Jun 21
ExpressionEngine 1.6 released!
2007 at 03.21 pm posted by Veerle
Yesterday I got a nice surprise on my birthday and that’s the release of ExpressionEngine 1.6 with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Half of these new features are the direct result of community requests.
What's EE?
For those who don't know it yet, ExpressionEngine is an off the shelf Content Management System that powers this blog with a very reasonable price tag if you consider that it is a very flexible piece of software.
What's new in version 1.6?
If you see the change log you'll notice that it is quite the long list. According to Ellislab there are almost 100 new features, with half of those coming from the community. It's one feature in particular that marks a substantial new milestone in EE’s history 'The Multiple Site Manager'.
Multiple Site Manager
The Multiple Site Manager (sold separately) is an expansion to ExpressionEngine (not a Module, Plugin, or Extension) that will enable you to manage multiple websites from a single EE installation. This new add-on is something I will definitely use to power this blog and the new duoh.com website. Much easier to have just one install for multiple sites. So I can't wait to give it a spin. If you want to see the feature I recommend you to watch this screencast. In fact this has been tried and tested by the Ellislab folks themselves. They use it to run EllisLab, ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter, and pMachine Pro all from the same install..
Key Features
- Multiple Sites from a single installation
- Multiple Forums from a single installation (requires Discussion Forums 2.0)
- Intuitive interface
- Member Database is "installation wide"
- Shared Member Groups across Sites
- Member Groups can have per Site preferences.
- Weblogs and Templates can be accessed across Sites
- Intuitively organized Control Panel
- Independent Preferences per site
- Specialty Templates per Site (Login screens, member profiles, etc...)
- Modules are Site Agnostic so any Site can use any Module.
The Multiple Site Manager costs $199.95 (commercial license) and $79.95 (non-commercial license) and enables you to manage 3 Sites (including your primary site). Additional sites can be purchased on a per-instance basis for $49.95 (commercial license) and $24.95 (personal license).
Pages Module
The new Pages Module allows you to create and maintain page content that is more akin to static content than dynamic information. It allows you to add and maintain pages without needing access to templates. 'Page' entries can be displayed with virtually any URL desired and take advantage of ExpressionEngine's powerful Weblog Module. You may already known pages from the talented Mark Huot.
Custom Category Fields
It seems that Custom Category Fields will open up some interesting possibilities too that we need to explore a bit deeper when time permits.
Hidden Templates
Sometimes it is undesirable to allow access to a template via a URL. For instance, a template that you only use as an embedded template would likely be an incomplete HTML document, and not something you would want your users to be able to come across on its own, even accidentally. 'Hidden' templates are just that: templates that cannot be accessed from a URL, but can be used as embedded templates.
ExpressionEngine uses a convention that is common among many file-systems, so it may already be familiar to you. To make a template "hidden", simply give it a name preceded by a period, e.g. '.my_hidden_template'.
Discussion Forum Module 2.0
Discussion Forum Module 2.0 now supports multiple sets of forums. The Discussion Forums 2.0 can leverage the new Multiple Site Manager and provide unique forums for each Site. Version 2.0 adds a number of other enhancements as well such as Forum Boards, a new grey theme, Text Formatting preference for posts, ability to move individual replies between threads etc.
New Control Panel Theme
Save the best for last and that's the new Control Panel Theme. It is a slightly modified version of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain’s beautiful EE Control Panel theme. Still love the old one no worries it is still available as a 'classic' theme.
49served
1
I never evaluated EE - how does it compare to highly flexible CMS software packages like Drupal in its recent version? I should probably evaluate them for myself.
Anyway, it seems like a lot of websites from well-known designers (like you :) are powered by EE, so there must be something attractive…
2
Happy birthday! (it’s mine too :)). Best of all, we have the longest day of the year to celebrate it :)
3
I’m really stoked about the Pages module. No more creating these as regular entries and then having to locate them months later via the search, way down deep. Pages is a much more client-friendly approach. Nice!
4
Does anyone know of a comparison between CMS’s that include Tradingeye CMS? I have been intending to buy Tradingeye Pro (For the shopping cart, not necessarily for the CMS) but I would love to see a side-by-side comparison of EE, MT, and TradingEye.
5
Very nice update. I’ll upgrading tonight. Expression Engine keeps on surprising me, right from the day they introduced it.
6
Well well ...
Nobody seems to mention that EE is still a bugfest has basically no real media handling capabilities (a simple file upload that’s all).
The important functions/tags like “categories” are missing lot’s of basic functionality.
It’s definitely not worth the hefty price! They made the right people use it (Good designers with pretty sites and a good reputation) that’s all ...
It’s not a wonder that they are planning a complete rewrite for 2.0 (using CodeIgniter) the current codebase/documentation is mess!
7
I’ve been testing the free version of EE, but now I think it’s time to get the full version. It’s really powerful, and the new features make it worth. Ok, the old one’s already did.
Congratulations and keep up the good work!
8
I’m a Textpattern user and have been for a few years now, the company I work for and most of my freelance client sites all run on TP
But for the last month or so I have been contemplating switching to EE, and as I’m currently restructuring my employers’ site I thought this would be a good opportunity to make the switch, downloaded the core version the other week to have a play.
I understand from the EE forum that Mr. Jon Hicks has come across a script for importing TP into EE, though I’m not sure if this will be necessary in my situation what with restructuring the existing site.
9
Super excited about 1.6. The pages module is super client-friendly. Multiple sites manager is really going to be fun to play around with too.
10
First off, Happy Birthday!
Hope you had a chance to celebrate it!
Secondly, EE looks great for handling a large member base. And having a single database for all members is a treat for big sites, having to register again for the forum is always a pain.
But I definitely think that EE is made for larger website groups, smaller CMS systems like Wordpress are handier for bloggers and such.
The control panel does look sweet though =)
11
Hey Veerle, just a note that your screenshot of the CP theme looks like Jesse’s, running under 1.5.2. If you haven’t had a chance to update yet, you can get a view of the final theme in the docs:
Control Panel homepage
Templates area
12
$100 is a hefty price? That’s pretty darned cheap in my opinion considering the professional support and product quality level. Bugs aside, none of which I’ve encountered in years of use, EE is a fantastic CMS package. Light years better than all of the open source, “you’re on your own” options.
EE didn’t “make” the right people use it. People choose what they want to use, that’s all.
13
I’m doing some tests with EE (core) on my site (a playground actually, as it is far from being complete).
The template engine is nice but completely different from the approach I used on the one I’m developing at work, so it’s interesting to learn how to use it (and steal some ideas =).
Unfortunately my host gives me a limited amount of daily queries to the mysql database, so I cannot really play a lot with :(
Anyway happy birthday! Mine was on the 16th =D
14
The multiple site manager is really nice - maybe I’ll finally have to give it a test run :)
15
NotAFanBoy said:
ExpressionEngine is the system I chose, they didn’t choose me or approached me to use it like you are claiming here. It’s the system where I can do my thing the way I want just right out of the box. I don’t have to depend on a programmer. That’s all that matters to me and that’s what this article is about. The ease of use and its flexibility for a very attractive price if you ask me considering its functionality and its great support. Oh and FYI I haven’t encountered any bugs since I’m running this blog. I’m sure there are a few, I don’t know any system that is bug free. No one’s stopping you to develop your own thing if you think that’s a better option, but that’s not what this article is about.
16
Isn’t it a bit slow when you reach a large amount of visitors a day? Although you cannot compare it, what would make me change my mind (using Ruby on Rails on my site) if EE is supposed to be very flexible (as well)?
17
Happy Birthday dear! May there be a lot more to come.
18
Your enthusiasm is making my CMS decision more difficult — I was trying to stay excited about the MovableType 4 beta, as it was just released right when I was considering switching to EE… Then this comes along. Woe is me!
Does anyone have experience with transition to EE from MT? Is it painful?
19
I’m planning to upgrade my site to EE 1.6 within the week, and then stage various client site upgrades. I’m very interested in the Multi-Site Manager (MSM), though I’m sadden that the old methods will no longer be officially supported.
I have a couple clients, who have what I consider subsites—sites where all the content is pulled from the main site. They don’t need the data separation that MSM offers, and the basic instructions for setting up subdomains still applies as the best method for handling these sites. But, I am doing a redesign of our business site, and we have three other sites related to that, so I’m thinking about using the MSM module for that. I’m kind of excited to see it in play.
I am bummed that custom fields in weblog entries parameter wasn’t added as feature. I use Mark Hout’s wonderful extension for this on my person sites, but for client sites I tend to use the custom queries instead--which is a lot more work-- but guarantees that updates can be applied by anyone, without breaking the code (Hout’s extension requires a modification in the core system file).
But I’m excited for hidden templates, the use of weblog_short_name, total_results, if no_related_entries, and a number of other things that seem minor, but will help me streamline a lot of code at client sites. In fact, weblog_short_name and total_results alone will enable me to get rid of 30-40 custom queries for a single client.
Looking forward to hearing more about your experience with the new version once you’ve had time to play.
20
Pixel. I guess it depends on what you consider a large number of visitors per day and how you have your hardware and system configured. EE is a MySQL and PHP solution rather than a Ruby and MySQL or Ruby and PostgreSQL solution.
PHP & MySQL can be configured to handle very large numbers of visits per day--millions of hits; but that’s all in the configuration of Apache, MySQL and setting up rollovers, and response times etc.
For us everyday mortals where 10,000 to 100,000 hits per day is high end, a basic install of EE on an ISP like Engine Hosting—where they specialize in making sure dynamic sites (EE or others) work well then those numbers aren’t problematic.
Handling large numbers of hits is more about your server configuration than Expression Engine, but that said, badly coded pages will also slow you down.
21
I remember there was a time I was in the market for a CMS. (Well, that isn’t really true, I was fishing for an free and open-source PHP CMS). I remember looking at TextPattern, WordPress, Movable Type and pMachine, although pMachine and Movable Type had some restrictions that made me cross them off the list. I was very impressed by all these then, and looking at it now, I couldn’t have said I could have guessed where the blogging scene would go and how these apps would catch up.
Some time back SixApart told the world they’d be making a commercial product out of the communities efforts. I check now, and they’ve announced an open-source GPL version of Movable Type.
XHTML and CSS support (and userbase) grew, sites like Veerle’s blog inspired countless others (mine included), and now here we are, Expression Engine has apparently grown to be so mature.
I ended up using WordPress for its advanced templating abilites and plugin support—the community is absolutely insane—and it’s so interesting what people are doing with the same software base. From what I can tell from your screenshots and the official site, it’s got a very advanced template support with direct MySQL connections.
The only thing I have reservations with is the steep price—pay $199.95 and get to manage only three sites—but since I happen to be the sort of person who rather believes in commercial success driving innovation, I guess I can’t complain.
Thanks for the post and review.
22
Hey Veerle,
why on the first side, did you choose EE when more world is running blogs on the famed wordpress platform. Ofcourse, there are differences, but what made u chose EE, can i know ???
23
happy birthday!
looking forward to the new EE based duoh website. and, knowing you, some accompanying tutorials in it’s wake.
24
It’s a good update! I’m a bit dissapointed with the Pages module implementation after the original’s performance and features, but hopefully some plugins/extensions/modules will pop-up to patch the gaps.
25
First and foremost, happy birthday Veerle. Many happy returns of the day.
Secondly I swear by Expression Engine. Great price, great guys over at P Machine and fantastic features.
I noticed the question of why Expression Engine in the comments. Why not? Seriously, once you try it there is no looking back.
Once again happy birthday, hope you have a good one girl!
26
Tom,
I didn’t migrate from MT specifically, but I migrated from Squarespace with an MT format export.
The experience was nothing short of amazing. The included importer for MT worked flawlessly. The comments were all imported, along with creating user accounts automagically for every user that posted a comment on the old site (this was an option you could turn off when importing).
The only issues I had were related to special features in Squarespace not translating well, but coming directly from MT should be a bit easier.
27
Happy birthday Veerle :-)
ExpressionEngine is a great CMS but unfortunately not for my pocket.
28
First of all, I’ve no experience of EE. None at all. It probably is an awesome software for all I know.
But still the $249.95 price tag for commercial version (or $99.00 for non-commercial) and $39.95/$19.95 a year for updates after the first year (and $99.95/$49.95 for the forum if you happen to need it) seem like a lot to me when you can get most of the same features for free in EE’s open source “competitors” like Wordpress.
(Not to mention that there’s hardly any feature you can’t find as a plugin, making it even more feature-rich in the end.)
And seriously, this “open source leaves you alone and lost” attitude some people stubbornly cling to is absolutely off the track. Wordpress, for an example, has awesome community forum, and usually pretty much any problem will be solved in no time. And for those who just need to pay for something, there are lots of companies offering support for open source software.
Can’t deny that those familiar with programming (PHP+MySQL in this case) benefit most from open source CMS software, though. But if you have little or none programming skills, fear not - there are lots of people out there ready to help. :-)
29
Thanks for the wishes and for taking the time to comment.
For people who think a license is too expensive, I’m looking at this more from a business perspective. EE is a powerful and very flexible CMS. If you look at the list of sites powered by EE, you’ll see there are far more business sites then blogs. Lots of systems are far much higher in price then EE, with 3 or 4 zeros at the end. I think this is a damn good price. As for open source, this is all good and well, but I need guarantee I get help soon when I’m stuck. I need to be able to deliver my services in time. I can’t wait a couple of days on a answer from a forum on a problem if it’s an important one an lots depend on it. With open source you fully rely on the community and who says you’ll get your help within 24 hours. For personal sites and blogs this is no problem I guess, but for business sites this would not be enough, at least not for me.
bootcat said:
The reason why I didn’t opt for something else is because EE didn’t need any custom programming to make my blog work. Most other tools need PHP knowledge when you want to take it to the next level. EE has a bit of a learning curve, but once you are past that you can do pretty much everything you come up with. Of course you need to know CSS pretty well if you want something like my blog. I’m sure there are easier tools out there, but it depends on what you want to do with it, design wise or feature wise. For me EE is perfect as a designer, my knowledge of HTML/CSS is enough and I don’t need to learn PHP to get what I want. It’s a tool that is suitable for a business site as well. So if I invest my time in learning, I’m sure it’s a good investment, but the learning is not to compare with learning a program language. I needed one extra day to get the basics to implement my blog. I started on Saturday and on Monday evening it was online (and no, no nightly hours).
30
The fact is, that even if you know php, you can do the same things in Expression Engine with little time and effort as you could in WordPress with significant time and effort.
In addition to that, when an EE update comes out, your site won’t usually be broken, because you haven’t had to make extensive modifications or install a significant number of third party plugins.
WordPress, on the other hand, breaks something every time I update it practically, even on relatively simple installations. And you must update WordPress frequently because of all its security holes.
The point is that the differences in time, effort, and support make it a very wise business decision to choose EE, and even make it a good personal decision in many cases.
31
Wordpress suits my needs for the time being. I don’t mind having to do the back end stuff with no support. Gives me a chance to geek out.
32
I am using modx...but the learning curve was high to make it do what i wanted (I used moo.fx for the transitions in my portfolio) and I’d rather spend my time learning typography, photography, tennis and this semester: After Effects (yay!)
I’ll let you know how it goes
At the end, it all depends on one’s needs and the only way to know is by trying this stuff…
-p
33
Some rousing debate over here. I can say that I’ve used just about everything out there and I always come back to EE because it does what I want in a dead easy way.
It’s so infinitely flexible - you can achieve so much with it and I never have to look at any real code which is a huge plus in my book.
Just because a lot of folks use wordpress doesn’t mean that there aren’t better options. I mean - you can drive a Hyundai if it suits your needs, but you could also have a Porsche too.
And Happy Belated Veerle!
34
Yep, updating right now. I’m stoked about the Pages module, and will consider the MSM when I get around to it. I wonder how pulling several existing sites together using the new MSM will work?
35
EE is really amazing CMS....I have been searching for something like that over two years :p because im too lazy to learn php and mysql and develop a custom cms… I have downloaded the new version of EE and start to make some themes ... its not really hard if u know some html/css… by the way i am 13 years :o ... am a photoshop master xD and i have allready learned HTML, CSS, some of XHTML, PHP and MySql and i hope in future ill be creative like you! Veerle your blog is great and looks fabolous.. i love u ;)
Regards,
Jabba.
36
Yeah, just designers with pretty sites, it does not power big, busy sites like www.bmi.com, or www.ilounge.com, or news paper web sites like www.sacunion.com, or hey even sites like gov.ca.gov either.
And hey all software has bugs, but I will take EE’s “bugs” over Wordpress’s endless security issues, Wordpress is right up there with phpBB when it comes to bad security.
37
Brian James said:
HAHAHA, maybe you should do a little more research before making a fool out of yourself since iLounge is powered by ExpressionEngine :D
38
Uhm, Veerle, I think Brian is being a bit sarcastic, since all the sites he mentions are in fact EE-powered. :)
39
Low said:
Well, if he is, the joke is lost on me :/
40
I think Veerle’s got a point. In a quest for a CMS, you have to consider several issues: am I looking for a lightweight, opensource, no-cost product? Or do I need support, a full-blown CMS-suite capable of streaming media ànd entertaining a community with ugc?
You should pick what serves your needs… If your business requires a Tridion-size CMS, I suppose you have a business-model that can carry that cost. In my case, I love working with PoloPoly, Morello,… but I can rely on programmers, engineers and sysadmins to keep things running. And I don’t have to pay their bills.
If you want a maintainable CMS, without programming knowledge ànd support for your software, EE offers you a fair deal…
(hi Veerle, greetings from Grammene)
41
As someone who has played around with textpattern and wordpress (both worthy blog-lightweight cms systems in their own right) and EE as well I’ll just say that those balking at EE’s price tag (still very cheap compared to so-called industrial strength CMS’s) can download the free core version to test it out.
Once you get your head around EE’s tags and template group/template system I guarantee you you’ll never look back.
Best of all, the EE community is truly helpful (and fast!) and Rick and the EE crew are continually working to improve EE. Can’t wait for version 2.0!
42
Hi, yeah, sorry I should have made it more clear that I was poking fun at the person that made it sound like EE was only running cute little blogs on the net. There are a lot of major corporations, large and busy news sites, online versions of print magazines and newspapers, etc. that are powered, and have been powered by EE for years now…
43
I may not know how it stands up as a CMS, but if you were to judge it by it’s cover, I’d say it’s pretty good!
I’m referring to their website here, It’s a great design!
44
Happy Birthday Veerle!
45
i have been working with big company’s in my region (south america) i have made some very complex sites like (news/ad_agencies/sports_magazine) and yes they all run EE. i only use php to do some nifty tricks but like 99% of the time its all built in. i am truly waiting for EE 2.0 and that E-Commerce module. have some big clients who want it.
Right now need to find someone who can make the current module a paypal_pro integration heh.
But for me EE all the way !!
P.S. happy birthday
46
I love it!
47
Happy Birthday !
It certainly looks like a superb system but I have one question. Does it support multiple languages simultaneously ?
I other words, could I put up a blog entry or static page in both the english and french languages on the same URL.
Then, when a french a visitor comes to the URL they would see the french version whilst a user whose preference is english would see the english ?
48
Using ee is an absolute pleasure for anyone with good html/css skills that dabbles in a little php. You don’t need to know php, but it helps to create certain features from time to time.
The biggest drawback imo, is creating/managing static content. At the moment its really difficult to create dynamic menu generation, breadcrumbs and url paths on the fly past 3 deep…
Mark’s module is fantastic but is still a little tempremental. The new ‘official’ pages module is a bit of a let down imho.
49
Hi All,
I’m a little late to this conversation. As a CMS fanatic (ie:nerd), EE looks very exciting. However, I’m wondering how it compares to ModX CMS, has anyone used both?
Cheers!