Impressions of Expression Engine

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I have been working with Expression Engine (EE) for a bit now. At first I was perplexed with the lack of obvious direction with EE. There is a fair amount of material on the EE site about the program but the initial video tutorials were too fast and too assumptive at the same time. Now that my feet are we and my hands dirty, I understand the tutorials much better.

The first obstacle for me was getting over the notion of a Theme. This is a critical element in many CMS tools. You select your theme and then build the site. While EE comes with a default theme and you can select from about a dozen alternates (that must be uploaded before you run the installer) or you don’t have the option to use one of them, it is not where you want to focus with EE. It blew my mind when I realized that you can totally design your site in xhtml and css and then you can port it over to EE and work from there to “chunk” it apart and create the beginnings of your new site.

Once you get this foundation started you can begin to create parts that will can be included as content. The more I have gone with EE, the more I like it. The initial learning curve is a bit steep, but not near as steep as Drupal, but after a bit it really begins to make sense. I find myself thinking in terms of EE structure. So I won’t be under the necessity of backing into the project. My impressions at this point? Expression Engine is Powerful and Fun!

Moving to Expression Engine

Saturday, March 08, 2008

This is going to be brief because I have made my decision. In my last entry, I posed the question, “which is the best CMS?”. Well, I have my answer. As noted, I have tried several of them, but after the last two weeks of work, I am converted the Expression Engine, and I am not looking back. That being said, this is the last entry for this blog. For all future entries, I can be found at http://cms.rouviere.com. The very best way to learn is to do.

Getting Started with ExpressionEngine

Saturday, March 08, 2008

This is the beginning of a new experiment. I am almost done building my first Expression Engine (EE) site for a client and it has been a tremendous personal success. WordPress has proved way to limiting, except for just blogging. The purpose of this site is to provide a laboratory for experimenting with EE.

I began this project with an excellent tutorial on building an EE site by Michael Boyink. This was a remarkable tutorial and helped me to see just how flexible and powerful EE can be. Check out the results I have tried Mambo (aka Joomla), Wordpress, Drupal, Plone and even looked at Xoops, but none of them come close to the power and elegance of EE.

You are welcome to follow along as I take this CMS journey. I am beginning with an EE theme, but that will go shortly as I bring in a custom design and build from there.

Which CMS is Best?

Friday, February 29, 2008

I am going to make this brief because I am in the middle of a project, but many of you will find this interesting. I have often wondered, “which is the best Content Management System (CMS) for building a website?”

I have been asking that question for some time and having worked with a few, have now come to some interesting conclusions. I tried Drupal (terribly complex), I have used Joomla (formerly Mambo), I have looked at Xoops and I have even tried to turn WordPress into a CMS. While these all may be content management systems, they all have their strengths and weaknesses.I am currently working on a project using Expression Engine as the basis for a CMS site and I am extremely impressed. Khoi Vin recently posted an article about this and I have seen sites like 31three as well as Veerle’s blog, which are very nicely done. The breakthrough came though when I came across an extremely helpful series of articles by Michael Boyink about Building an Expression Engine Site. This has made all the difference in the world. I am currently in the process of following this at my CMS experimental site and it is proving to be quite fun.

Working with Expression Engine

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Quick note, just to keep the flow going. I am currently working on a site using Expression Engine. So far, I am pretty impressed. After I get the site done, I will give a full report on the experience. Stay tuned.

Working with Style

Thursday, February 14, 2008

When I was a kid my Dad had lots of tools and there are few men around that don’t have more tools than they probably need. However, there are a few tools that I consider absolutely indispensable when it comes to working with CSS and style sheets.

The first one is Firebug, which is a Firefox add on. It gives a remarkable view of the html and css for any site, but most importantly it lets you see your own code. I particularly appreciate how you can see what CSS is applied to a particular section of the page and even better, what code it is overwriting.

The last tool is CSSEdit. This tool is worth working with just for the interface, but it is also very good for organizing code. There are plenty of helper aspects to the tool, but it helps bring order to hundreds of lines of code. If I wore a hat, I would certainly be tipping it to the folks at MacRabbit. 

Web Developer’s Conundrum

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

One of the most perplexing challenges I find with keeping a blog is that you can either develop web sites or you can write a blog, but it is not easy to do both. So is there any wonder that these pages have been empty for almost three weeks?

Nevertheless, developing web sites certainly provides fodder for a blog and today I wanted to take a few minutes to recap some of the key lessons from this last stretch of coding (in order of importance):

• Always begin a new site with a good solid plan
• Always have a clear understanding of the client’s expectations
• Design the home page first and get approval before designing the rest of the site
• Bake in the fact that your client will change their mind after they are certain about their decision
• Build a “foundation” page first with all key elements and make sure it is cross-browser compatible
• Create one style sheet for standards-based browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera and another for finicky browsers like IE 6 and IE 7
• Keep good reference books close by and don’t be afraid to look things up

There is more but that is a really good place to start. Now then, back to the code.

What’s the Big Deal About Cutline

Thursday, January 24, 2008

I am working on a project that involves a customized WordPress installation. I have reviewed the current themes at WordPress and thumbed through the various listings of free and not-so-free themes. There are just a handful of attractive themes available. I like the one I am using now, Ocean Mist and I also like the unique look of Nick La’s iTheme, but then I came across Cutline, which is listed as one of the top theme downloads (currently more than 601,000 downloads).

Surely there aren’t more than 600,000 blogs out there that all look alike.  So I have to ask the question: What’s the big deal about Cutline? It isn’t the design. The big, chunky, too-much white space look. Is it something behind the scenes? Is it the fact that Google’s search engine algorithms really like it?

I read Chris Pearson’s statements about how much his traffic increased after switching to WordPress and using Cutline as his theme. Frankly I can’t believe the it is just a matter of applying a particular theme that makes such a difference. If I switch to Cutline, would traffic to my site suddenly increase 445%? If there is something about the code that makes that big a difference, I would like to see Cutline with a new look. 

Why Wait for the New Year?

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

I am still plugging away at developing a WordPress site so I am pouring over the codex section that has all the details about how to modify and develop themes. As I worked on this I came across a theme that I had seen some time back that I really liked. I applied the theme by Ed Merrit and added my own photo of the Sydney Opera House. Just goes to show you that all code and no photos make, well, boring websites. I decided not to wait for the new year to have a new look.

Under the Hood

Thursday, January 10, 2008

When I was just a kid, I spent a number of hours under the hood of our family vehicles, watching and helping my Dad do maintenance. As time passed, I gradually learned to change the oil and a number of other minor repairs on a car. This came in handy countless times when we lived in China, but that is for another discussion.The think that I am finding as I work with WordPress is that after getting the desired plugins and themes, I am under the hood tinkering with the code. So once again PHP shows up again. I have been tweaking the headers and footers and modifying this and that to get all the right elements in place. The one goal I have with WordPress is to create a fully modified and customized site based. A couple of examples that I have seen with what you can do with WordPress:

Matt Mullenweg
Lance Thackery