ExpressionEngine and I, part 2

In Part 1, I talked about how I got started with ExpressionEngine and some of the problems and disappointments I faced. It probably came across as pretty negative.

That was not my intention, because overall, I really do like ExpressionEngine. So, some of the things I like…

The documentation and community

The documentation on the EE site is very good and well written, and the forums are very helpful as well, especially when compared to Wordpress which has suffered for its success, as the forums are overwhelmed and questions go unanswered.

Communicate tab

It was a lovely surprise to find out what this tab contained in the admin panel. You can send emails from this screen! Ok, it’s arguably slightly pointless for me as I’ll have Gmail open anyway. But for the administrator of a site, or the site owner, this is an excellent option and alternative. A very quick way of communicating.

Setup and installation

Very simple and very fast. The Wordpress setup is equally as good and I can’t think of anything that is missing from either setup.

Contact form

I absolutely love the ease with which I can set up a contact form, here’s the documentation.

It is easy to setup a contact form. This is something that Wordpress struggles with in my opinion. Although you can download the Cforms II plugin which is excellent and allows the user to add many actions to a form.

With the EE form, the documentation offers several useful parameters that can be used.

Code and templates

I was eager from the start to get stuck-in and see how EE allows manipulation of the code and templates. I can’t knock the Wordpress way but once you get your head around the EE setup and creating new sections and templates, I much prefer the EE way of doing things.

For example, you can of course change the way comments are marked up and styled in Wordpress, but I prefer the way of doing things in EE.


(exp:comment:entries weblog="(my_weblog)")

(if entry_author_id == author_id)

<li class="comment-author"><h3>(url_as_author)</h3>

<p class="comment-date">(comment_date format=‘%m/%d’) | (comment_date format=‘%h:%i %A’)</p>

(comment)

</li>

(if:else)

<li><h3>(url_as_author)</h3>

<p class="comment-date">(comment_date format=‘%m/%d’) | (comment_date format=‘%h:%i %A’)</p>

(comment)

</li>

(/if)

(/exp:comment:entries)


EE allows you to set up template groups. My groups are:

Within each of these I can set the exact HTML that I want, and which weblog I want to draw information from. Plus, it’s all editable within the built-in editor which is very handy.

Add-ons

With any CMS, you will need plug-ins and extensions. Wordpress has thousands, but it has a much bigger fanbase. Here are the extensions I’ve used for my site:

Which to choose?

Right now, I’m loving ExpressionEngine. However the main negative from my point of view is the poor control panel. ExpressionEngine 2 is meant to be out ‘soon’, but it’s already 6 months late.

For my next couple of projects, I will almost certainly be using Wordpress because the control panel is far more user friendly and after some quick chats with clients, they certainly prefer the simplicity and usability of the Wordpress admin screens.

Don't just sit there, join in!

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