Opus Archives: Elsewhere: “ExpressionEngine” Archives
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Two bits of ExpressionEngine news: first, version 1.6.6 was released, which is primarily a security update but also fixes a minor bug that I discovered concerning the quote tag. (See the change log for full details.)
And second, EllisLab CTO Derek Jones has posted an entry explaining the delays with EE 2.0. It’s pretty geeky, delving into some pretty heady PHP issues resulting from EE 2.0’s rebuild on CodeIgniter. I can’t wait to get EE 2.0, but I’m glad to see EllisLab taking their time, posting these updates to keep people in the loop, and continuing to support EE’s 1.x branch.
Smashing Magazine has put together a pretty comprehensive ExpressionEngine developer’s toolbox, with links to tutorials, resources, and recommended add-ons. There’s a lot of stuff here, including plenty that’s new to me.
Subvert Marketing, Inc. has put together a nice tutorial on building a banner ad management system with ExpressionEngine and Google Analytics.
Structure is a third-party module that claims to be a new way to build ExpressionEngine sites
. From the nGen blog:
It forgoes the current template_group/template setup and creates “static” and “listing” pages that are all editable through a tree sitemap view. Now, traditional page style content and multiple entry pages can live within the same area. Designers & developers, your clients & authors will rejoice.
I can’t wait to try this out; I’m working on a couple of sites for which this could very well be a godsend. Man, I love the EE community.
Khoi Vinh discusses some thoughts concerning the impending ExpressionEngine-centric overhaul of his site. FWIW, the approach he outlines—condensing all of the different types of entries into a single “blog”—is very similar to what I’ve done on Opus. I’m a big fan of the approach’s simplicity and elegance, and using EE as the backend makes it very easy to do.
Michael Boyink and Collective Idea will be offering an intensive, four day training session for ExpressionEngine this September in Michigan. Boyink has written a number of incredibly helpful tutorials and resources for EE, including the first EE book, so this should be really good.
Ryan Irelan has just started a series of 20-30 minute screencasts that show you how to build a website using the ExpressionEngine CMS. The first two episodes, which give a preview and cover installing EE, are free. Each subsequent episode will cost you $5. More details on Ryan’s blog, and make sure you follow along in the forums.
Ryan Irelan presents some compelling arguments for making ExpressionEngine your next CMS of choice. However, if EE isn’t your cup of tea, Web Distortion looks at 13 free and open source CMS options, including Drupal, Mambo, and Typo3.
ExpressionEngine 2.0 is due out sometime this summer, and EllisLab have been pretty mum concerning new features and enhancements. But they recently posted a preview of EE 2.0’s new file manager, and it looks promising—file management is one area in which EE could definitely use some improvement. The preview movie shows off relatively small libraries, so I’ll be interested in seeing how the new file manager lets you manage larger ones (Opus has several libraries with hundreds of files apiece).
ExpressionEngine 1.6 was released earlier today, and it contains a boatload of new features.
The biggest feature is the “Multiple Site Manager”, which lets you to run multiple websites—each with their own individual settings, templates, and weblogs—from a single installation of EE (you can watch a video of it in action here).
Another big feature is the new “Pages” module, which allows you to create static-type content (previously, you had to use Mark Huot’s ingenious “Pages” module, now renamed to “Tomes”).
All in all, it looks great. Kudos to Rick Ellis and the rest of the Ellislab team. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some downloading and installing to do.