Thread

Hello, I am a long time fan of EE. I have used EE with about 5 or 6 projects to date and I absolutely love it.

Here is the problem. I have a potential new project on the horizon for a magazine style website. This is a dream come true project for me and I know EE was built for this kind of functionality. My client isn’t convinced EE is the right option yet. He is concerned about Performance and Usability.

I need to show him that EE and I are ready for the job. Can anyone suggest some data, links, fact sheets, anything concrete that I can pass on to my client to convince him. I have already sent him a list of EE build websites from the showcase.

Any help would be hot. Thanks!

jdawg2k,

Performance is largely up to you as the developer.  If you are using addons with dozens or even hundreds of queries per page performance is definitely going to suffer.  There’s also an issue of nesting tags, overzealous usage of embeds, etc.  EE gives you the power to do what you want, but with great power comes great responsibility 😉  Also, don’t forget about just good HTML/CSS/Javascript coding.  That definitely adds to page load and the user experience.

Their hosting environment is very important too.  If they don’t have a sysadmin who is used to running completely dynamic websites, there could be problems.  Like everywhere, MySQL and Apache need to be tuned.

I have seen some sites that fall on their face with just a few visitors, and others that can take the traffic like change.gov did. 

Basically, what site X can handle is different from site Y, as the templates are different.  Development with show SQL queries & template debugging on is a must, and doing your best to keep parsing time, memory consumption and sql query number to a reasonable level.

Make sense?

-greg

Hop studios published a list of high traffic EE sites - http://www.hopstudios.com/blog/the_10_largest_expressionengine_sites/ that you could refere to.

There are also the numerous ways of optimising EE which you could mention, not just for better performance but also to cater for high traffic - http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Optimize_EE/ - all plus points!

EE can handle it. They may have to fork out for better hosting with each wave of new traffic but I have a client that gets bunches of traffic and there are no issues there.

http://gearlive.com is also a good example. But BlueDreamer posted the best source. Then the big questions becomes one in which you have to show that you are up to the challenge.

M.

Thanks for the help. This gives me a bit more to go on. I should also point out to my client that EE support is unmatched!

All these points are valid - good EE knowledge, programming skills, excellent hosting, caching, etc.

However, my take on it is that the client shouldn’t be specifying the software (or hosting…), but rather should list out their needs.  If you can deliver on those needs with EE, then your recommendation to them should be what they take if they hire you.  Beware of clients who want to take too much control… you are the expert and they are hiring you to advise them.  If they won’t let you be the expert and trust you… maybe its not such a dream client.  Good luck!!

Really, really great point Chad.

All these points are valid - good EE knowledge, programming skills, excellent hosting, caching, etc.

However, my take on it is that the client shouldn’t be specifying the software (or hosting…), but rather should list out their needs.  If you can deliver on those needs with EE, then your recommendation to them should be what they take if they hire you.  Beware of clients who want to take too much control… you are the expert and they are hiring you to advise them.  If they won’t let you be the expert and trust you… maybe its not such a dream client.  Good luck!!

Thanks for the advice chad, you’re absolutely right. I’m meeting with my client this morning so we’ll see if this deal is a good fit for both of us.