Thread

Hi to all,
I am considering EE for my project and I have following features on mind. I know EE can support most of these, but I will be happy if any of you (or the EE staff) can comment on my below requirements.

Any other feedback is welcome.

I will post more questions as and when they come to my mind.

Expression Engine Questions :-

- Should be able to handle VERY HIGH TRAFFIC websites. (Lets say 5,00,000 members or more and thousands of people being online at same time)

What are the mechanisms in EE that enable the website to handle high traffic. Is there special care taken to handle the performance issues ?

- Should be SEO friendly

What are features of EE that support SEO ?

- Should be able to create custom forms

How easy it is to create custom forms in EE ? Is it possible to create a form and then store the user entered data in a data base table and / or send the user entered data in the form of mails ?

- Should be able to assign a post to multiple categories.

Something like - associating many tags to a post and then put those tags in the menu items, so that all posts related to that tag word can be obtained by clicking on that menu item (tag)

- Should be a combination of CMS + Blog + Forum

I think EE has all 3. So not many questions here 😊
If possible, comment on EE blog features. How advanced it is (compared to Wordpress - lets say) ?

- Should provide integration with a forum (Preferably Vbulletin / IPB)

I know EE has a good default forum. Is it as advanced as Vbulletin / IPB ? Where can I find the complete set of EE forum features ?

Is there any bridge available to use Vbulletin / IPB as forum along with EE application ?

- Good mailing list component

Admin should be able to specify different mailing lists. The users (when joining) should be able to select which mailing list they want to subscribe (instead of receiving all irrelevant mails to him), and then should be able to change his preferences any time. The ‘mailing’ feature should support sending mails only to the people who subscribed to particular list.

- Should be able to handle spam very well

What are the advanced features to avoid spam memberships / posts ?

- Easy to integrate advertisements

How easy it is to integrate AdSense in EE ? Is it flexible ? Any tutorials / guidance available for that ?

- Video Plugins

Is it possible to link YouTube (or any other) videos in EE posts ?

A quick response…others will probably elaborate if you need…

1) Traffic…There’s all kinds of caching but the biggest thing from other forum posts is server resources. Check (search for) posts by Nevin, he’s the EngineHosting server guru and has posted quite a bit about this in the past.

2) SEO…Since EE is so flexible, you can set up the URLs to be very SEO friendly. Just plan the site well and you should be in the pink.

3) Forms…Solspace has the free FormHelper which works for most. I believe he has other low-cost solutions also.

4) Categories…Unlimited multi-select.

5) Combo…It is. Way more flexible than Wordpress or the other mainly dedicated “blog” platforms. Also has a Wiki. All have a common membership.

6) Integration…Has it’s own Forum module. Doesn’t really integrate with others. Some have used a third-party membership program (aMember?) to tie other scripts to a common membership.

7) Mail list…Has the communicate module. Only you can determine if it’s good enough for your needs.

8) Spam…Does very well, better than most. There’s moderation, captchas, blacklist, etc. Of course nothing beats a human spammer.

9) Advertisments…Very easy, you are in control of designing/implementing your templates and can place anything you want in them.

10) Video…I haven’t gotten into this but yes, you can embed videos. There are some plugins but for some, you can just do it through normal templating.

Hope that helps.

Thank You verymuch PXLated. That helps.

I am looking for comments from more people.

Best Wishes…

PXLated pretty much nailed it. 

#1. It’s going to depend on your servers, but there’s no reason EE can’t handle the load.  Nevin could get into load balanced server configs and such- which is how EngineHosting runs- and of course, it will depend on your use of tags, templates and queries.  But there’s no reason EE can’t handle the load under a proper server setup.

#2. SEO- you’ve a lot of flexibility here- probably don’t want a server that requires forcing query string, and I always remove the index.php - via htaccess.  Use url_titles in my urls, and wise use of no_results and a 404 page to reduce duplicate content concerns.  But in general- clean urls, and plenty of custom fields if you’re concerned about adding meta data.

#3.  Freeform is definitely the way to go for custom forms- and it does save data to the db.

#4. Forum integration- there isn’t much focus on integrating with other forums, since EE has it’s own fully integrated forum.  I’m not up on VBulletin features, but my general impression is EE’s a good match on the basics but lags where it comes to plugins/mods/etc.  But- that’s an opinion based on reading rather than experience.  You can check out the overview here and the forum docs- but the best way to form an opinion is to try it out.  The hosted trial would allow you access to your own forum setup- and give you a chance to work with the full package.  A few things are disallowed in the hosted trial, but it’s a great way to get some experience with all of the first party modules.

I think PXLated nailed the rest.  But if you’ve got specific questions still?  Just let us know.

- Good mailing list component

Admin should be able to specify different mailing lists. The users (when joining) should be able to select which mailing list they want to subscribe (instead of receiving all irrelevant mails to him), and then should be able to change his preferences any time. The ‘mailing’ feature should support sending mails only to the people who subscribed to particular list.

Is this possible ?

For example my current IPB forum does not differentiate the members based on their mailing list preferences (there is no way for members to select a particular mailing list and receive only corresponding mails). So whatever mail I send reaches all members, which is inconvenient for them.

Yes, the mailing list is better than IPB.

No question.

EE’s forum lacks some things IPB does have, unfortunately (I’ve used both).  Someday I may add several of those functions to EE’s forum. 

IPB and EE have been integrated in the past, though.  It is a tough job.  EE’s forum is pretty good, but it’s not nearly as full featured as IPB or vbulletin.  If your community is mostly focused on the forum and you need all the bells and whistles, EE may not be the best. 

If you do a lot of other content, though, outside the forum…. EE wins hands down.  The forum is good enough, and the rest is far more powerful.

Mail list…Has the communicate module. Only you can determine if it’s good enough for your needs.

Yes, EE mailing list is better than IPB.

Can someone please point me to the link or documentation for EE’s mailing list component.

It’s all in the docs, of course.

It’s all in the docs, of course.

Many thanks for the link.
I was actually searching at below modules link and couldn’t find any module that talks about mailing…
http://expressionengine.com/downloads/addons/category/modules/

Is this ‘mailing lists’ part of core code of EE ?

The mailing list is one of the modules that comes with the full version of EE, yes. Here’s a complete list: http://expressionengine.com/docs/index.html#modules_docs

It’s all in the docs, of course.

That means, I (admin) can define different mailing lists and provide the user interface for the users (lets say on my home page) where the users can subscribe to 1 or more mailing lists. Right ?

Here’s a thread about multiple mailing lists and signup you might find helpful.