Thread

ok, so have you submitted the feature request yet?

You can’t get a no…. or yes, unless you ask.

I won’t be holding my breath though. 😉

This stuff has been discussed adnauseum for a few years.

Derek wrote (way back)

Though we do understand that there’s clearly a need to take people who are familiar with other publishing systems to the ExpressionEngine “lightbulb moment” more quickly, and feedback such as yours has been very helpful in determining how we can approach that in the future.

I’ll be honest, I went through the tutorials last year and basically, within a couple days grasped the basics of EE. OK sure, on my first site, I hardcoded the links because I didn’t know about path= and other variables, and made other really stupid structural and design mistakes, but I had a working dynamic site (that first site is still up and being updated and used, too) in the end.

That’s after, previously, spending weeks ripping out my hair with Drupal in a test run for a nonprofit website, and being as much of an expert in setting up WordPress as one can get without being a real hardcore programmer. For me, I come at it as a front-end designer, who wanted her sites to look exactly as she designed. Trying to get Drupal to fit into my design nearly drove me to drink (more), and I wouldn’t even attempt that in Wordpress, as others mentioned, Wordpress always looks like Wordpress no matter what. It’s always easier to find a template and tweak it a bit in the CSS and images with WP. Not something I could sell my clients (well, most of them).

Then I came across EE on a review site, because I was actively looking for a CMS that I would be capable and interested in developing, to offer more services to my clients and expand my business base. Investing too much time in a big learning curve wasn’t going to happen (*coughPlonecough*) - either I started to grok it, or I would move on, I didn’t have time to waste as I was expecting to be evaluating several CMS’s before settling.

However, as I said, within less than two days really, I was making basic stuff happen. The success I had early on using EE prompted me to stop looking and start learning EE in earnest.

I think that does tell you one thing, which others have said. EE is a CMS that should be heavily marketed to front end designers looking to become dynamic-site designers. And I can tell you from looking around at my colleagues, there are a lot of them out there.

I also will say that you have a no more enthusiastic ambassador than me. LOL. You could even say I am an EE evangelist. My developer friends are all tired of it, I’m sure. (I have several that develop in Drupal *shudder*).

As to the wiki and forum, I have used nor needed neither…as yet anyway. Most of my clients do not need those. Though I’m sure skinning and all will be useful for those should I ever want to install them.

Lynne, well said. That “lightbulb” moment comes at different times for different developers, of course. Right brain vs. left brain may have something to do with it. I suspect there are many web developers out there who are proficient in design, decent with XHTML and CSS, who want the benefits of a dynamic CMS, but struggle mightily with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and crowd. For some, EE is a bit daunting initially because the “structure” is what you want it to be, but once the light goes on, life improves with a simple…

“I see!!”

Hi Lynne,

Thanks for the kind words and the feedback, its much appreciated.

Figured I’d toss in my 2 cents while I’m awake, bored, and denying myself sleep like I was still in grade school.

I’ve been playing with websites in my free time since high school, i.e. about 8 years ago give/take. My first job/internship was not long after, I dealt primarily with x-browser compatibility (Netscape 4, IE4, on PCs, G4, and some sort of *nix on someone’s laptop). I was pretty much the only one that knew anything about CSS and though I hadn’t touched on related math material I was picking up JavaScript pretty well. In that particular job we always had a different solution for every client, a different CMS, a different templating system, everything was always a learning experience. I didn’t make much of it but I stayed on that path into college, wound up working in my university’s webteam doing similar work except including more graphical stuff where permitted as I desired (in that first job I was on the design team… but never did design work per se).

basically over time I had gotten in touch with all sorts of different materials and it’s no mystery that being involved with the web be it as a developer or designer can get to be very political. Part of the learning curve of just dealing with people transformed the way I marked up, coded, designed. E.g. A document should be well-formed. Not just the XML tech term “well-formed” but like an essay, or better yet a good story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There’s an order to things that should be observed, yes innovation is allowed, welcome, wanted even but when that order is observed every step of the way, not only do the developers, coders, designers, and editors look good, but so does the entity/company behind it (even if this is just an effect of a good designer covering up for the company).

What I loved about EE was finally here is something that promotes order and yet gives you the flexibility and power you need to do whatever it is you want to do, whether it’s a simple 5-page site that a non-tech-savvy person needs to edit or migrating an e-artifact to something “Web 2.0”-ready with excellent site flow. I love that personally for once by default the client is sort of locked into an architecture, yes you can make it dynamic but hierarchy or relations of things are much better managed when we get our say, they listen, and they can’t just go ahead and distort everything because they want a “block” here or a link or video to appear there. Data exists in various shapes and forms and we decide where and how to display it. If there’s something we didn’t account for then let the developer build it and work with the designer on where or how it should appear. Clients hire us for a reason, they trust in our expertise, there’s no reason for them to take such roles and if they want to we’ll help them out with that, too.

So far I’ve only really done 2 EE projects (pretty much by myself), so far the clients for both were able to maintain their sites with little-to-no instruction (though non-verbose documentation was provided). The sites were never broken and if they did want a change they weren’t shy of asking. The current project is much larger and I’m 1 of 2 developers on it, there will be some confusion at first but I’m sure they will love it. There are some days when I have to multitask between good old x-browser compatibility, semantic markup, css (i didn’t do the original layouts, a lot of tweaking was needed, a lot haha), javascript, templating, and php but with EE this is never daunting and I find that I can really go from task to task without getting lost or spending too much time thinking about how it’s all going to come together. I’ve never worked with a system in which both user and builders so-to-speak had such a short learning curve to basically do as they please.

Okay. I think I can sleep now haha.

Lynne, well said. That “lightbulb” moment comes at different times for different developers, of course. Right brain vs. left brain may have something to do with it. I suspect there are many web developers out there who are proficient in design, decent with XHTML and CSS, who want the benefits of a dynamic CMS, but struggle mightily with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and crowd. For some, EE is a bit daunting initially because the “structure” is what you want it to be, but once the light goes on, life improves with a simple…

“I see!!”

You know. Other CMS’ have that light bulb moment, too. I haven’t seen anyone mention that.

Nor have I seen anyone mention that when you get your light bulb moments with EE that light bulb stays on or around. Whereas with other CMS’, well, better hope you’re carrying a spare box of bulbs somewhere unless you don’t mind coding in the dark haha. I can’t count the times I thought I understood something basic in another CMS only to have to unlearn all that as I dug deeper or as the CMS grew in kernel or contributions/hacks. The thing with EE sure they may have built something to be used in a certain way but if you’re using it properly/efficiently regardless of how they intended for us to use it, e.g. “/” instead of “{path=''}” then all the power to you, there’s nothing wrong nor “more” right than the other. It’s working... as desired. Good job.

Personally once I realized ‘the “structure is what you want it to be’ I became eager to pick it up and employ it asap, I vaguely recall the weblog/template terminology being a bit awkward at first but once you get your hands on it you find EE’s language went from alien to vernacular.

The problem with “light bulb” moments with other CMSes I have used, is that you need to be something of a programmer to understand them. As someone only vaguely aware of programming principles, I’m not interested in spending weeks unraveling code and database structure to do something advanced in Drupal, Joomla or WP.

Installing and running, even extending, Wordpress, is easy (it’s what makes WP great) and the OooB features are cool and there are plenty of great awesome free templates, but as soon as you want to muck around in it, you will have to learn something of the DB and coding structure of the thing, and on top of that, installing too many plugins, AND keeping them working together, over the course of upgrading the software, is a nightmare!

Same with Drupal. I may have friends that swear by Drupal, but they’re also actual programmers. More power to them. I can build the same sites they do with Drupal in EE, but quicker and with more awesomeness - and that means my prices are lower, because it takes less of my time and I can work on more projects. For one client (who himself is a front end designer), I actually beat out the price from India of a company doing custom content management (ie programming a site CMS from scratch) and got the big job from him that he was planning on outsourcing to them, thinking they were cheaper.

Then, let’s not talk about the spotty support for WP or Drupal or Joomla…ug. I could never get my questions answered on the WP forums, to the point where I abandoned certain projects. Same with Drupal.

Currently, all my bids/jobs are web, and all of them involve EE! Not to mention some personal projects of mine… But anyway, all the work I’m doing now is eons more valuable than it used to be, because I can offer customized solutions for not-customized prices. It used to be, if you really wanted a powerful custom website driven by a back end, you would easily spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, if you find the right product (like EE), that’s not the case. But even customizing (ie, programming and tweaking code) in Drupal and Joomla takes a lot of time, and hence, money from a developer. Not so much with EE.

Anyway, for me, EE’s revitalized my business and making me money. Without my having to tear out what’s left of my hair (much). So I’m pretty happy with the product all told. (And the community, it rocks!) And I’m totally excited for 2.0, because I know it’s going to offer even more and better solutions to the needs of my clients.

Edit: I sound like an EE commercial I know, but I really do feel that way. Economy schmonomy, I have plenty of work, and it’s largely because I can offer an affordable CMS solution to clients’ problems.

Yeah I hear you loud and clear. The mucking around is very related to support. I don’t think it’s just me who spends a lot of the time figuring out why something isn’t working the way I figured it would or some exceptional behavior. While I disagree about having to dig into the DB to muck around definitely you’d need some sort of programming experience. I recall with Drupal there was a bug that wound up using the default arrangement of blocks for the original theme essentially breaking the site minutes after the client sent out an email blast to 2,500 people linking them to a NY Times article. I figured I would just trace my steps and I’d be alright. When I was wrong I began to panic. I somewhat traced the bug but it was virtually impossible to “fix”, the bug, extremely rare, persisted across all versions (4-6.x) and the existing ticket went from open to closed to minor and more ping-ponging as other victims came about. I don’t see how having a site’s theme being discarded completely spontaneously can be a minor thing.

If there’s a bug with EE you get support, not necessarily because we all paid for it but because there’s a lot of passion here and everything is clean enough so that we can and do figure things out.

Yeah I hear you loud and clear. The mucking around is very related to support. I don’t think it’s just me who spends a lot of the time figuring out why something isn’t working the way I figured it would or some exceptional behavior… If there’s a bug with EE you get support, not necessarily because we all paid for it but because there’s a lot of passion here and everything is clean enough so that we can and do figure things out.

It’s sooooooo beneficial to know your site inside and out and NOT be a programmer, which is very difficult with WP, Joomla, Drupal and friends, but the opposite with an EE site.

I think you hit the nail on the head, Ronnie. If something breaks in EE, I can fix it. If the same happens in Drupal or WP or whatever, it takes hours and hours and peering into the machinery, which I’m not so good at.

Of course, if something breaks in EE, it’s usually my fault.  :roll:

I think you hit the nail on the head, Ronnie. If something breaks in EE, I can fix it. If the same happens in Drupal or WP or whatever, it takes hours and hours and peering into the machinery, which I’m not so good at.

For non-programmers (those like me who have difficulty spelling PHP, but do fine in XHTML and CSS), WP, Joomla, Drupal and friends are a futile effort in multiple personality syndrome. I love being able to find a nice design, upload a file, click a couple of times and the whole site gets changed. That is an absolutely sweet, euphoric, heady feeling—until it’s time to change something, move something, tweak something, and then the feelings go from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. Instantly.

An EE site that I have the pleasure of building from the ground up—not much XHTML these days, plenty of CSS, and just the right amount of EE tags—makes it more complex to build (vs. the button clicking crowd), of course, but much easier to change, tweak, move, repair.

BTW - it’s winter here today, too. I can tell because it may not kiss 80-degrees outside.

😊

I am not going to dignify your winter comment with a reply!    😠

An EE site that I have the pleasure of building from the ground up—not much XHTML these days, plenty of CSS, and just the right amount of EE tags—makes it more complex to build (vs. the button clicking crowd), of course, but much easier to change, tweak, move, repair.

Well, and that’s where doing this as a business comes in! It’s not superfly easy, but it’s not Sisyphus hard either. Just the right amount of “I need to bill you for adding another feature you need” without “this isn’t worth me doing because I’m going to have a mental breakdown and by the way the quote for me doing it is way out of your price range.”

In other words, it’s the perfect you-need-me but-not-TOO-much application for us l’il web developers and designers!

In other words, it’s the perfect you-need-me but-not-TOO-much application for us l’il web developers and designers!

Well said. It’s nice to be needed. But not by the needy.

Speaking of structure, I’ve been dinking around with the 960 Grid CSS Framework, which seems, once understood, to give a leg up on prototyping and a quick way to ‘standardize’ a layout. Any experience in that area?

Speaking of structure, I’ve been dinking around with the 960 Grid CSS Framework, which seems, once understood, to give a leg up on prototyping and a quick way to ‘standardize’ a layout. Any experience in that area?

You might want to check out this screencast.