“You’ve taken your first step into a larger world”
– Obi-Wan Kenobi
I’ve personally been able to create sites with dynamic content that I would have never attempted with WordPress. And I don’t have to know PHP. EE’s templating layer is very robust.
So, EE manages the backend admin, the database management, the security, and the main engine that allows for all sorts of wonderful things like:
* Member administration and permissions
* Site administrator roles and permissions
* Multiple “containers” of information (like blogs, listings, events, etc) than can all be set up to relate to each other, be accessible to certain admins, be viewable by certain members, be given RSS feeds, be archived, etc etc.
All of which I can setup in a admin area that’s easy on the eyes. I access all the features via a templating language that’s powerful, straightforward, and documented fairly well.
PS- forgive the Starwars reference up top.
I’ve been seeing EE everywhere. I’m finding that I really need to pick up some content management capabilities. Is this the kind of thing that someone that’s more of a print designer with moderate web skilz can pick up pretty easily? I’m not much of a programmer.
Ooh! Joshua, look for an email about this. I’ve got something right up your alley.
Yes, away with WordPress! The community has been stagnant for far too long, and its functionality keeps getting more obfuscated, not to mention the knowledgebase. The current version of my website will probably the last one I use WP for. Hopefully.
Why not check ut something like joomla first. It has worked really well for our church. cityreformed.org
I love, love, love Expression Engine. Ironically, I still do use WordPress for my blog (and EE for everything else). I just do it because most of the blogs I read are WP and the WP Dash has a number of “inter-blogging tools” I like. Still EE is great!
The beauty of EE, I have found, is in the template layer. It’s a very straightforward way of accessing and managing everything that’s happening on the back end. This, as I see it, is the difference between traditional PHP CMS’s like WordPress or Joomla or Drupal. ZERO PHP.
It’s hard to explain what a templating engine looks like in actual code until you see it. If you’ve ever used something like smarty then you’ll pick it up very fast. Catch a glimpse of it here.
I’m still partial to doing it myself … I hate having to “break” something to get it to work for the many needs of most clients. But then again, I can program that.
EE is the way to go. I have used and tried about every resource available and EE is by far the easiest most customizable solution for most project needs.
I haven’t messed w/ EE, but I can’t say enough good things about RadiantCMS… well worth looking into…
RadiantCMS (the stuff Dwayne has shown me) is friggin’ amazing but you have to know how to set up and use Ruby On Rails which is just plain difficult.
Well, I am not a programmer nor am I very versed in the cms war – but I love EE. I’ve tried just about everything and I pretty much always come back to it because it’s so smart. Good luck!
Just gotta ring in and give EE props as well. My company has switched over to using it for most of our CMSes and I love it. All the available modules and 3rd party add-ons are great.
I’ve been using EE and the msm and forums module quite a bit for the past year. I’m finding that it’s easier to bang out small sites in WordPress, but something that’s rich in content types is better suited for EE. I really haven’t found a problem that EE couldn’t solve, and I’m looking forward to whatever 2.0 will bring, hopefully (for the love of all that is right and good) better file upload management and copy editing. No image thumbnails, are you serious?
About The Author
I'm a graphic designer and sometimes writer living in Anderson, South Carolina. I serve as the Design Director for NewSpring Church. I love Jesus, my wife, Levi's Jeans, good Tex-Mex, and 8oz glass bottle Coca-Cola Classic. On good days I love them roughly in that order. Email me.
An Introduction to ExpressionEngine
Mon 01/28/08
Sean Sperte talks about ExpressionEngine in an introductory sort of way. EE is one of the content management systems I’m considering for the new NewSpring Church website and for an overhaul of this site. Bye, WordPress!