This morning The Pragmatic Programmers released a series of ExpressionEngine screencasts developed by EE guru Ryan Irelan. The screencasts follow Ryan as he builds Engine City Times, a fictional newspaper site.
Looks set to be an interesting set of screen-casts.
Should be really good for newcomers to ExpressionEngine. Whilst there are quite a few resources now for people to follow screen-casts are definitely always a winner in my eyes as you can literally see the site being built as they talk you through it.
Don’t know if they are all going to be saved in that kind of quality but seemed a little large? Nearly 63MB for under 2 minutes is quite large. Might be nice if the site offers them in a Flash player format online too so that once you have paid you can watch them at any time from anywhere? Just a thought though they might already be doing this I don’t know.
All in all from what I have seen from the very short sneak preview looks like it should be set to be a good series. Might be nice to say what level of ExpressionEngine designer this is aimed at though? Also perhaps a sneak video with very very quick (no more than 2 seconds each) snippets from the different sections just so that people get more of an over-all feel to the series. Just another thought though.
Well done Ryan. I’m sure this series should get a lot of interest.
Nice project. Having more resources is definitely a great idea and the demos are well done, moderation by Ryan is very good. Regarding the project in a whole, I’m not too impressed by what I’ve seen. But I don’t think I’m really targeted?
Mostly, the episodic type turns me off: How many parts would I have to buy until the demo site is completed? When will the mini series be completed? What additional resources would be available for customers (transcript, code, ...)? Would it make any sense to buy only episode #3 but not the rest? (I don’t think so ... and therefore it feels there is one product broken into an (undefined) number of pieces sold separately to “optimize” the total price.) Moreover, I’d prefer more info on the content of an episode before buying. And if I’d be interested in the series, I’d be interested in buying an “all in one” package - I wouldn’t like to have to wait until Ryan will complete the series at one time but would want to work at my pace and have a chance to come to the final result.
Two remarks on the demos: Sometimes, highlighting or magnifying important parts of the screen might be helpful especially for newcomers (Camtasia for example has some nice tools to enhance screencasts that way) - and I woundn’t have used a webserver on port 8888 for an introductory screencast that is targeted at newcomers because that results in some URLs perhaps confusing some viewers.
Markus, while I wish I could have planned out all the content up front, I generally work more incrementally than that. Releasing these an episode at a time means you and others get access to them early, but you can always buy the whole set at the end if you prefer.
It’s important to me that brand new users to EE get a solid foundation on how it works and the first handful of screencasts will provide that (while containing nuggets of information for everyone, regardless of EE experience). So, the first few screencasts will definitely rely on each other more than later screencasts will. If you do decide to purchase the current episodes in the series, you’ll see that by the end of the third screencast, we’re pretty far along.
Future screencasts will definitely be more targeted to certain tasks, even though they will most likely all be built around the Engine City Times website. But the code is provided for the project up to that point, so you can jump in at anytime and work along with the screencasts.
Well my feedback would be to know how many you will do.
Charge a set amount for the whole lot or just $5 for specific episodes. Break them down so perhaps a specific area of expertise is taught in the context of the site.
For example, relationships or building URLs (I don’t know who you’ve structured so this is guesswork).
Thanks for the additional resource Ryan. I’ve added the mini-site feeds to my reader to stay in the loop.
Best of luck and I hope the project is a success.
I guess I’ld like to see some of these things going the way of advertising, but that takes a sales person, then it could be almost free to the end user. $5 is a good value though, similar to a magazine subscription price.
Ryan, as a newcomer to EE, these screencasts are invaluable to me. I have already learned so much about how EE works, and am looking forward to more videos covering advanced issues.
Call me a stickler, but I am turned away by the fact the “mini site” isn’t powered by ExpressionEngine. :(
Right solution for the right problem. You’re right, it isn’t powered by EE, instead it’s powered by a custom CMS I wrote using CodeIgniter. It was a better fit for the type of site I wanted to build. And soon, EE will be CodeIgniter-powered, too, so just think of it as if I’m ahead of the curve on this one.
Ryan, as a newcomer to EE, these screencasts are invaluable to me. I have already learned so much about how EE works, and am looking forward to more videos covering advanced issues.
Thanks! I’m glad you are finding them useful and the first set of screencasts is aimed at someone just like yourself. New screencasts will slowly become more advanced and the code is always available, so you can skip around and only purchase the screencasts you feel fit your skillset and interest.
Call me a stickler, but I am turned away by the fact the “mini site” isn’t powered by ExpressionEngine. :(
Right solution for the right problem. You’re right, it isn’t powered by EE, instead it’s powered by a custom CMS I wrote using CodeIgniter. It was a better fit for the type of site I wanted to build. And soon, EE will be CodeIgniter-powered, too, so just think of it as if I’m ahead of the curve on this one.
Then why does it say “powered by railsmachine” then? *cough cough* I realize that is the host but a little CI love in the footer would be cool
I’m excited by the series. It’s a bit too basic right now for me, but I plan to track to when you get into more interesting things. I think $5 per episode is a pretty good price. I’m interested in seeing how you handle related articles, and a couple other things. It’s always great to have insight into how other people accomplish tasks; ad $5 for 30+min of your time (acknowledging that it probably took much longer to put the episodes together), seems reasonable.
Though, I do like the idea by stinhambo to also have a package rate. Sure you don’t know how many episodes you’ll do in total; but you could maybe estimate and create actual series or seasons for your series. This first set would be: Building a Dynamic Website with ExpressionEngine: for Beginners (set of 5-8 episodes), for $50. That way if you continue the series, episodes after the first 5 or 8, would be more intermediate or issue focused. Or maybe even sets of single issue such as relating data: related data, reverse relationships, custom queries for relationships. You can go more detail into options and how to make decisions based on available options. That would be cool. But a set of 3 for $10 or $12 would be cool for an advanced look at an issue.
Anyway, just thought I’d congratulate again, and support stinhambo’s idea. I buy season passes from iTunes for the same reason— a single upfront cost, can go back to whenever, I don’t have to decide which episodes are worth my money.
Though, I do like the idea by stinhambo to also have a package rate. Sure you don’t know how many episodes you’ll do in total; but you could maybe estimate and create actual series or seasons for your series. This first set would be: Building a Dynamic Website with ExpressionEngine: for Beginners (set of 5-8 episodes), for $50. That way if you continue the series, episodes after the first 5 or 8, would be more intermediate or issue focused. Or maybe even sets of single issue such as relating data: related data, reverse relationships, custom queries for relationships. You can go more detail into options and how to make decisions based on available options. That would be cool. But a set of 3 for $10 or $12 would be cool for an advanced look at an issue.
This is great feedback from you and stinhambo. I like the idea of breaking it into beginners series and selling bundles. I’ve had other people ask for something similar and I’ve passed this idea on to PragProg. While I choose topics and create the screencasts, I rely on them for the transactions and something like a bundle would have to be first supported by their store. But they know about it and it’s definitely an idea that I’ll bring up for consideration!
