Thread

In addition to many EE sites, through the years I’ve set up and managed a number of sites using WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, TextPattern, et al. For those comparing today’s blogging and CMS tools, the similarities are many (PHP, MySQL) and the differences substantial.

When making a choice as to which CMS will do the job, a number of issues have to be considered. For me, for commercial projects (I get paid by a client to develop and manage a site), the Open Source apps vs. EE commercial is one of the least important. Clients who cannot afford EE are not clients I prefer to maintain. Development costs and ongoing maintenance costs are a part of the typical ‘total cost of ownership’ equation. EE’s licensing cost has little, if any, impact on TCO for most commercial sites which require a CMS.

From my perspective and experience, other important areas where EE shines include dependability, scalability, security, performance, and flexibility. When comparing EE to WP, Joomla, Drupal, and friends, there are many variables on the list. EE’s security record is enviable. The same can be said for dependability. Performance and scalability are often hardware configuration issues, but EE builds in a number of robust capabilities (caching, for example) which make improving performance, and expanding a site’s complexity, via software an easy treat.

Then there’s the area of “flexibility.”  Each site developer will have a different criteria for building a site, and the Open Source solutions probably have a few features that make everyone’s list.

This is an opinion from both a user and developer, so take it with a grain of salt. I’m particularly impressed with the advancement of WordPress’ admin control panel, now v2.7. If a site’s requirements are modest, and the user can live with canned themes/templates, WP is attractive, with plenty of little bells and whistles. Interestingly, though WP aims to pursue a mini-CMS course, the feature to place a static page as the home page (without screwing up the category tabs) is an effort in frustration.

Joomla 1.5.x is similar. There’s a robust template community, a decent, well-organized admin control panel, and a bunch of variations for modules in layout which extend well beyond WP’s capability. Again, if a user can live with canned themes/templates, and the bells and whistles that do work (track record isn’t so good with some of the Open Source CMS efforts) available, Joomla is a good solution.

Drupal is perhaps a bit more like EE. It’s not quote so easy to set up and maintain as WP or Joomla, and the security track record is embarrassing. But Drupal has emerged as a capable, expandable, CMS with a large following. All three are easy to set up a site initially, yet much more complex when a site must be customized.

Personal preferences and experience aside, a few extreme differences between EE vs. WP, Joomla, Drupal, and crowd come to mind.

Once a site design and layout requirement goes beyond the basic template/themes which are available—toward a customized effort—the development effort and difficulty curve goes up significantly for WP, Joomla, Drupal, et al. For the non-PHP programmer, creating a custom site in WP is painful, in Joomla it’s a nightmare.

On the other hand, capable, customized sites can be constructed quickly in EE without even the need to know how to spell PHP. The learning curve in the beginning is steeper than WP, Joomla (clean white board vs. structure), but much more gentle when full site customization is required. For a site developer, working knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and basic EE tags are the only real requirements, which may be why EE is the darling of creative designers who are not also coders. That’s the beauty of EE’s tags and templates system. All the rest of the EE bells and whistles are icing on the cake. For those developers who want to “roll their own” bells and whistles, EE gives them plenty of room with template configurations, plugins, extensions, and modules.

While I have few issues with EE’s current admin control panel, perception is reality, and the perception among many site developers who look at EE from a user perspective is that the controls are clumsy, creaky, and anything but Web 2.0 (whatever that is). EE 2.0 should address that concern, of course. EE’s whole approach to site design and layout, via template groups and templates and categories and ‘weblogs’ (channels) makes it somewhat problematic to create a simple architecture for a cottage template/theme community, which, in my opinion, would be very helpful to EE’s growth as a platform. So, I’m looking forward to the ‘built in’ theme site in EE as perhaps a ‘standard’ implementation for a site which can be used by developers to create ‘click and install’ templates/themes which can then be tweaked and customized via CSS.

This rant brought to you by a little Eye Candy Envy™ while walking through WordPress 2.7’s new admin control panel; said envy dissipated rapidly when WP 2.7 promptly broke a bunch of existing themes (requiring a visit to a local pharmacy, a nap, and a cold, bottled beverage).

Ronnie,

Interesting read. I must confess that I’m quite happy with the situation as it is. It has taken me quite a while to understand the whole CP and I’m still hopelessly searching around every now and then for some admin settings. But as long as the users have their SAEF and restricted access to the CP, they won’t notice and I’m the only one getting frustrated.

At the same time I’m having a hard time convincing colleagues that they should invest their time in EE. So far the success factor for those is zero. Most of the time they just don’t (quickly) understand the way it works.

I have less difficulty to sell EE to end users, because for them I can offer simplicity through a clear setup and simple SAEF forms.

Regarding a template community, from my point of view, I don’t think it is difficult to make a template for EE. I think most designers here however get paid making websites while for Wordpress there is a big global community of free timers developing software and content. So in the end don’t you think it has more to do with the size of the community and the character of their activities?

I have less difficulty to sell EE to end users, because for them I can offer simplicity through a clear setup and simple SAEF forms.

That’s been my success as well. Keep it simple and focused.

Regarding a template community, from my point of view, I don’t think it is difficult to make a template for EE.

And that’s probably quite true, though the templates available (no offense intended) have trouble competing with some of the good ones available on WP, Joomla, et al.

I think most designers here however get paid making websites while for Wordpress there is a big global community of free timers developing software and content. So in the end don’t you think it has more to do with the size of the community and the character of their activities?

And, true, too. I’m neither a designer nor a coder so I tend to want to start with a design and build behind it. But I find plenty of potential customers who would (and sometimes do) go for a pre-design which can be customized (especially on the back end, which is where I spend my time).

Of course, the EE community is what it is and is largely shaped by what EE has been and is—so far. Any worthwhile developer community needs to grow and improve, which is why I would like to see a cottage industry of pre-built templates/themes grow and thrive. So far, it hasn’t. That EE has a number of sites which specialize in training and instruction for EE (compare similar offerings for WP, Joomla, DP, despite their far larger market presence) says something about the complexity of the product for many newbies.

But I find plenty of potential customers who would (and sometimes do) go for a pre-design which can be customized (especially on the back end, which is where I spend my time).

Not a direct answer, but for the last two low budget project I did use a Wordpress template from http://www.freecsstemplates.org/. This is however only usable for the front end. I understand that, in order to get a bigger community, a growing set of EE specific templates would be nice. I started with such a template for my first site, because I did not really understand EE yet.

For the Control Panel it is more complicated, because the template needs to get updated from time to time. I did use a backend template on one site, but removed it because it just didn’t work well after some time.

Maybe the credit crunch will give some people time to start eetemplates.com or something similar?

lol… OK I’ll bite. The economy has not hurt our business but we are still pressing forward with our desire to create templates for EE like those found for Wordpress or Joomla. Our first template will be Hands Raised which is a Church website template. Lots of good stuff in there for any site even though it will be sold with a church slant. And just like with the other template houses the template will be sold with the source png so you can change it to fit whatever client you may have so long as the structure of the site fits.

Of course we all know that there are some big differences in templating WP, Joomla or EE. I have experience in all three and I will say that I find EE the easiest to build sites in as I can make the code do what I want.

Joomla is a bit more difficult in that if you make a change to the code (CSS) then that change may effect something on other pages since Joomla really uses a single index file for rendering the template (and not in the same way that EE uses a single index file).

And with WP… well… let’s just way it is the simplest but also most difficult in that the structure and all makes sense and knowing what to put in each file. But to make it do anything more than just look like a blog is beyond me. I know there are some that have done it through the use of categories and conditional logic but man… what a way to build a CMS…

EE’s biggest challenge has been figuring out a way to install the templates short of a good pdf. We could provide a .sql file but that would make it usable only on sites that were brand new. And even in version 2 I do not think this is going to change because while the capability to install templates and template groups is available the idea of creating custom fields, weblogs and categories without harming a client’s information is just something that has been a bit of a ... well… a hiccup… But what we may do is create good files with good documentation and release the templates that way until 2.0 is out and we can see what we are playing with.

When making a choice as to which CMS will do the job, a number of issues have to be considered. For me, for commercial projects (I get paid by a client to develop and manage a site), the Open Source apps vs. EE commercial is one of the least important. Clients who cannot afford EE are not clients I prefer to maintain. Development costs and ongoing maintenance costs are a part of the typical ‘total cost of ownership’ equation. EE’s licensing cost has little, if any, impact on TCO for most commercial sites which require a CMS.

I think it is important to add that with all the extra time it takes to implement a Joomla or Drupal site and create a usable website, you realy could consider EE less expensive in the end. The number one thing to remember about free software is it usually doesn’t end up free with all the extra time you put into it…...

....except for maybe Wordpress if that fits your needs. Quite a polished package and like you said, an elegant and well organized admin that IMO is the best in the industry. The Wordpress admin was designed by a renowned design agency that ironically is an EE user. But Wordpress is not a full-featured CMS.

Joomla’s admin is terrible. I don’t think I have ever been so confused by a web application. I can’t imagine unleashing that nightmare on a client.

I think though that you didn’t mention the most important part about EE, which is the reason I’m starting to invest time in it, and that is that it is the only community oriented CMS product that has a forum with at least an acceptable level of usability and features.

The Wordpress admin was designed by a renowned design agency that ironically is an EE user.

Who might this agency be?

....except for maybe Wordpress if that fits your needs. Quite a polished package and like you said, an elegant and well organized admin that IMO is the best in the industry. The Wordpress admin was designed by a renowned design agency that ironically is an EE user. But Wordpress is not a full-featured CMS.

And to make it better requires so many hacks and add-ons that it becomes unstable, unwieldy, and a paint to upgrade—exactly the opposite of the EE experience.

Joomla’s admin is terrible. I don’t think I have ever been so confused by a web application. I can’t imagine unleashing that nightmare on a client.

I agree, though 1.5 is somewhat simplified, though not as elegant as WP.

I think though that you didn’t mention the most important part about EE, which is the reason I’m starting to invest time in it, and that is that it is the only community oriented CMS product that has a forum with at least an acceptable level of usability and features.

You’re right. I did not mention that and I should have—it’s a major difference between EE and other open source apps. EE’s support folks usually respond quickly with a solution, and when one isn’t immediate, they keep on it.

I second the praise for WordPress 2.7’s control panel. It’s really elegant. I wish ExpressionEngine’s control panel could be this good.

It’s been so long since ExpressionEngine 2.0 was announced, so I’ve forgotten—is the Control Panel in EE 2.0 supposed to be themeable/skinnable, or—better yet—will it be designable as an EE template like any other EE-generated output?

The Wordpress admin was designed by a renowned design agency that ironically is an EE user.

Who might this agency be?

http://www.happycog.com/

Fascinating discussion this - and one that I’m forever contemplating.

The thing that bothers me about EE and why I’ve held off for so long on my personal project - and why I keep see-sawing towards other solutions but never picking one - is the relative inflexibility of the user control panels and forum system especially with respect to theme-ing. If there’s one thing I want from 2.0 it’s a more streamlined means of reskinning these components, because EE still has a compelling feature-set, community, and front-end.

You can spot an EE forum a mile off because they’re never very well reskinned or integrated into the site’s design - apart from EE’s own site. That said, the latest 2.0 preview offers a glimmer of hope about this. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet - as 2.0 is still a long ways off.

Just did a skin for a client. Their site is NSFW so I put up a sample here (note that because it is a sample not all of the links work). This was a fairly straight forward way of reskinning the EE Forums. Really the site is totally configurable to whatever look you want. And if you run it in a template within EE then you have access to to all of the embeds and everything else that weblogs offer.

You can spot an EE forum a mile off because they’re never very well reskinned or integrated into the site’s design - apart from EE’s own site.

As is the case with vBulleting, phpBB, and other popular forums. It takes effort to create a ‘skin’ that goes beyond the standard look.

That said, the latest 2.0 preview offers a glimmer of hope about this. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet - as 2.0 is still a long ways off.

It’s my understanding that EE 2.0 will come with a basic “site” installation that goes far beyond the current templates available. Perhaps that setup can be the basis for a “skin community” to create template themes.

WordPress and just got hacked

Out of curiosity, what version were you running?

Just did a skin for a client. Their site is NSFW so I put up a sample here (note that because it is a sample not all of the links work). This was a fairly straight forward way of reskinning the EE Forums. Really the site is totally configurable to whatever look you want. And if you run it in a template within EE then you have access to to all of the embeds and everything else that weblogs offer.

If your example is anything to go by there’s definitely mileage to be had with the approach you’ve suggested. I’ll look into it - thanks.