I’m thinking about finding and hiring an EE developer for a project I have, but I just want to make sure that EE is the best choice for it. However, I’m told by some people that Drupal might be the best choice. But, I’ve had two EE (blogging type) sites created for me before, and I was pretty happy with them.
This project is for a new online community magazine, which will have many authors. The articles will require an online review process by editors before approved and published. While “just” a community (a city) magazine, I have high goals for it the design needs to be par with other very sophisticated online magazines; it cannot look like only a community blogging site.
Initially, I will not add major features other articles, such as events listings, classifieds, groups and social features, but they are a possibility. And that is perhaps why some have steered me to Drupal (I’ve already ruled out Joomla and Wordpress). But from my previous experience, it seems like EE might be just as good as Drupal for this; I just don’t know much about Drupal to know. I can say that I like the community here much better. And, contrary to the preferences of many people, I PREFER to pay for commercial software on an important project; I feel much more comfortable in terms of support.
Anyway, I’d appreciate any comments. Thank you.
I know where you’re at in this process having been there a year ago. I migrated http://www.americanaroots.com which is a music magazine/community over to EE last year. After running on Joomla for close to 4 years, I decided it was time move to something more professional. Let me give you some of my feedback in running a multi-author platform.
EE is a blank slate. You won’t find templates, not a ton of addons to extend functionality like you would say with Drupal/Joomla. You literally have to build everything from the ground up. This is problematic but gives you a great chance to really start to understand EE.
Template Engine
As anyone will state, the templating engine is amazing and the performance has been top notch.
Data/User Migration
I had a huge issue with migrating data from Joomla to EE so if you’re going to be migrating look out.. it’s a freaking mess 😉
Day To Day Workflow
EE has some great functionality built in to control your “document workflow”. I have only touched the surface of this but we have reviews that submit reviews. These reviews go to a “ready for review” status which only our editor can promote to production. This is a great way to manage content.
Social Aspect
There really is no built in functionality for user communities other than the optional forum. One area really lacking is the lack of standard user profiles, messaging and relating content. There are a handful of addons from places like SolSpace.com which fill in the gap but that can be costly.
Relating Things
Another issue which was very important to me is building relationships between articles. This has been a real challenge with EE. I don’t quite understand the way they document how to relate one entry to another. Everything seems quite manual as you have to build a relationship between each piece of data. For my own needs, I have review music. I key in a Artist Name as a custom weblog field. An artists may have multiple reviews, so I want a way to relate those entries based on this custom weblog data. I haven’t yet conquered that mountain yet.
I hope that is a helpful to some degree. EE will get you a rock solid base to build your organzation. One thing to keep in mind is that you mention needed a developer. EE developers for the most part charge a premium, because they can. That is a drawback in my book as Drupal has a much larger audience and therefor a much bigger developer pond to pick from.