Thread

EllisLab seems to be operating in a bubble. It’s actually quite disturbing.

Progress is absolutely glacial, bugs linger, the CP UI is still poor *years* after the launch of EE2, a trickle of new features - file manager, RT field - have been really disappointing, and communication with the community is almost non existent. This is the Internet age - software evolves rapidly and communication is multichannel and very immediate - but not it seems with EllisLab.

The overwhelming evidence is that a large number of smart people from the ExpressionEngine community, including many talenteded devs, have had enough, are looking elsewhere and are likely to move on. This is no surprise and it hasn’t happened overnight. EE is completely dependant upon the excellent third-party add-ons which have stepped in to fill the void and much of that great resource can and probably will move on too.

After working with ExpressionEngine as my go-to CMS platform for many years, I get no pleasure whatsoever from concluding that even if something does emerge from EllisLab soon, it will be too little, way too late.

2013 will see things change and it looks like I will struggle to place EE even as my third choice CMS. This is so disappointing: I don’t hop around to the next shiny new CMS - I think longer term and make commitments.

It might be too late now, but people should speak out if they care - the deeper your involvement in ExpressionEngine, the more concerned you should be. Heads need to be pulled out of the sand, standards and expectations raised, voices heard.

EE is completely dependant upon the excellent third-party add-ons which have stepped in to fill the void and much of that great resource can and probably will move on too.

You bring this up like it’s a negative. The vibrant third party developer ecosystem is a direct result of intentional moves we made with 2.x, which we were quite open about. There is an entire industry within the ExpressionEngine ecosystem because of deliberate choices made in EE2’s development and our positioning of the product as a platform. Others are now copying that, including our terminology (no surprise) even products that enjoy 10x our market share or more.

There are two ways to look at this, one is a pessimistic and dour outlook that ExpressionEngine requires add-ons for you to provide dove-tailed solutions to your clients. The other is wow, look at all of these high quality add-ons to help me provide dove-tailed solutions to my clients! There is simply no comparison of the overall quality and reliability of the add-ons that our community builds compared to swimming through those of WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc. In some cases people are flat out choosing ExpressionEngine because of a particular add-on that they find. Personally, I’m proud of that.

ExpressionEngine is not dead, and will continue to be the platform that people want and try to copy and repeat its successes. I’m sorry guru24, because it sounds like we’ve already lost you, and that saddens me. Your voice and everyone else’s is still welcome. If you don’t get a reply to every question at every location, don’t think we didn’t listen, it just means we’re working. Which is what I’m going to get back to now. 😉

Thanks everyone for their feedback and perspective.

Derek - thanks for replying calmly to my rather gloomy post.

I can’t disagree with anything you said. Indeed, the ExpressionEngine ecosystem is mighty with a huge range of great add-ons; this would not have happened if the architecture didn’t allow for it. Something to be proud of for sure.

I guess my point (badly put) about add-on dependency was that while this is a huge strength of the platform, it has almost engulfed it and crucially the core product may have suffered as a result. Also, EllisLab only seems to benefit from the ecosystem indirectly: we choose ExpressionEngine because of the add-ons, but probably would not if they didn’t exist - is this sustainable? The balance of power has shifted.

As for the slow progress, I just don’t know… team too small? And the radio silence - what’s worse: people complaining that nothing is happening (serious damage), or people pushing to get their hands on work that is still in progress (just needs some careful expectation management)?

I won’t be slamming the door shut on ExpressionEngine just yet - because of existing projects and those exceptional add-ons - but it is disappointing that I find myself looking elsewhere for a core CMS platform which is modern, evolving and can deliver more without so much help from 3rd party software. ExpressionEngine was supposed to be that platform.