Preparing for ExpressionEngine 2.0.

If you’ve been a long-time member of the community, it’s likely you’ve noticed some real big changes in the last couple of weeks. This is not just with the relationship between CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine, but with the relationship between EllisLab and our community of users.

EllisLab has never been so forthcoming with information about a new release in the company’s history. We’re being more transparent about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. We’re giving you more information about the direction we’re headed so you can make better decisions for your business, your clients, and your own web-ventures.

At our official ExpressionEngine 2.0 Preview page, you’ll find up-to-date information about the release of our most exciting version of ExpressionEngine ever. You’ll also see that we’re committed to a release of 2.0 during the third quarter of this year, that there will likely be a modest price adjustment to EE, and that we’ve got a plan in place to work with all interested three-party add-on providers to ensure as smooth an upgrade to EE 2.0 as possible. We’ve never made it this easy for you to be totally prepared for an upgrade.

You could spend the next few months posting in the community and speculating about 2.0, wondering about features and what surprises we have in store for you, or you could start taking action now so that you’ll be fully prepared for when EE 2.0 is released.

Here are some ideas for working off some of your pre-launch energy.

1. If your current sites are not running the latest build of EE, get them updated. It’s always a good idea to be running the latest build, and this way, your sites will be ready for the upgrade to 2.0.

2. If you have established sites that have collected lots of old entries that are now closed or no longer relevant, this could be a great time to remove some of them.

3. Now is also a great time to purge old image, pdf and other files people are no longer downloading from your server.

4. Prepare to Accessorize: If you’ve watched our 2.0 preview video, then you know about the new “Accessories” feature in the control panel. This is an amazingly powerful new feature; start thinking about how you’ll use it.

  •  Screen-cast type videos and flash slideshows will soon be commonplace for a big segment of web users. If you’re not up-to-speed with these tools then this might be a great time to get one and start practicing.

  •  You will also be able to include RSS feeds right in the Accessories tabs. You may want to include information about your business, your services, or other activities that you can feed right in to your clients’ sites. Now would be a great time to set up RSS templates in your current site, and start getting into the habit of writing content for new feeds if you’re not already doing that.

  •  Do you find you have to explain some of the concepts of online publishing over and over to new clients? This would be a great time to write some of those concepts so you can simply paste one or more into an Accessory tab when you build new or update existing sites.

5. Is it time to let your inner geek out to play? You don’t need to understand CodeIgniter to use EE 2.0, but if you like knowing how things work under the hood, and you like PHP or want to learn more about it, CI is an awesome tool to explore, and it already has a very helpful and active community around it.

6. If you’re new to EE, then this is the perfect time to dig into a big project and study our documentation. The more you know about the current version of EE, and the more experience you have with it, the faster you’ll pick up on the enhancements in 2.0, and the quicker you can start implementing those for your clients. Remember that the switch from our current version to 2.0 will be an upgrade, so nearly everything you create now using supported methods in EE will work in 2.0.

7. If you use EE for your clients, you could start rewriting some of your own advertising copy that’s specific to EE and add what you’ll be able to offer your clients in the future. Yes, you don’t know all the specifics yet, but how would you change your messaging now with what you know?

8. Get off the fence! If you’re a professional web developer and you’re still on the fence about the best CMS and application framework to use for your company, you can get off the fence now and put your energy and creativity to work doing what you do best. EE and CI are ready for you now.

9. If you’re not already participating in our EE affiliate program, this could be the best time ever to sign up and add a few affiliate links to your existing sites. We’re predicting that EE 2.0 will create some pretty strong sales volume, and as an affiliate who introduces new people to EE, you could benefit from the future success of EE.

Be sure to read the Affiliate Program FAQ too.

10. Subscribe to our RSS feeds so you’ll always be the first to learn of any new details as they become available.

EE 2.0 is going to be absolutely fabulous when it’s released in a few months. Will you be ready?

I had promised to write about something else this week, and I fully intend to get to that real soon, but I’m just so excited about EE 2.0 I couldn’t help myself.