Thread

Hi guys,

I’m already experienced with EE, but I’ve been looking at Code Igniter and comparing the two for a big social media site that I’m working on.

There are a lot of things that EE doesn’t do that we’ll need such as photo tagging, rating, custom member profiles (where members can customize what they want to show on their profile), tag analysis and more, all of which have modules that kind of do what I want but not exactly. Considering Code Igniter seems to have a lot of the EE engine built into it (or from it), I’m trying to figure out if we should just build a new platform from CI or if there’s a way that they play well together (can it be used for modules or instead of modules?) or what. Is there a comparison out there?

I’m not much of a PHP coder by any means but can hack things together in a pinch.

Any thoughts on this?

(Note that I haven’t played with EE1.6 yet)

Thanks all!

CodeIgniter doesn’t have any actual functionality built into it - you’d need to program everything (the login system, everything) from scratch.  It would be a daunting job, particularly for someone without much experience with PHP.  Hate to ever steer anyone away from CI, but it doesn’t sound like the right tool for you in this instance.

You’d probably be best off modifying EE, and doing any custom PHP work you need done through it.

I love doing things all by myself too. It’s nice to know that I don’t have to compromise.

But…

I have to agree with Derek.

After I have done all the nice and custom things… then I have A LOT boring things to do - and everything is just reinventing the wheel. There is so many things, that you usually don’t even think about: logins, admin interface, members, e-mails, templates, security… list goes on and on. It of course depends on the project: do you even need logins? Can admin be ugly hack? etc.

My 2 cents is that, if it possible to use EE or any other software that *almost* suits your needs, then go with that software. You will save a lot of work. Of course think carefully about software you choose. I think this article has good points for choosing cms system too: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/choosing_ecommerce_package/

If you are experienced and talented coder, then you might think doing all by yourself. But there is always more work than at first look you could think.

I have hundreds of projects, that I have done all by myself - some pure PHP, some CI or other framework - and I never have time to finish them. I get bored after all fun and interesting is done.

Derek: That’s cool and I hear what you’re saying loud and clear. One of the issues I’ve had however, is that EE can be a bit slow. I’m sure I could do a bit of fine tuning on caches etc, but really what I want are AJAXified logins, comments, etc. I know some AJAX principals and how to do it with PHP, but haven’t tried it with EE yet. Flexibility with forms is something I keep getting frustrated with in EE.

Have you guys played with Ruby on Rails yet? That was another avenue we were considering. Then when I saw CI I thought *ooo, very EE-like, so probably easier for me*, but maybe not really.

I’m going to start rooting through the forum here for Web 2.0 and Ajax’d EE sites…

Yup, but AJAX has little to do with RoR, its just an implementation of (mostly) XML server responses.  RoR doesn’t have any of the things you need built already, as just like CI, it is a framework.

I think what you’re looking for is EE with some fancy plugins and extensions.  Take a look at out add-ons library and you’ll see there are some there.  The community has contributed others.

For forms flexibility, take a look at freeform from Solspace which seems to be the most popular suggestion (I’ve used it myself, and like it).

Hey again,
Right, Ajax isn’t RoR, but RoR does some nice and painless Ajax.

Today, for example, I’ve spent three hours just trying to make an Ajax’d EE mailing list signup form but I just don’t get the EE system forms right (FreeForm is good but doesn’t do EE forms like login, mailing list signup, etc as I understand). I’ll post something in the How To in a sec here. That darn User Message Template (the point?) kills me.

I’ve been through the Addons extensively. The image uploading in EE is still clunky compared to other solutions I’m seeing these days (multiple screens loads, even using SolSpace’s GX2). I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m complaining because I love EE and everything it’s given me over the last couple years. I just feel like I want to move onto Web2.0 stuff and wonder if EE can keep up. I expect that as more and more developers get up to speed with these technologies that EE will see more plugins that effect these functions.

I’ll also say that I’m surprised EE1.6 came out with such heavy emphasis on the Multiple Site Manager (which is nice, but was do-able before hand) instead of putting out more robust tools for user-editing, user-moderation and user-contributed materials (which is the direction the web is going these days and the types of unconventional solutions I find myself developing for clients more and more).

Right, Ajax isn’t RoR, but RoR does some nice and painless Ajax.

Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Ruby on Rails server side, while AJAX is Javascript/client-side?

I’ve not played with Ruby, but done plenty Javascript stuff lately with jQuery, mooTools, and a few others.

Ruby includes Prototype and possibly more, so it’s a real cinch to make everything Ajaxy.

Having said all this, I got Prototype running with EE last night to get Ajax’d mailing list signups working… :D

I’ll also say that I’m surprised EE1.6 came out with such heavy emphasis on the Multiple Site Manager (which is nice, but was do-able before hand) instead of putting out more robust tools for user-editing, user-moderation and user-contributed materials (which is the direction the web is going these days and the types of unconventional solutions I find myself developing for clients more and more).

It seems you are a great add-on developer yourself, which is the only missing link if you require customisation of EE, Wondermonkey. Your advantage is the unprecedented support and collaboration you find here on the forum, which would not only speed up your development but also ensures that hacks become solid solutions.

Did the (smooth?) integration of Protoype force a decision?

Did the (smooth?) integration of Protoype force a decision?

Well I have to say I like Prototype. It’s great. Installed EE 1.6 today too. Just plugging in Scriptaculous now…

I think I’m going to start mapping out all the functions that I think EE will have difficulty with and built some test pages to see if I can refine my ideas a bit. We also have another guy building some of the site in Java (backend), so we’ll have a show and tell in a couple weeks and at that point I’ll know more.

Oh, and here I posted about how I did my Ajax mailing list signup. It’s a *ahem* ROUGH post.