No of course they’re not the responsibility of Ellislab, I was just answering Derek’s question as to why they’re using open-source.
Ah, that makes sense.
I still think my other comments apply. Though they basically echo your original post.
So our options are:
- Quit client work, or stick to smaller private jobs, missing out on nearly all the big (50k+) contracts. This is sustainable at least in the short term, but not if we want to grow quickly, and in the long-term EE will inevitably be outpaced by open-source systems.
- Start using an open-source CMS
If you’re aiming for jobs that require or favor open source you either need to pick a system that fits the bill or find some creative ways of selling your preferred solution to the potential client. Easier said than done, I know. But it’s probably easier and more logical than a company like EllisLab moving a flagship product in an open source direction.
Similarly to your experience, we’ve received RFPs requiring Microsoft-based solutions for certain things that we can do easily with open source alternatives. We just toss those aside because we don’t “do that” and we don’t want to waste the time/money to try and sell them otherwise. There are other jobs out there to invest time in. I think that’s similar to the open source requirement. Some people think they need a certain solution and won’t budge on that position (and sometimes they actually do need it).
- In government jobs, or even large organisations, they put out an RFP to which they get a number of responses from companies such as ourselves, which they evaluate against a number of criteria. The problem is, this is done by an employee who doesn’t understand what open-source even is, they are simply ticking a box and weighting it accordingly
- Open-source is such a commonly used term now that for people that don’t understand it, not being open-source is instantly seen as a negative factor.
Hi Dave -
Thanks for starting the thread, it’s always interesting to learn about another developer’s experience. Mine is a bit different: I hope and trust that EE does not go open source; I like paying for quality things. In my experience open source projects without clear leadership—and even the ones that have it—are subpar products from all perspectives: code, UI, support. I’m not exempting Wordpress here: I really, really dislike working with it, as well as Joomla, Drupal, and the rest. (In fact, the single successful example of well-designed open source software that I can think of is Firefox, but then Mozilla is a corporation that receives $10s of millions each year from Google.) That EE is a profitably run business means that I can expect it to improve and is shaped by market demands.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here of the benefits of EE over, say, Wordpress, but honestly you are much better off letting those clients go. If I hired a painter, would I insist on the kind of brush that he use? Clearly not, and we have an obligation to educate our clients who engage in the process of building web sites but don’t know much about it. We do our best to seek out clients that trust our judgment across all aspects, including CMS software, web host, etc. They are paying us for our considered, well-informed judgment on matters that they know little about, as you suggest in your points quoted above. When they ask me about whether EE is open source, I ask them back: do you require the option to take this software, build something on top of it, and sell it? Because if not there is little other benefit to open source vs. proprietary software.
The final point I’ll mention is this: as a rule, we don’t respond to RFPs. If we receive them, I ask the sender to remove our firm’s name from consideration. I’ve never had a good experience and dislike the very set up: it means I’m bidding as a lowest common denominator service provider that does not take into account what my firm has uniquely to offer. If you know us, know our work, and want what we can provide, then it’s a great relationship. Otherwise, we just happen to be the one that bid lowest and that’s not where you want to be.
So let them go and make their poor choice of Wordpress!
Thanks for starting the thread, it’s always interesting to learn about another developer’s experience. Mine is a bit different: I hope and trust that EE does not go open source; I like paying for quality things. In my experience open source projects without clear leadership—and even the ones that have it—are subpar products from all perspectives: code, UI, support. <SNIP for space> That EE is a profitably run business means that I can expect it to improve and is shaped by market demands.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here of the benefits of EE over, say, Wordpress, but honestly you are much better off letting those clients go. If I hired a painter, would I insist on the kind of brush that he use? Clearly not, and we have an obligation to educate our clients who engage in the process of building web sites but don’t know much about it. We do our best to seek out clients that trust our judgment across all aspects, including CMS software, web host, etc. They are paying us for our considered, well-informed judgment on matters that they know little about, as you suggest in your points quoted above. When they ask me about whether EE is open source, I ask them back: do you require the option to take this software, build something on top of it, and sell it? Because if not there is little other benefit to open source vs. proprietary software.
<SNIP>
So let them go and make their poor choice of Wordpress!
Speaking as a person who is more of a customer-type person than a website developer, by FAR (I’ve been hangin’ here since 2006, if memory serves, and have had a variety of different EE licenses; built my first site with Boyink’s online toots, and then migrated it to EH and upgraded to 2.1.3, and had some professional help during that near the end, which resulted in MORE work than it was to get the help, because the expert didn’t know Boyink’s system so completely tried to rewrite my pages to use Structure, instead of the 3-way cross-referencing…so I had to go back and rewrite it all…)...
I think that the idea that the clients/customers “need education” for wanting a product that is easy to use is really irritating, and that’s coming from someone who did most of her own coding AND has had help. Moreover, those of us who have to live with the end product want to know that when John or Jane or Fred go out of business, or whatever, we don’t/won’t have to wait 2 months in a queue to have their (one in 10,000 coders) EE “expert” get around to it (as I am now). Nobody worth a damn gives two hoots about $300; but they do want to know that there are adequate resources available to assist WHEN it’s needed. In all the time I’ve had EE, not one of the questions I ever asked at the “CodeShare Corner” or whatever the frack it’s called now has ever been answered. Not one. To be clear, Sue Crocker helped me out mightily when, in a fit of pique, I (oh-so-erroneously) purchased a Woo Themes theme and it utterly bollixed up my database…but when you need “help” just trying to do something above your paygrade, fuhgeddaboudit. There’s a thoroughly elitist atmosphere about CI and EE altogether that is spelled: “if you can’t code it yourself, don’t ask.” Oh, sure, if someone can’t install their EE, there’s an answer…but hate how that Gallery looks? TOUGH.
Moreover, I think calling EE a “CMS” is utterly disingenuous. It’s not. I mean, let’s stop blowing smoke up our own butts, here; it’s a framework by which you can write templates FROM SCRATCH and use “tags” that are essentially scripts to do something-but it’s no more a ready-to-go CMS than the old EZPublish of the 2005-2006 era, which was a lot of code and very little existing substance. There are no templates (none that have ever been updated; those that do exist are all bloody BLOG designs). People can customize and re-customize WP with the click of a button; it’s not doable with EE. And tags, for categorization? Forget about searching anything in EE for “tags” to figure out how to add tags to a blog post, because—well, hell, YOU try searching for tags on this site and see how many results YOU get. Social media? Bwhahahahahahahaha…..
I’m sitting here frustrated right NOW because I desperately need something wiki-like, to use in lieu of an FAQ, and I guarantee you someone will pop along here and tell me, “but, WHY use the wiki when you can use a blog entry,” or somesuch—which is exactly what I do NOT want; I want something SIMPLE to use like Wikimedia, but attractive…which the EE wiki isn’t. I don’t even know how you’d MAKE it attractive. it doesn’t even qualify as utilitarian, for crying out loud. And if I wanted to code the whole thing myself, I would have already done so—and THAT, to me, is the major stumbling block with EE. Sure, it does everything; as long as you’re prepared to write a custom system from scratch.
The idea that clients “need education” as to the extraordinary benefits of EE is, to me, arrogant. Clients want a product that works; that they can easily use, for which they can EASILY find support, (and replacement support); feel comfortable that it’s widely used and that those who do are happy with it. Clients don’t want something exotic that’s a never-ending headache, or for which every answer is “well, just use the SAEF or the Safecracker module and write a template that does blah-blah-blah;” they just want a CMS to WORK that doesn’t require custom coding every time they want to do something as simple as adding a wiki, or a gallery. OR cost a grand in custom help.
My $.02, FWIW, after 5 years with EE; as a “client” who’s had to write most of her own stuff.
@Hitch - this isn’t really the point or subject of this discussion, but anyway… If you’re more a customer-type you’d be better off with something like Wordpress. Then you can get all the off-the-shelf designs / modules you want. EE’s target market is web designers/developers, not soccer-mums making a DIY website for her part time sewing classes. If you’re still with EE after 5 years then surely you like some parts of it, otherwise theres plenty of alternatives… I’m not sure how you can reasonably expect a CMS to come with a Wiki, the fact that EE actually does should be a bonus for you. And yes, I think doing this with channel entries & comments would be a better way to go, and easier to template. This would take a few hours, if that. You can make it as attractive as you want. Tags? Theres at least 3 powerful modules for tags in EE, one of them free I think. Themes? Would be nice to attract the less-experienced market, but hardly a priority. Once you’ve built one site in EE you can copy & paste all your standard templates anyway.
EE is intended more as a CMS framework, and as such requires a bit of ‘architecture’ due to the number of different ways you can do things. Although on the other hand, the EE templating language is much easier than Wordpress once you get the hang of it - I built lots of Wordpress sites before switching to EE. EE is better for websites with the budget to build the CMS into what the client wants, with a high-quality custom design. If you don’t understand channels, safecracker etc and aren’t willing to make the effort, either sign up to wordpress.com and get a website in 5 minutes, or pay an ExpressionEngine professional to take care of it for you. No point complaining about something you don’t understand, when you are free to use something else.
Haha now I’m the one defending EE
You’re right, theres little help out there for developers, which I hope changes (one of the benefits of open-source), but it just means you learn more in the process of figuring it our yourself. Its not really Ellislab’s responsibility to train 3rd party developers, its ours, as experienced users. But the commercial business model of EE discourages a lot of this kind of participation. Every hour we put in on the forums helping others may feel good, but its directly helping Ellislab as a business, which feels a bit wrong.
Anyway this thread was meant to be a discussion of the pros/cons of open source
@Sprocketeer - valid points but in this market, Ellislab doesn’t seem to have the resources to grow at the pace the industry demands. And being commercial limits the market in the ‘age of free’, and as such less of our potential clients have heard of it or used it before. Wordpress and Drupal are pretty much household names, and that gives confidence to someone who doesn’t necessarily know the difference. They are the ones who decide which web company to go with, the one with the obscure CMS, or the one that millions of others are using, where they can easily change web developers if need be. Nearly every job here over 15k or so, even for private clients, requires an RFP of some sort.
@Erik - yes we realise we can just switch CMSs or use the tool for the job, but the whole point of this was just to discuss the pros/cons of open-source and how it could benefit EE or otherwise. I would much rather use EE for everything, hence its in my best interests to improve it as much as I can. Would love to toss aside RFPs that we can’t/won’t do, but the point is that more and more RFPs these days specifically request open-source. So as years go by, we’re going to have less and less of a market for selling EE, unless things change. I’m just commenting on trends I’ve personally observed in 13 years of web design, it may be different elsewhere of course. Its possible that within a few years, our government will make open-source mandatory for all govt websites.
@Hitch - this isn’t really the point or subject of this discussion, but anyway… If you’re more a customer-type you’d be better off with something like Wordpress. Then you can get all the off-the-shelf designs / modules you want. EE’s target market is web designers/developers, not soccer-mums making a DIY website for her part time sewing classes. If you’re still with EE after 5 years then surely you like some parts of it, otherwise theres plenty of alternatives… I’m not sure how you can reasonably expect a CMS to come with a Wiki, the fact that EE actually does should be a bonus for you. And yes, I think doing this with channel entries & comments would be a better way to go, and easier to template. This would take a few hours, if that. You can make it as attractive as you want. Tags? Theres at least 3 powerful modules for tags in EE, one of them free I think. Themes? Would be nice to attract the less-experienced market, but hardly a priority. Once you’ve built one site in EE you can copy & paste all your standard templates anyway.
EE is intended more as a CMS framework, and as such requires a bit of ‘architecture’ due to the number of different ways you can do things. Although on the other hand, the EE templating language is much easier than Wordpress once you get the hang of it - I built lots of Wordpress sites before switching to EE. EE is better for websites with the budget to build the CMS into what the client wants, with a high-quality custom design. If you don’t understand channels, safecracker etc and aren’t willing to make the effort, either sign up to wordpress.com and get a website in 5 minutes, or pay an ExpressionEngine professional to take care of it for you. No point complaining about something you don’t understand, when you are free to use something else.
Haha now I’m the one defending EE
You’re right, theres little help out there for developers, which I hope changes (one of the benefits of open-source), but it just means you learn more in the process of figuring it our yourself. Its not really Ellislab’s responsibility to train 3rd party developers, its ours, as experienced users. But the commercial business model of EE discourages a lot of this kind of participation. Every hour we put in on the forums helping others may feel good, but its directly helping Ellislab as a business, which feels a bit wrong.
Actually, as I understood it, the topic was “The State of EE,” not whether or not EE should be OS. A poster replied that clients should effectively shut and take what they’re given—(in other words, be a good client, shut up and do what we tell you)—rather than object to the tools being used—even though it’s the client who’s PAYING, and the client who will OWN the end result. Your own comment about “soccer-mums making a DIY website for her part time sewing classes,” is precisely the sort of patronizing, condescending attitude I mentioned earlier. (BTW, I’m not a “soccer mom.” I own and run one of the two largest Indy ebook-production firms in North America). What I AM is busy. I don’t “expect” that EE should come with a wiki (although innumerable OTHER “real” CMS’s have wikimedia hooks)—but you know what? I do think it should come with a bloody usable Gallery, which it doesn’t, and some form of mechanism to use/leverage social networking/media, which it doesn’t. Or category-based dynamic menu generation on the fly. OR a forum module that really works.
From you: “Once you’ve built one site in EE you can copy & paste all your standard templates anyway.” YES, exactly my point: for those of you that do nothing else all day long, it’s just spiffy. Not so much for the actual business owner who has to live with it later on.
So, MY point, which apparently got missed, is that the “state of EE” is that it tries to be both things. On the one hand, it claims to be a CMS, which it clearly isn’t. Just read the “pre-sales” forums for the answers that imply, if not outright state, that it’s essentially equivalent to Joomla, Drupal, WP; and it’s not the same thing at all. On the other hand, when people like me bitch about it, the response is that we’re just too dumb to know how to use it, that it’s not intended for we morons, that it’s “aimed at” EE developers and coders and website designers.
The whole OS thing is about third-party participation. No, it’s not EE’s responsibility to train EE developers/power-users; but I think it’s about time that EE and EL start to ask themselves WHY there is so little third-party participation; WHY so many former EE-website developers have walked away from it (3 that I interviewed, trying to hire help), and why, if it’s really just a developer framework for an elitist cadre of people who can sell their time to OTHER people, they keep selling it as though it is Joomla, WP, etc.
BTW; Yes, there are tag modules. I bought them. Trying to get support? Zero. Trying to figure out how to display the tag cloud? Yeah, right. Gallery modules? Yes, IF you are planning to upload every single picture on your site through the DevDemon module; if you want to FTP a dir of images, to try to display as a gallery, OOOOPS, it doesn’t work.
And, of course, the wiki answer is: write your own, just as I predicted. Great for those of you coders, but for those of us running our own full-time, 16/hour/day businesses, I’d just like something that worked and didn’t look like death warmed over. My site is too complex, and requires too much categorization, to work on WordPress (don’t think I didn’t try when I got fed up with trying to relearn EE every time I’d been away from it for 2 weeks), but the idea of paying yet ANOTHER web-guy/gal to design yet ANOTHER custom site for me just so I can migrate from this makes my head hurt.
EE is a tool for web developers, that have time and get paid to build sites for their clients. Business owners who take their business seriously, will accept that they should stick to what they’re good at - which is running their business - and pay a professional to take care of their website. Not saying your too dumb to use it, I’m just saying your strengths obviously lie in other areas, and its not worth you trying to stress about a CMS
Of course you’re going to get frustrated trying to do everything yourself. If I’m sick I go and pay a doctor, I dont buy a medical text book, pull out the kitchen knives and blame the author for not being clear enough which kidney to remove. If I want to build a house I hire an architect, I don’t go to the hardware store and do it myself, then complain that my nailgun doesn’t work. If you dont’ have much spare cash, pay a small web company or individual. If you have enough cash, hire a reputable web company who have the skills & tools to do it properly. Don’t just ‘hire a web guy’, hire a company that can take responsibility and do the entire thing properly. So when you want a Wiki, let them worry about how to do it. Your business sounds successful, and since its internet-based, a good website should definitely be worth investing in. Your time is obviously too valuable to spend stressing out over the specifics of a CMS. Web design is a professional skill. If you want to build your own house go ahead, but its not the hardware store’s fault if it leaks.
Re tags and galleries, theres ways to do anything, hence why you pay people who do this for a living, that know how to solve these problems. EE modules as a whole, esp. the commercial ones, have excellent support, far better than any wordpress modules I’ve seen. If you had a problem with the DevDemon’s tags module, Brad would personally help you through it (assuming you’re being reasonable and read the docs first). If it doesn’t do what you want, then clearly its an uncommon use-case, so the cost of custom development is justified.
I’ve said this before but the Forecast and greater transparency after KennyGate was a wonderful thing for all of about 2 weeks, until it exposed what we all seemed to know, but seem to ignore anyway.
Pace of development is painfully slow, because EL do not have an army of coders. Forecast page tells you all you need to know if you compare it today from an arbitrary date in the last 3 months. Captcha has been on the boil for what seems like 6 months, same as bug fix sprint…
People buy the software for their own reasons, but if you pay ($300), you expect reinvestment in the form of speedy enhancements. The OS vs non-OS is not really the question here. The question is how can EL grow, put food on the table of their currently employees, but also take on the responsibility of more employees (developers) to do the same? Or, to put it simply, why aren’t you increasing output capacity in the core areas?
Direction is important, and it’s a questions I have asked a few times, but EE needs renovating quickly, not fixed up over two years when suddenly the market is following a new trend. A sense of future direction needs to be incorporated and I’d love to hear the answer of where EL want the product to be in 5 years time.
EE is a tool for web developers, that have time and get paid to build sites for their clients. Business owners who take their business seriously, will accept that they should stick to what they’re good at - which is running their business - and pay a professional to take care of their website. Not saying your too dumb to use it, I’m just saying your strengths obviously lie in other areas, and its not worth you trying to stress about a CMS
Of course you’re going to get frustrated trying to do everything yourself. If I’m sick I go and pay a doctor, I dont buy a medical text book, pull out the kitchen knives and blame the author for not being clear enough which kidney to remove. If I want to build a house I hire an architect, I don’t go to the hardware store and do it myself, then complain that my nailgun doesn’t work. If you dont’ have much spare cash, pay a small web company or individual. If you have enough cash, hire a reputable web company who have the skills & tools to do it properly. Don’t just ‘hire a web guy’, hire a company that can take responsibility and do the entire thing properly. So when you want a Wiki, let them worry about how to do it. Your business sounds successful, and since its internet-based, a good website should definitely be worth investing in. Your time is obviously too valuable to spend stressing out over the specifics of a CMS. Web design is a professional skill. If you want to build your own house go ahead, but its not the hardware store’s fault if it leaks.
Re tags and galleries, theres ways to do anything, hence why you pay people who do this for a living, that know how to solve these problems. EE modules as a whole, esp. the commercial ones, have excellent support, far better than any wordpress modules I’ve seen. If you had a problem with the DevDemon’s tags module, Brad would personally help you through it (assuming you’re being reasonable and read the docs first). If it doesn’t do what you want, then clearly its an uncommon use-case, so the cost of custom development is justified.
Res ipsa loquitur. My point exactly. I can (along with my crews, yes) create hundreds of ebooks every month, all using html, xml, xhtml, css and even javascript, but bygod, I need an “expert” to use EE. Nothing hubristic about that perspective, eh?
Sorry, but I’ll say it again, for anyone else who’s paying attention: if you have a boatload of modules that don’t really “work” without a crapload of intervention from an “expert,” then they don’t count as viable, “CMS-type” modules, like the completely non-existent Gallery. Or the mostly-unusable wiki. A CMS is a system that WORKS, as-is, without life-support. Like WP or Joomla, even the later EZPublish, which has a workable CMS (if you like brain-damage). I bloody hate WP—but at least it mostly functions. I don’t have to get knots in my stomach every time I think about trying to modify something, or add something, to my website. (And, FWIW, I had an EE expert—not “some web guy”—who certainly wasn’t cheap, and I still have PHP errors on my site.) Or get angry when I realize that I need a wiki-like set of pages, and that this means another thousand bucks DOWN THE DRAIN to make something that should be SIMPLE. Or to do something as normal as display hundreds of book covers, that almost every other CMS on the planet will do with the click of a button.
I’ll shut up now, because this is exactly the attitude I spoke about earlier. “Poor little bunny, of COURSE you can’t manage, hire a real expert and let him worry about it.” Yeah. While I’m sitting there working on my XSLT’s for my XML transitions, I’ll hire some OTHER person to work on the website that’s so brain-damaging I have to hire people to work on a BLOODY TEMPLATE. And, yes, I’m complaining about the hardware store, not because it sold me a nailgun but because this was and still IS touted as a CMS—and it ISN’T. It’s a templating toolbox, and that’s it. If EE is happy selling to no one but developers, because that means that they don’t have to dedicate the resources to helping poor dumb bunnies, great—but then they should make it clear that “just” having a knowledge of html and CSS is NOT ENOUGH, because it isn’t, unless all you have to do all day is screw around with this thing.
I’m done with this thread; I’m sorry I ever replied; I knew it was a waste of time to begin with. What seriously irritates me is that you all want the speed of development that comes from large user communities; but large user communities come from EASE OF USE and the ability of large numbers of people to try and use the software, which by your own statements, isn’t really possible with EE. But on the other hand, you all want the exclusivity (and ability to charge for) of the knowledge of the arcane. And, just in case anyone missed what I just said: the ability to charge the “user” for that arcana.
That’s “cognitive dissonance,” which is the ability to hold two completely opposite ideas in your head at the same time. Want a bigger user community? Then make it so through ease of use. Want to be the Knights Templar? Then accept the sluggish pace of development.
I’ve said this before but the Forecast and greater transparency after KennyGate was a wonderful thing for all of about 2 weeks, until it exposed what we all seemed to know, but seem to ignore anyway.
Pace of development is painfully slow, because EL do not have an army of coders. Forecast page tells you all you need to know if you compare it today from an arbitrary date in the last 3 months. Captcha has been on the boil for what seems like 6 months, same as bug fix sprint…
People buy the software for their own reasons, but if you pay ($300), you expect reinvestment in the form of speedy enhancements. The OS vs non-OS is not really the question here. The question is how can EL grow, put food on the table of their currently employees, but also take on the responsibility of more employees (developers) to do the same? Or, to put it simply, why aren’t you increasing output capacity in the core areas?
This is my big problem. We’re also based in New Zealand and have also experienced the same issue as Exp:resso where companies are going for Open Source over commercial, especially the NZ Government projects. However I feel that we can prove (in some cases) that ExpressionEngine is the right option over Drupal or Wordpress, but what I cannot convince them is that ExpressionEngine is improving at the same pace as other CMS’s.
Progress on EE feels painfully slow, I can’t remember the last time I got excited about an EE release except for bug fixes and that’s a pretty sad state of affairs. I want to be excited about major improvements, new features etc, not fixes. The control panel in its current state is an abomination and nothing has been done in over a year? If you show a client the EE1 CP vs EE2 CP in our experience they’ll pick EE1 every time. The File Manager got a bunch of time and development resource thrown at it and then it’s completely outclassed by Assets, that’s just not right.
I really really want EE to succeed, it’s our only development choice and right now I couldn’t think of using anything else, BUT, and that’s a big but, we really need EllisLab to come through on their promises and we really need to see some rapid improvement in EE. I’m not sure what the solution is, maybe they need more staff or maybe some new fresh talent, but what I do know is that we need a solution, and fast.
Just a quick observation: the $300 license figure has been brought up numerous times, but in my experience, there are always additional costs associated with EE installs. For all but the most basic sites (for which we tend to use WordPress, which is quicker to deploy), the Pixel & Tonic add-ons (for one) are indispensable. I wonder if EE could snap up Brandon Kelly?
I find EE third party add-ons to be more robust, in general, than open source add-ons; however, they come with a cost that should be added to the base license fee. These costs can sometimes make the difference to a client. We’ve offered both WP and EE solutions for the same website, where the EE alternative is hundreds of dollars higher (for necessary add-ons and additional development time).
I’m not making a claim one way or the other for open source or commercial. However, I agree with the general consensus that EE will lose the battle in the long run against less expensive and more robust competitors.
You can build complex sites without any third-party addons. EE.com itself has just 1 addon and the rest is native.
I’m not sure anyone is saying a “complex” site is impossible, but most data driven sites would benefit massively from the add ons out there. “Complex” is very subjective. EE can also write their own plugins and field types which you probably would not include in your add on count.
The irony is that EE benefits from the fostering of an add on developer community, and it can/does conflict with a pricing conversation when the best add ons are not free and costs a significant proportion of EE’s own fee.
There is an expectation field types, matrix, playa etc should be standard, like SafeCracker now is because it’s a core competency. Not saying it’s a correct view, but that’s what the view is.
If EE was $50 more and including all those tools, would you still buy it? Course you would. And that’s $50 per EE license going potentially into Pixel & Tonics pocket, rather than what they might make today (for all I know it’s more than $50, but you get the point).
It’s a devs/handy with a LAMP stack versus type of guy friendly tool, versus a need no PHP knowledge tool like WP. The middle ground is hazy - how far do EE want to go towards a set it and forget it tool, and how prohibitive is the add on cost to those who try and make EE that tool?
This is probably preaching to the choir, but when we’re selling clients on using EE there are a number of points we highlight:
1) It IS open source, but it’s commercially supported. We even show them the forum and responses sometimes to show what that means, as well as the $15k VIP support for Wordpress and whatever Magento Enterprise costs these days.
2) It’s security record, possibly made stronger by being under the radar, but one high profile site like Obama.com builds a lot of trust.
3) Its flexibility - we show them Show-ee, then show them the themes section on Themeforest for WP. There’s no comparison. WP is a blogging platform, EE is a CMS, and as WP catches up as a CMS, EE is becoming a foundation for web applications.
We’ve had one legal client grow from a typical B2B site to a full-fledged client management system with online payments, without throwing out the work done on day 1.
4) Once you have some PHP devs on hand who know the system, in theory any CMS can be what you want it to be, but you’re losing the benefits of open source at that point - the community of people who can take on and improve your site over time. You may as well be proprietary at that stage.
Because EE is more flexible, you can go further before you start locking yourself to one supplier.
We consistently pick up clients from failed bespoke-from-the-ground-up projects so this is a big plus for us.
5) We point out that EE was never meant for everyone, I think I saw something that explicitly said they were aiming at $5k+ projects, for which $500 for software (including some key add-ons) is not so much. Notably EE does better as the scale of the project rises:
For us, at about £2k we start questioning whether EE is right for the job (and whether the client is right for us!), but make the point to the client that a relatively small change in requirements might means the cost of switching platforms
Now the above may paint the world through rosEE tinted spectacles but I honestly believe in all these points. However I do have concerns about EE’s growth since the move to EE2.
I have no issue with the model of a small core team eat EllisLab dealing with the core, and then commercial add-ons on top, if that’s what EE is, that’s what it is. Not wishing to pick on one example but maybe someone else should release a forum module? Sure I gripe about some ommissions but if they’re that bad I’ll hire someone to fix them.
My own concern is more about ensuring the influx of new talent to the pool of users and how cutting off the core version may affect that. Just today I saw one example of a lecturer swapping her class from EE to WP because there’s no free version for people to cut their teeth on.
Once I tried EE I was hooked, ditched doing WP and Joomla sites and we’re now even canning Magento for a certain type of job. Getting a credit card out is a REALLY big step for someone with just a casual interest. We’re not the biggest contributor to EE, but over time it adds up, and I’ve probably pointed another half dozen designers this way over the years.
I wouldn’t want EE to go the way of Magento and be giving it away for free for anything but learning / dev purposes, but I do think it’s a concern that needs addressing.
Ellislab would lose their primary income stream, but would also lose most of their overheads
I disagree, look at how long Joomla took to get to 1.6, how OSCommerce stagnated. A successful project needs a guiding team with vision, and that means having the confidence to say what you don’t do as well as what you do.
After “Kennygate” I stirred up the problem of transparency and the features list with Road-EE and my biggest concern was EllisLab’s ability to commit to NOT doing certain things on the feature request list in order to give developers the confidence to spend their own time solving that problem.
So in my view, EllisLab needs to decide what is and isn’t part of the core, make it simpler and robust rather than “cool” for the sake of its designer clients, this allowing others to build on it more readily, then be transparent with the community about where it’s going to stop, and concentrate on encouraging the ecosystem of designers & developers who can help it lend its hand to a wider and wider set of applications.
The fact that Brandon Kelly got 2 speaker sessions on opposite sides of the Atlantic about the failings of the new CP, while the file manager is still a mess tells me that this isn’t happening.
the moderators, although good for guiding people to common RTFM answers, distract from what was once a great community of smart folks solving problems. Now you get “make a feature request” as a answer.
This is symptomatic of the issue. Why make feature requests when they have no intention of completing them? Why not divert the request to a marketplace of developers who can solve the problem?
While we’re discussing the general state of EE, I’d like to give major props to the community and the folks at EllisLab for the overall excellent level of support provided in the forums. I work with both WP and EE, and it’s been my experience that you are almost always guaranteed a response to a question posted in these forums, while your question has a greater chance of going unanswered on WP. This isn’t so much a knock on the WP community as it is a plug for the EE one. I don’t know that this is related to the commercial nature of EE so much as to the passion of the people who build and use it, but I think it’s great.
While we’re discussing the general state of EE, I’d like to give major props to the community and the folks at EllisLab for the overall excellent level of support provided in the forums. I work with both WP and EE, and it’s been my experience that you are almost always guaranteed a response to a question posted in these forums, while your question has a greater chance of going unanswered on WP. This isn’t so much a knock on the WP community as it is a plug for the EE one. I don’t know that this is related to the commercial nature of EE so much as to the passion of the people who build and use it, but I think it’s great.
EllisLabs have paid support people who monitor the forums on regular shifts. WP does not. I’ve also found the support at WP to be lacking and much prefer the commercial model that EllisLabs employs though I think that some of the third party add-ons should be part of the core system, that’s not my decision.
I sometimes wish that it was legal for buy people so that EllisLabs could purchase Brandon kelly and roll all of his add-ons into the core.
