I’m aware that Expression Engine v2.0 is around the corner. Can anyone tell me if this is flexible enough to handle friendly looking URLs please? My understanding is that v1 doesn’t handle this very well unless that’s changed recently?
I’ve also been looking at Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.
Wordpress is probably the one I’ll go for for my modest needs. Mainly a blog and a list of static pages showcasing products and info. I’ve found a theme I like, and it’s flexible enough to create friendly URLs - which is perfect in fact for both blog and pages. It’s a no mess get-up-and-running solution, albeit potentially less flexible down the road.
Joomla gave an initially good impression but it seems so convoluted and rigid that I soon crossed this off my list. Each page is assigned to a category/section by the looks of it which seems rigid to me. I just what a tree of articles, however I chose. It’s URL generator is poor too and admin backend generally confusing.
Drupal seems better with this regard. It has a tree of nodes to represent articles and list of articles. But it’s URL handling seems poor. It’s “friendly urls” option gives ugly urls which includes numeric ids all over the address. An optional plugin which comes supplied allows the URL to be specified for each page - but this has to be fully entered manually for every page and it has no intelligence to it. A third-party plugin creates friendly urls automatically though I havent tried it because it doesnt support the latest version of Drupal - which is the whole reason I wont consider using it even when it does - I dont want something so fundamental to the site to be handled by a third-party plugin, which may or may not support future versions of the CMS. Drupal, although I got the feeling it was more flexible than Joomla (and Wordpress obviously) they put no effort into making it presentable. The admin pages are bland, and the default themes are ugly. Most of the themes seem to mix the admin backend menu into the frontend design which also I hate (Joomla and Wordpress separates them which I prefer) though I understand this can be changed. Third-party themes are very thin on the ground, and a lot of commercial Drupal themes ask x10 typical Joomla costs. Drupal is just too much hassle to get up to speed quickly.
So that leaves Wordpress and Expression Engine. Although I can get up and running (and setup content) in under an hour with Wordpress, and the URL handling is fantastic, I’ll see how Expression Engine develops in v2. Can anyone give more details or share experience with friendly URLs please?
I would have to get my hands dirty in Dreamweaver for Expression Engine so would take much longer to get up and running which is yet more time. But have to admit the admin backend in v2 is looking excellent. And the extra flexibility down the road is always nice to have on tap.
As a side note. A couple of other negative feelings I generally had about Expression Engine when I looked into it a year or so back was the cost. With an open-source CMS for example I can invest time learning it and then use that investment creating any sites as needed in the future. But with Expression Engine after I’ve invested the time learning it, I’m faced with a financial outlay every time I want to make use of it on a new site. I’m not contending that the terms are unreasonable, just that it’s a big negative for me. The cost is reasonable for a one-off website of reasonable size, but I’d feel more comfortable if I had the flexibility to reuse what I learnt without clocking up costs every time. In other words I’d like it to feel more like a tool that I can add to my collection and depend on like Dreamweaver than an ongoing service plan. I don’t know how competing commercial CMS companies compare but it’s a big negative nonetheless for me for something which is essentially a business decision rather than a resource issue given that we install it on our own servers. Tech support could just be limited to the site specified when signing up for example, and forum support thereafter, and tech support per additional site available at cost.
Anyway, a minor negative was when I glimpsed at the tags used. It uses “weblog” to present all lists or databases if I remember correctly which gave an impression of inflexibility. But that’s just a semantics thing. Still seems odd for a general purpose CMS though.
So any feedback would be appreciated. No blasting me for my opinions or misunderstandings please especially with the price issue – those were my impressions/feelings and not a demand to change it - I already know the official response by the way after reading a similar question so just treat that part as more feedback.
If I’m happy with EE’s URLs I’ll probably buy EE for my next site.
