Almost everyone here sings the technical praises of EE, and although I want to point out my two favorite new features in EE 1.1, first I want to point out what to me is the best and most important feature about EE.
Rick and all the folks who have built and support EE/Pmachine really listen to the user community.

I used to be a Moveable Type user, but got tired of waiting for the features that were “forthcoming” to be released.  They never came and so I moved on.  The bright side of leaving MT was finding PMachine.

Since starting with Pmachine 18 months ago, it’s been amazing to see all that has grown in the the Pmachine/EE software.  Although it’s impossible to be all things to all people, the 1.1 release reminds me just how much Rick and company respect us, the users.  Thanks to all the folks who work and support EE/Pmachine.

That said, here’s my two favorite features (so far) with EE 1.1:

* The ability to search entries from within the Publish page (the thing I missed the most when switching over from Pmachine to EE)

*The ability to add an image as a pop-up or to have it embedded in the post.  This was the one thing I missed when switching from MT, I’m so happy to see it in EE!!

Search from the publish page?  I’ll have to look for that.

I personally am liking:
1) The expanding template groups. A lot less “messy”
2) No captcha for logged-in members
3) Login form tag to use on any page.

I still have to play around with a lot, but I am realy looking forward to getting the moblog functioning correctly now that the lockfile issue is solved.

first I want to point out what to me is the best and most important feature about EE.
Rick and all the folks who have built and support EE/Pmachine really listen to the user community.

Oh stop!  I’m blushing. 

Ditto. The pMachine/EE community is really growing and a big factor for such, is the support and efforts of the pMachine team.

In my humble opinion, I find 1.1 more on the side of an “Enhancement” milestone, rather than a “New Features / Modules” milestone. Then again, this is a considerable milestone, to say the least.

I love the fact that EE best exemplifies web standards (semantic markup, separation of style from content, and leaning towards XML). The 1.1 release further strengthens this aspect, especially that these enhancements follow the trend of the “3-Click Rule” of GUI 101 (AKA “Maximum of 3 Mouse Clicks for every task”).

I foresee that future enhancements on the UI of EE’s cpanel and output formatting of the backend, would lean towards the “3-Click Rule”.

Yes, I agree, these are the two best, but by no means the least, of all the new improvements.

I can see EE becoming the dominant paid-for blogging utility in the next couple of years, and if all the buzz about various modules come to fruition…it may evolve into a full portal/CMS that will smoke anything out there.

Forums!  We need those forums! 

A little story:

Recently I picked up a Nikon D70 Digital SLR.  I’m going to cultivate the artistic side of my brain with it.  I wanted to start a photoblog that stores images from the D70 as well as moblog pictures.  I tried a few free apps I found at Hotscripts.com, then I tried WordPress.  When I say “tried,” I mean installed, configured, tested and used them.

And I hated them all for one reason or another.  If there was a feature that EE did not have, it made no difference.  They just aren’t enough to use every day.

I have to save a couple bucks and buy another license, because EE is the only blogging/content tool I ever want to use.

re: stark- I tried a few free apps I found at Hotscripts.com, then I tried WordPress. When I say “tried,” I mean installed, configured, tested and used them.

And I hated them all for one reason or another. If there was a feature that EE did not have, it made no difference. They just aren’t enough to use every day.

Yea, I tried out everything (free) under the sun before I made that initial decision to go with pmachine.  I just play with this stuff as a hobby, and I LOVE the ideals behind open source software and GPL (and not because I’m a cheap bastard- I like the free exchange of information and community collaboration on projects).  But, when it came down to choosing something to run my site, pmachine (at that time) was the clear choice.  That’s mostly because as much as I like the idea of a bunch of people coming together to create something, it tends to be ‘messy’ for that very reason.  I’d prefer to go with one guy (or gal) with a vision I can relate to and the resources to make it happen.  I mean, I just TRUST the pmachine crew.  They don’t put out crap.  I may want the forum, community, gallery, etc. modules NOW (ok, I do want them now!), and maybe with open source or GPL I’d get something ‘nower’- but it tends to be a mish-mash.  Ever try to wade through all of the ‘nuke’ varients?  It’s insane.

I know when EE gets out a module, it will work, it will fit with the logic and the vision as a whole.  I’m happy to pay for that- and I’m happy to wait for that.  (Well, ‘happy’ might be stretching it…)

The key is to find the team with a vision that works for you- and for me, EE does.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt when I stumble across little posts like this one on Webhosting Talk:

I meet a guy at my datacenter on night while I was doing some work on my servers, he was the CEO of pmachinehosting.com a hosting company that specializes in hosting Pmachine web blog software.

It my be a viable option for you, he seemed like a good guy with a head on his shoulders.

Hee!  Nice to hear an unbiased opinion confirm my faith in the PM crew!  EE is great stuff, and it’s only going to get better.

(Also nice to know the crew has heads on the shoulders!  And while I’m rambling, am I the only one who’s noticed that most of the male PM crew look like pro wrestlers in their pics?  That’s sort of disturbing.)

(Also nice to know the crew has heads on the shoulders! And while I’m rambling, am I the only one who’s noticed that most of the male PM crew look like pro wrestlers in their pics? That’s sort of disturbing.)

Hmmm… am I the Penguin Marauder then hahahaha.  Yup I remember meeting the guy that posted that comment, seemed like a good guy as well, chatted for a few hours about the hosting industry in general (what else do you talk about while standing in the middle of 1,000 server cabinets in a 43,000sq ft data center at 2am

Fitting he posted that in a thread on my birthday even .

*The ability to add an image as a pop-up ?

I’m missing that - tried uploading, didn’t get that option. Is there a setting somewhere I’m missing?

ah. there it is. hmm. odd it wasn’t there before - must have had it cached.

I installed it last night, and everything went perfectly.

It’s so cool that a lot of the features I (along with others) asked about on this forum are included! Here are a few of the ones I’m looking forward to:

-  Image thumb-nailing improvements:��The upload utility will now create
��a link to the full-size image.

- Added a DHTML Calendar in the PUBLISH page to make setting dates/times easier.

- Added “select all” button for ping servers (in publish page).

- Changed the logic so that the “ping server” checkboxes in the publish
��page will only be selected for new entries, not when editing existing
��entries.

- Added search feature to control panel EDIT page.

- URL segments can now be used in conditional statements:
��{if segment_3 == “charlie”} {/if}