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First Impressions

For December we are planning on two ExpressionEngine 2.0 updates. The first is this very post. The second will be around Dec. 19, give or take a couple days.

One of our goals for 2.0 is to change the first impression people have with ExpressionEngine. Right now there is a disconnect with how people hear about EE and what they see when they first experience it.

We do zero advertising so when someone hears about EE its because someone they trust told them, they’ve read a review, or heard that “such and such a site is on EE” through a blog post, Twitter, you get the idea.

But when they get to ExpressionEngine.com and download EE Core, or try the 30-day demo, or explore our Site Library what they may see is a blog tool with a very limited “Theme Library.” While EE makes a fine blogging solution, this first impression is misleading (for example, “themes” now has many different meanings), and doesn’t invite exploration. Instead it leads to awkward questions.

“Is EE a blog tool or can I run a whole site with it?” “Can I use my own templates or do I have to modify yours?” “What can I do with EE?”

Between very blog-centric terminology and site “themes” it can be difficult to convince someone that yes, EE is a very robust CMS that can be used by bloggers, corporate enterprises, businesses of all sizes, non-profits, and even a certain President Elect.

This initial confusion also leads to another issue. Just how do people learn EE? Thankfully Mike Boyink (Train-ee) and Ryan Irelan (EE Screencasts) have taken up the education cause, but we still feel that EE is missing that initial learning resource that gives people a solid introduction to what EE is capable of and how to make the most of it.

To address this we’re making two significant changes with 2.0.

First, the term “weblog” is being dropped from EE. We’ve mentioned this before on the forums but this is the “official” notice. The term served EE well during its early years but now days it carries so much internet baggage that it is more detrimental then helpful to the initial experience. Its being replaced with “Channel”, a term that communicates a stream of data. What that data is, how its structured, and how its delivered is up to the developer. This is exactly how “weblogs” currently work in EE but more appropriately named.

I want to make clear that from a developer standpoint that this is purely a change in terminology. In other words, this:

is equal to:

The EE 2.0 installer will automatically update this in your templates so you don’t have to.

Second, the entire Site Theme Library will be replaced by one Example Site. Instead of maintaining a handful of blog-centric templates as starting points, we’ll be offering a Example Site that doubles as a learning resource and introduction to what’s possible with ExpressionEngine.

To make this Example Site outstanding we needed to work with a team that does top-notch design, has implemented EE at the “personal blog” level all the way to the enterprise level, and has experience in developing HTML in a way that encourages learning. We choose to go with long time EE advocate Simon Collison and the team at Erskine Design.

Simon Collision is a published author on HTML, CSS, and web design, the team he leads at Erskine do outstanding work, and they have formidable EE experience. In one phone conversation (well, Skype to be specific) it was clear that Colly understood what we wanted and Erskine delivered big time.

In the next update we’ll be talking to Simon and Greg Wood about Erskine’s approach and you’ll get to see what it looks like (at least some of it).