Veerle's blog

I am a bit late to the party but ExpressionEngine 1.5 is out. This weekend I updated this site without any problems. Only a .1 update but just look at the change log to see what great work the programmers at pMachine did. The added list is where you need to look and I’ll try to dig in a little deeper about what’s brand spanking new.

The Simple Commerce Module

Most notable in this 1.5 release is the inclusion of the Simple Commerce Module if you have a personal and commercial license. In essence every entry can be defined as an item to purchase and it also means that you design your store the way you like by using the templating engine. When you click Add Item you see the entries to choose from. It integrates Paypal functionality into your site and you can create customizable email notifications for each product. The Simple Commerce Module supports PayPal Encrypted Payments, a secure shopping experience. Following what’s going on with your store is easy thanks to automated purchase tracking through PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification service. You could use Paypal to control a website subscription model with content only available to members after purchase for example.

Template Preferences Manager

This is definitely a great feature. Now you can mass change options for your templates, even if they’re in different template groups! For example changing member access permissions for multiple template simultaneously.

Template Access Restriction

Also new is password protected RSS feeds. The setup for this is done in Template Access Restriction where you can define who can view or not. New for templates is HTTP Authentication, when enabled, users will be prompted to login with their username and password to view the template using a standard HTTP Authentication dialog box. You’ll see a little key next to the template when it’s switched on. However keep in mind that passwords are in clear text format using this method unless you are using an SSL connection.

Discussion Forum Module

The forum module now has user-side theme switching along with a host of minor enhancements. The Forums Module offers two professionally designed forum themes, and a bare-bones developer theme to help you create your own forum themes. If the user is a logged-in member, the theme choice is saved in their profile data, if they are not logged-in, it is stored in a cookie.

Wiki Module

The module now adds support for Namespaces, they are set on a per wiki basis and allow you to divide your content up into logical, semantic divisions while also placing restrictions on who can edit and administer that content. For example if you had a wiki dedicated to learning languages you might have a Spanish namespace and a German namespace as a way to organize and separate your content. You could have a different Member Group as the admin for each namespace. You can see the EE Wiki in action because it is now hosted at pMachine.

Contest

This will get you a pretty good idea of some of the new features in version 1.5. Next week I’m holding a contest to celebrate its release and I will be giving away 3 licenses for ExpressionEngine, StyleMaster, the Westciv CSS editor for Mac and PC, Inquisitor and NewsFire. All in all great prices don’t you think? You have to be a little creative to win because I’m planning on doing something fun with photo manipulation. You’ll see next week, spread the word :)