Expression Engine Mini Review
In Scripts & Resources, Expression Engine, Web Development
I was first attracted to Expression Engine because it appeared to offer a solid ‘all in one’ package. Seamlessly integrating multiple pieces of software to bring a site together can be at best a laborious task and at worst impossible. Even once it’s done you then have the hassle of one login for every section of the site, whether it’s the gallery, the news section or the downloads area. The idea that I could configure every aspect of my site through the same templating system and then make updates through the same login made EE an appealing purchase.
Now that the site is up and running I’m pleased to say that in that respect EE has lived up to its promises. In fact since I started work on the site pMachine have released EE 1.5 which includes a basic eCommerce module, so the software is gradually getting closer and closer to being the first and last thing you need to install on your server when starting work on a new site.
The templating system lives up to its end of the bargain too: It’s powerful and intuitive once you get used to it. Even as a total beginner I found that as long as a Firefox tab was pointed at eedocs.pmachine.com I couldn’t go far wrong.
Once all of my ‘weblogs’ (a slightly misleading title, since an EE weblog can be dynamic content in just about any form) and templates were complete it was time to add the content. In this area EE does excel. Each weblog can be assigned it’s own categories and its own set of fields. Which means that a different selection of fields can be displayed, depending on the blog being posted to. For anyone who has plans to ‘hand over the keys’ so to speak and let their clients update their own sites, this is a very useful feature as each field can be clearly labelled and configured to suit. E.g. an input box for ‘Book Title’, a drop down list for ‘Paperback / Hardback’, and so on. Also useful is a versioning feature and ‘guided’ posting feature.
So, EE’s perfect?
No. Currently there are two issues which I think may be a show-stopper for anyone with plans to build a site which is heavily based on a gallery.
- Galleries are not searchable. The EE search currently only looks at ‘weblog’ content, so if User X is searching for some info that happens to reside in a gallery caption (such as my portfolio item details) then they are out of luck.
- Although EE does offer a ‘batch entries’ feature, it is not what most people would expect. There is currently no way to upload a batch of images to a directory and just click ‘add’. Every single image must be reviewed and confirmed, not something which will be very appealing if you regularly add galleries of 50 images or more.
But as a CMS with blogging capabilities I would say EE is a sound purchase. As with any software there is the odd frustrating ‘feature’, but certainly nothing major enough to put me off.
Overall Verdict
If you’re someone who’s tired of hacking away at core files and scouring the net for essential third party plugins then EE is definitely for you. However if you’re just looking for a script to power your new blog and you’d benefit most from a selection of free templates then Wordpress and its huge community are probably the way to go. I have spent quite a long time working with both MovableType and Joomla and Expression Engine is infinitely nicer to use than both.
02 Oct 06VayaDesign Goes All “Two Point Oh”
It’s been something of a wait, but the all new Expression Engine powered VayaDesign.net is finally ready for public consumption. I have been busy testing with every web designer’s best friend, but if anyone spots any problems in their Browser of Choice then please do let me know in the comments.
Rather than sending people to sleep with details on all the new features and content I’d just like to invite everyone to have a look around the site and see they think. Any and all comments welcome.
01 Sep 06Controlling Your Domain Name
Following the painfully lengthy transfer of a client’s domain recently I’d like to offer one quick bit advice to anyone who is planning to start their first site: Make sure you have full control of the domain name. Before ordering a domain name ensure that the registrar has a control panel from which you are able to update contact details and nameservers whenever you wish. Never register a domain through a third party who you don’t fully trust. Would you give your car keys to a stranger?
Example Scenarios
- Your current hosting plan runs out in two weeks and you opt to move the site elsewhere. If you can’t update the nameservers to point at your new web host then you will no longer be able to use your domain name.
- The domain expires because you were not set as the administrative contact therefore didn’t receive any of the renewal notices.
In the event that you lose a domain name then your brand will be severely damaged, any incoming links that your site had will stop working, you will likely have to move to a new domain name which search engines will not like one bit and, worst of all, all of your visitors will get the impression that you no longer exist.
You don’t need to be an expert (or even close to it) to register your domain and it only takes a minute or two to complete the ordering process, so I really cannot recommend it enough as it can save some serious headaches in the long run.
If you’re not sure which company to register your site with then a couple of the registrars I would recommend are Namecheap and eNom. Registerfly are one to avoid; don’t ask!
21 Jul 06Previewing the Headache of the Future?
Ask anyone who makes websites what is the single most frustrating part of their job and I’ll bet many of them will say it’s working on cross-browser compatibility. Unlike just about any other kind of interface/graphic design, websites have to work in all sorts of environments. They have to work in all of the popular browsers for a start, and with more and more people using their mobile phones and PDAs to access the net it’s becoming more important by the day to take that into account too.
So when Microsoft release a new version of Internet Explorer, the most commonly used browser on the planet, it’s a Big Deal.
Having done a little bit of Internet Explorer 7 testing through BrowserCam I had a pretty good idea of what to expect: A shiny new interface, tabbed browsing and RSS support. Many of the more frustrating CSS bugs and missing features are also apparently fixed. I haven’t had much of a chance to test IE7’s CSS capabilities/shortfalls myself yet, but it seems to be a huge improvement over IE6 even if some problems do remain.
But what’s it like to use? Well it’s good enough that I have been using it for the past day instead of FireFox which certainly says something. Tabbed browsing works more or less exactly the same as in FireFox but there is the addition of a very handy ‘quick tabs’ button that lets you view thumbnails of all of the open tabs at once, eliminating the need to ctrl-tab 10 times to find what you were after. Another hugely useful feature allows you to save all of the open tabs when the browser is closed, something I previously achieved with FireFox’s SessionSaver extension.
IE7 also catches up with the rest of the world by offering a search box at the top of the page, which IE6 users will instantly wonder how they lived without. Surprisingly mine was set to search Google by default; presumably a result of previous settings being carried across from IE6.
If the above screenshot was your first look at IE7 then one of the first things you noticed was probably the lack of a standard File | Edit | Tools menu as seen in just about every program you ever used. The icons to the left and right of the open tabs replace these, but I would expect many of the less techy users to be pretty confused by this change. You can actually bring the ‘old school’ toolbars back by pressing ALT on your keyboard at any time and they can be turned on permanently in the settings, but by default it is turned off. My guess is Microsoft will be getting a lot of support calls about that one, but personally I think it’s a great feature that saves valuable screen space.
Support for RSS feeds is really the only other big feature addition and on the whole it seems pretty average. I’d have thought anyone who regularly catches up with lots the updates on a large number of sites would still want a dedicated RSS reader, but maybe for casual users it will be enough.
Overall verdict? Well from a developer’s point of view I have yet to see just how much of an improvement has been made in how pages are rendered, so I’ll have to reserve judgement. But as far as the user experience goes, I like it. It’s a huge improvement on IE6 and since it doesn’t seem to have the memory leak problems that plague FireFox I will definitely be persevering with it as a main browser. I’m sure that even once the currently unthinkable happens and IE6 support can be phased out there will still be a need to spend time double and triple checking that everything is behaving as it should, but with any luck I’ll be reaching for the paracetamol a little less often. Roll on the official release!
13 Jun 06Changes a-comin’
I've decided that it was time that VayaDesign was given a fresh lick of paint. The new site is probably still a little way off as client work has to come first, but I'm hoping that the finished product will be worth the wait and that a complete overhaul will be a real boost for the site.
A little preview of the new design can be seen to the right, here are some of the features I'm planning to include:
- The blog will be integrated into the main site, instead of being a fairly incongruous bolt-on like it is at the moment.
- The services area will be completely updated to include some of the more specific services I can offer, for instance vBulletin templates and building sites with Joomla/Mambo and other CMSs.
- An updated and extended portfolio.
- A 'mini-blog' section where I can post some of the more interesting links I come across. There are so many great resources I find on a daily basis but aren't really worth making a full post about, hopefully the 'mini-blog' will solve this and help keep things fresh.
After a lot of head-scratching and trying to decide on the best CMS for the job I think I will be opting for ExpressionEngine for the final thing. In a nutshell it looks as though it will make managing a fairly complex site structure fairly simple, the customer support looks good if I need it and I'm always a sucker for a nice interface. Once the site is up and running I'll be sure to post a review up, but in the meantime it certainly looks like a winner.
31 May 06Project Updates & Some Useful Tools
I’ve definitely been slacking blog-wise lately (how do the people who post every couple of days manage it?), there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. I’ve got a ‘proper’ post in the works which will hopefully be up soon, but in the meantime here’s an update on a couple of the sites I’ve been working on lately and a couple of the tools I have used in developing them.
MadWeekends
was lucky enough to be able to do whatever I wanted for this design, so long as it ended up looking ‘fun’. In my book, a pretty good design brief. On the whole it’s the usual XHTML/CSS setup, but I did get to experiment with sIFR for the first time. At this point I should warn you that unless you are familiar with building websites, the following will send you to sleep (it may have that effect regardless).
Until now I’ve always opted for the negative text-indent method when trying to replace plain text with something more interesting. It’s simple, effective and pretty accessible. However if you’ve got more than a few titles you wish to replace, it’s also mind-numbingly boring and totally inefficient. Which is were sIFR steps in.
sIFR is an automated means of replacing unattractive, plain text with anti-aliased eye candy. Its only requirements are that the user’s browser supports Flash 6 or greater and javascript. According to Macromedia around 97% of browsers have Flash 6 or greater and according to w3Schools 90% of browsers have javascript enabled. Hardly definitive, but a useful indicator if nothing else. Even better is the fact that if these ‘required’ browser features are missing then no damage is done - the user just sees standard CSS formatted text and is none the wiser.
Once you’ve spent 10 minutes setting up the CSS, flash file and javascript the job is done and thanks to a little black magic your standard markup such as:
<h3>Example Title</h3>
... is automatically turned into formatted text.
Would I recommend it? Definitely, and I’m sure I’ll be using it again in future projects.
Treasure Art & Design
Not a site I designed, just one that I was asked to complete some updates on. An exhibition page was needed and in the name of avoiding one obscenely long page I decided to try my hand at some javascript tricks with the help of scriptaculous. I’m in no hurry to go back to 1995 (Clock mouse pointers, anyone?) but I do think a little javascript can be very useful in the right situation and that on that page it works pretty well. Who needs flash, anyway?
Incidentally, if anyone else is looking for a wordpress code snippet plugin then the imaginatively titled ’code snippet plugin‘ is what you want.
That’s it for today, but there’ll more posts up soon with any luck!
24 Apr 06Google - Expandable results, shrinking ad revenue?
If you enter a search term into Google, currently you will be presented with the ten links deemed most relevant and either a brief extract from the page or the page’s meta description. And some sponsored listings. Google are currently testing a new expandable results feature which would allow users to view an extended extract (example) from each of the pages listed.
This is great for Google, as they can provide more information directly to their users who will then spend longer on the SERPs and click more sponsored listings. It would be nice for users too; the extended listings probably feature some quick-loading AJAXy goodness and searchers looking for specific information will likely find what they want even quicker. But what about site owners?
My initial reaction is that this could be a Very Bad Thing for anyone with a 'content site', that is to say, anyone who runs a site which exists purely to provide information, rather than some kind of service. Such sites are usually funded by advertising and occasionally through paid subscriptions. If someone's searching for a specific fact and Google's extended listing already contains the all-important part of the article which contains what is being searched for, why would they then click through to the site? Google answered their question already.
To an extent this could be considered paranoia; after all, the short extracts currently on offer already target the area of text containing the search terms. The answer may already be there with the current system. However it's reasonable to assume this would happen more regularly if the extract area is four times longer.
If the content provider (by which I mean the site, not Google) does not get the visitor, despite providing them with the information they wanted, there is a problem. Sure, life's not fair, but if the content providers lose out on visitors then they lose out on revenue. Then they decide it's not a profitable venture and there is a serious decline in the freely available information on the net as excellent free resources become subscription only, or shut up shop for good. Of course not all content sites provide information so that they can directly profit, but if you think about all of the sites you visit regularly I expect that a majority do.
Oops, back in the realms of paranoia a little, I think. Nonetheless, as a content site owner, I am a little concerned about the idea, probably just as publishers were with Google books. It certainly seems like another instance of profiting through information hoarding from the big G, but for now, and since it is still just one of many developments in testing, I'll sit on the fence.
Source: Sharp Seo.
03 Apr 06‘Nofollow’ & Paid Links
The 'nofollow' tag was introduced by Google at the start of 2005 solely as a means of 'preventing blog spam'. In other words, to stop people using automated scripts which post gibberish in weblog comment areas in order to get a link back to their site. The basic idea being that if Google spotted a link tagged with 'nofollow' then it wouldn't consider it a 'vote' for the site being linked to in the way it does with normal links. Therefore the spammer's site wouldn't benefit in the SERPs from the link and as a result he or she would give up their evil ways and concentrate on making nice fluffy sites about puppies and ice cream, using only search engine approved 'white hat' techniques.
Great idea, eh? Well maybe in theory. Personally I feel that blog owners should take responsibility for the comments on their site and ensure that any 'spam' comments are deleted very quickly or moderated before being approved for general consumption. I also think that anyone who takes the time to comment on a post deserves a 'proper' link back to their site. But that's not my main point.
Last week Matt Cutts, more or less the public face of Google, posted the following on his blog:
Q: "If one were to offer to sell space on their site (or consider purchasing it on another), would it be a good idea to offer to add a NOFOLLOW tag so to generate the traffic from the advertisement, but not have the appearence of artificial PR manipulation through purchasing of links?"
A: Yes, if you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google.
Riiiight. So the official policy is that nofollow should be used on paid links, 'or else'. The first thing that strikes me is that paid links have nothing whatsoever to do with blog spam and that they are perfectly legitimate. Equally you would assume sites wouldn't accept advertisers if they weren't willing to 'vouch for them' so to speak.
Point number two would be that Google make almost all of their revenue from advertising. If publishers added nofollow to their paid links then the advertisers would potentially lose out on improved organic search results - one of the few things Google can't (or at least doesn't) offer advertisers. That then reduces even further the number of reasons not to advertise with Google. Coincidence?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, here's a quote from the Google webmaster guidelines:
"Make pages for users, not for search engines."
Isn't that a bit hypocritical then?
Whilst nofollow may have been a nice idea in theory it isn't working in practice, and with talk of 'reputation' penalties in Google it certainly doesn't seem to be helping site now - the opposite in fact. Personally I will keep doing my job as normal and leave Google to do theirs.
(On a related note, Threadwatch have an interesting post up demonstrating some of the bizarre uses of nofollow currently floating around.)
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