A Greeting Card to Third Party Developers

a developer
extend our code bend our app
growing up so fast

I wanted to take a moment today to acknowledge all of the hard working third party developers in our community, as well as draw attention to the growth spurt that we’ve seen in that area.  In the last 18 months, perhaps two years, a major shift began taking place in the third party developer community.  It used to be that extending ExpressionEngine was largely about creating one-off add-ons for a specific site or user.  There were exceptional standouts of course, like our good friends at Solspace, who for a long time had both free and commercial plugins and modules targeting a broad audience.

At that time, we were thrilled and proud to see that there were web firms who had started and built successful businesses around ExpressionEngine, using it almost exclusively for their clients who needed content management.  We’re now starting to see the same thing take place in the third party developer community, striking out portions of their business based on building tools that extend or work with ExpressionEngine.

We had over sixty developers participate in Kaylee this summer, the ExpressionEngine 2.0 developer preview.  Some such a Brandon Kelly (author of Wygwam, Playa, and FieldFrame), have even quit their day jobs to focus exclusively on ExpressionEngine add-on development.  Our hats off to you, Brandon, and all of the other developers pioneering into this new territory!

This growth is one of the reasons we made the critical decision to move ExpressionEngine onto CodeIgniter.  Not only does it add an influx of smart and creative developers from the vibrant CodeIgniter community, but will it create more opportunities for add-ons and support services for third party developers, and will make doing so easier for them.  We couldn’t be happier, and plan to continue to foster that growth, allowing them to have a greater position in what’s available to a user who chooses ExpressionEngine to power their site.  For me, this is largely what ExpressionEngine 2.0 is about - setting the stage for big things in the future.

So after having announced the release date for ExpressionEngine 2.0, developers are in high gear prepping their own add-ons, using the beta testers, and finalizing their early-adopter development plans.  The sheer volume of add-ons currently available and the major shift of architecture, particularly with the control panel, of course means that not all add-ons will be converted and ready by December 1st.  So one of the tasks ahead of us prior to launch is to create an official list of what add-ons are available, which should help you determine how soon you plan on upgrading.

If you are a developer and have already converted your add-ons for ExpressionEngine 2.0, and I’ll make sure you get on the list for launch.  Please include the name of the add-on, a one-line description, your name, and a link to your site or how to obtain your add-on.  The Add-On Library will for a time have separate sections for 1.x and 2.x, but we plan on featuring this particular list prominently for easy scanning.

My code may be poetry, but my poems, not so much.  So I’d sign off with another haiku, but I think I’ve done enough damage to your culture bone for one day!