and offer a personal account of my experience rather than a “expert’s point of view”.
As for the interface compared to WP — Happy Cog did an amazing job with the new WP (2.5 and beyond right?). I think EE 2.0 will have to step up their game for sure. I will qualify that statement by saying EE has more features to offer, so it may not be fair to compare.
Incredibly thoughtful introduction for new EE users, and those who never heard of it.
I too, am a hapEE user
Aw man…dinged for being a midwesterner…:). We are coming to the left coast in a couple of weeks….
Thanks for the mention and the comments!
Nice article. Certainly each of the CMSs mentioned has its place. I went through the same search that it sounds like you went through in finding my perfect CMS and right now it is definitely EE. The community is great/helpful and the community is growing. I just wish people could see past the license fee as it has so much to offer that they are missing out for a paltry sum.
boyink – Love your website. Do a seminar in northern California sometime!
Sorry – missed the response..so here I am a month later…;)
Thanks for the comment — but Portland wasn’t close enough?