Thread

Yowziee… There might be something to this…

I’ve been saying this for years. This is a part of our industry that is exploding. Think of the pre-built theme business as the difference between DOS and Mac OS a few decades ago. EE is DOS. WP is Mac OS. Or, think of it as EE the command line interface vs. WP the GU interface. Eventually, kicking and screaming, and with fits and stutter starts, CLI became GUI.

I’ve been using EE since the beginning and love it to death. It’s great. It’s flexible. It’s solid. It’s secure. It’s dependable. Support is superb. None better. But money talks. The last half of 2009 (and continuing into 2010), we brought in more revenue for managing and developing WP sites than EE sites.

In this regard, the current EE 2.0 Control Panel actually works against selling it as “professional-level” content-management software. WordPress’s Control Panel is much more professional-looking, and unfortunately, surface-level perceptions do count for something.

The 1.x Control Panel was/is a godawful mess, but it didn’t give off the jaunty, bloggy vibe this new Control Panel does. Not just color scheme—the design elements and layout do not make the software seem like a professional’s “power tool”.

I continue to urge EllisLab to give the 2.0 Control Panel a thorough workover with the aid of user-interface designers, a la the Drupal UX Project. I’d make it a crash project. This kind of feature upgrade would be worth paying more money for when EE 2.2 is released, but if it were me I’d roll it into all versions for free.

I agree with you Brendon on EE2 Control Panel. I, too, think it is actually a HUGE step backwards from 1.6. In fact, I think the absolute HIGHEST PRIORITY for Ellislab is to FIX EE2 CP Theme. Like you said… you can’t judge a book by its cover… but PEOPLE DO ALL THE TIME!!!

I actually like the CP for 1.6 but I can’t stand the new CP for 2.0. The ‘Corporate’ theme is terrible too! I think Ellislab should call up Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain today and have him ASAP a new professional CP theme that will become the default CP theme for EE 2. That way the ‘cover’ of the book will match its contents.

Here, for example, are 14,700 reasons to choose EE over WordPress. The cheapest VIP support package for WordPress costs $15,000 per year. Oh, and to be clear, that’s $15k per seat. If you compare the level of support they offer to what you get on these forums for the cost of a EE license, EE is an absolute steal. So, for example, if you value Support, suddenly WordPress isn’t even remotely free. Its very, very expensive.

Of course, to be fair, there is an extensive WP community that offers 3rd party support, both free and paid. But so does the EE Community. But the barrier between a user and the people who make WP is $15,000. The barrier between EE and the people who make it is $300, at most. A similar argument can be made for any open source package.

Thanks for pointing this out, Leslie. The comparison is worth revisiting anytime I get frustrated here because response time or communication may not be what I expect. The support here is great, especially considering the relative price.

It is intriguing that the WP community is en route to making room for commercial addons as ‘first class citizens’ with free stuff. I see this as a sign of success but also as an indication of major trouble ahead for WP. Though I can’t think of a logical reason, four decades of software development seems to show that whenever a vendor/product/platform evolves away from its ‘message’ (its original ‘coolness’), big-time trouble ensues. Always and whenever.

As WP is chosen increasingly for robust, CMS-like systems (and, no doubt, this is happening in 2010), it will, inter alia, evolve to become more like EE. It simply has to, because there are only so many ways that medium and large systems can be CMSed.

I say ‘will’ evolve but that is the question to be answered. Will it? Can it? Should it?

I suspect WP is going to hit a major ‘wall’ of user frustration and community confusion sometime towards the end of 2010 over the pertinent question, “who are we?” I predict one or two serious attempts to fork WP in 2011. Whether this will be good or bad remains to be seen.

It would be silly to argue that EE hasn’t had a major failure with the timing of 2.0.

Short of wearing hairshirts, EllisLab knows this very well- it’s painfully obvious and they are smart businesspeople. If 2.0 had come out in 2008 or even 2009 before 1.6.X matured (wonderfully, I may add) and addons like Structure, Playa and others attached themselves to the ‘wrong’ platform (again 1.6.X instead of 2.X), the playing field would look very different. It’s a very big bummer. And it’s still beta as March, 2010 rolls in. Wow

Still, my gut feeling is that 2.X has come out barely in time, biz, buzz and community-wise. EE/CI, with all its flaws, is a true software application platform. I know of no other truly equivalent CMS platform. How can this not be awesome downstream?

In any case, we are still far nearer the beginning of the Web as a serious application platform than even its mid-phase. Let a thousand WP & EE flowers bloom. I hope WP pushes the heck out of EE developers, in fact, something that has not happened until now.

But I do think it’s baked into the cake already that the market for EE sites/applications should grow by 2X or more over the next few years, even if EE 2.X is merely ‘okay’. What’s not to like?

And as EE 2.X solidifies and slicks itself up by early 2011, we will be watching the angst over at WordpressMUBuddypress.orgcom with some amazement. I won’t be happy about that. This isn’t a zero-sum world and WP has done an amazing job over these years.

So has - and so is - EE still doing too.

Disclaimer: To those who have made strong points about theming: I’m not ripping on you in this, nor being some sort of EE fanboy. I personally feel EE cannot sustain WP-type theming, but gramps and others know EE far better than I do and I’d love to be proved wrong.

I am attempting to learn more about express engine and I found this post somewhat odd. I have a WordPress website and I would have never thought about using EE. I think those familiar with WP would consider WPMU. Just a thought.

It depends on what you’re after. WP and WPMU are quite capable, but usually require extensive knowledge of PHP if you need to customize the site’s layout and design. And there are restrictions for user groups, fields, channels, etc., and WP doesn’t match EE’s template flexibility.

Different strokes for different folks.

Everyone has their own needs I guess. To someone who simply wants a blog to update people about his/her life, EE is overkill.

I think alocalseo post was simply spam. His signature really gives him away. His comments don’t make sense and WPMU is very different from EE. WPMU is written specifically for those interested in starting a hosted blog network. I don’t see how that has any relevance to the thread.

The spam reply has been removed if you are all wondering why the last few replies make no sense. Carry on 😊

Bjorn, as someone that ventured into this market almost 18 months ago I have to say I feel your pain. One of the things you have working against you is that WooThemes has been absolutely awesome at pushing the boundaries of what can be done with WP. I have an officemate that works with WordPress and is continually pushing the boundaries of the themes he creates. The addition of a framework that is as robust as what WooThemes sells is also working against you. And I dare say that with the addition of the WooNav into the core of 3.0 that WP takes on a whole nother life. I have actually thought about heading in a different direction in regards to themeing as I could have made more creating 1 more custom site than I did all of last year on template sales. Granted my designs are not by Tier 1 level designers but that can only get you so far.

If you are going to make it work then the designs for EE might have to be different and push the boundaries of what EE is doing. I downloaded Bueno in EE and in WP when you all launched and there was not really enough difference between the two to give me a feel for why someone would pay the extra 300+ for an EE based site using one of your themes.

I do welcome the Woo Clan into the EE Template-ing world because I recognize that they bring a huge following. I also think that until there are a few players in the EE theming business that people in general will not see ExpressionEngine as a platform they can easily get into that will grow with them.

Anyway, I would love to chat with you about all of this offline and share any information I can. I think I am a really small player compared to WooThemes but perhaps we can push this to a different level?

M.

If you are going to make it work then the designs for EE might have to be different and push the boundaries of what EE is doing. I downloaded Bueno in EE and in WP when you all launched and there was not really enough difference between the two to give me a feel for why someone would pay the extra 300+ for an EE based site using one of your themes.

That’s the crux of the whole issue.

An EE theme that merely replicates what WP does for free (or $89 plus free) makes it a challenge for a site developer/webmaster/EE newbie to justify the cost of EE’s ticket.

Still, EE would be better served with a default, de facto standard configuration so that theme designs can be developed and installed easier—a basic framework upon which to build a more capable site.

For many site developers it may be that there’s not much difference between EE and WP. Except the complexity and the price tag.

Thanks for all the information!

You’re welcome.

[mod edit:  removing spam links in quoted text]

Spam

You’re welcome.

Grrramps!!!

Certainly your spam detection radar is stronger than that?!

Certainly your spam detection radar is stronger than that?!

What? That was spam? How’d that slip through? It looked so legitimate.

Not.

Well, as a very experienced WP user (I turn them into CMS’s), I moved to EE because WP could not do what I wanted. I got here though after trying Drupal and Joomla. Frankly, Drupal was just too unorganized. The same with Joomla. A friend (a professional designer) recommended EE and I went on his recommendation and I am glad I did.

I’m converting a site I built as a home-grown CMS when I was just learning how to build web-sites. Taught myself some php—basically a garage hacker but good enough to make a few bucks on the side. If WP could have handled what I wanted I would have used it. But I don’t want to end up constructing scores of custom fields that would break on a new major update. WP is a very good product, but it only goes so far.

What I appreciate about EE is that the entire internal structure seems so coherent, although it is taking a little time to grasp it all. I wish the documentation was a bit clearer (it presumes too much from the newbie I think), but my questions get answered on the forum fast enough which I really appreciate. It sure is a different way of thinking though—content flowing through templates and all that.

I bought EE and what it offers—a superb product as far as I can tell, gracious and timely help on the forums, and the promise of future stability—strikes me as a very fair deal.

Don’t underestimate the difficulty of grasping how EE functions to the experienced WP user however. It really is a different approach.

Don’t underestimate the difficulty of grasping how EE functions to the experienced WP user however. It really is a different approach.

Are you able to give a bit more detail about how ‘different’ that might offer some fresh insight, given your unusual situation as someone expert in WP and familiar with EE? I could guess, but you are putting particular emphasis on this at the end of your post, so it seems important.