What I like about ExpressionEngine when compared to WordPress and my final thoughts on the commercial CMS from EllisLab.
In a previous article I did a bit of griping about ExpressionEngine. After spending time building a full site with the commercial CMS, I was left impressed with some of its features and quite unimpressed by it’s lack of others. As I promised in that article, I’m going to cover some of what I did like about ExpressionEngine here, as well as let you my final opinion and whether I plan to continue using the CMS.
Now, on to the good parts of EE…
Solid Support Forum, Documentation
I’ve become quite convinced of the idea that no CMS can succeed without excellent support in one form or another. EllisLab obviously understands this… the documentation is good, laid out clearly, and the search function works very well, which is a big help for those times when you can’t quite figure out where to look for the information you need. The docs get another point for the comments, which users can contribute to, at the end of each page; this was a great help for understanding some of the system’s intricacies.
Anything I couldn’t find in the documentation I was able to find in the support forum. They’ve built up quite a support community and, although the employee moderators’ SEO knowledge leaves something to be desired, I found most of the community to be knowledgeable and more than willing to provide helpful advice.
Impressive 3rd Party Contributions
I have to say, I was impressed by the quantity and quality of 3rd party addons for EE. Ellis Lab has managed to build up a community of developers and passionate enthusiasts that any commercial CMS developer would envy.
Easy-to-navigate admin UI
Although it might take a bit to get familiar with the administration UI, once you do, it’s very nice and easy to navigate. Most of the frequently-accessed pages are linked to directly through a tab at the top of the screen. The more advanced, perhaps less frequently-accessed pages are buried a bit and, while that may seem frustrating at first, it’s nice to not have the main interface cluterred with information you rarely need to access.
I said “most of the frequently-accessed pages are linked to directly” because some aren’t. The good news is EE lets you add a new tab in just two clicks, so you won’t have to hunt around for those burried sections of the admin that you find you need to access frequently.
Development Mode
EE has a great feature that, when active, prints out a long list of useful program information at the bottom of every page for the super admin for debugging. This is something I inevitably create at one point or another for most projects, so it was nice to have it already done for me when I needed some pertinent program info.
Final thoughts
One thing you’ll probably notice is that only the admin structure and development mode are not, by default, something WordPress has. You’ll also notice that my complaints about EE were a bit more serious than my praises. That’s because after spending quite a bit of time with EE I’ve concluded that it doesn’t do anything that another CMS can’t do easier, better or faster. In fact, a few of it’s key features are strangely under-developed – I mean, come on, I can’t duplicate custom fields across sections? Custom fields are the foundation of a general-purpose CMS. That issue, among others, needs some serious attention in the next major release.
Will I use ExpressionEngine in the future? Unlikely, unless I absolutely have to. It was a good learning experience, but other than that, my time with EE only served to remind me what I like about WordPress.
There is an extension called Gypsy that does exactly what you were asking for… it allows you to duplicate fields across sections.
I know, I mentioned it, and my thoughts about using it, in the previous post.
What did you think of when it came to building a navigation menu for your site? This is proving to be a real paint in the ass for me. This is one place where I feel WordPress offers more.
I didn’t have too much trouble with anything in particular, although the code for my nav menus is looooong. Much longer than it should be…probably 3/4 as long as if I hard coded the thing. The particular site I built used dropdown menus, and those aren’t terribly simple to build in WordPress either so that wasn’t a big deal.
Thanks for this thorough review of EE. I’ve wondered how EE compared to WP and your analysis was very helpful.
very nice, but is there a way to register into your forum ? I have some questions and in the codex.wordpress.org they never answer me !! they just show off with their experience !!
You’re absolutely right. Your complaints were heavier than your lightweight praises about EE. I’m a big WordPress fan but am very open to other tools surfacing the CMS world. Thank you.
A few days ago, I’ve build my website on top of WordPress. This was a relief after using CMS Made Simple.
I’m still reading an different content managers and EE would be my next try.
In my search for information, these post were very helpful. Also read this topic on the EE forum for EE’s developers opinions: http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/35142/
I tried CMS Made Simple. Before WordPress, CMS Made Simple might have been a nice option for a simple content management system. However, it doesn’t come close to WordPress when you consider the simplicity of WordPress, the features in WordPress, and all the themes and plugins available for WordPress.
I was going to have a try on CMS Made Simple, since I wanted to use a different system than WordPress (which I’m a great fan of) and Joomla. Nevertheless, the many complaints concerning mainly the problems with php and the unhelpful forum, have put me off.
That is the same reason I was put off as well, and plan to stick with WordPress for now anyways.
If you are looking for more than WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are good options.
I’ve built a few sites in EE and after switching to WordPress I can’t stand having to make and changes on the sites. The admin panel is just awful, there seem to be hidden configurations all over the place and the templating system is horrible.
I can do anything I want with WordPress and have built many non blog sites with it. Unless EE2.0 which is taking forever to come out just blows me away, I’ll be staying far away from EE.
Hi Ryan,
You’re right about the admin panel. Although I like the way some items that you may not use very often are tucked away, finding those items is a dreadful experience.
I’m a bit fan of WP, but after your article I will give a try to EE. When you have about 10 blogs on WP it’s time for sth fresh;)
I would figure that if you have 10 blogs on WordPress, you would want to stick with the same system on all your blogs. No?
I think your last line conveys your experience perfectly “my time with EE only served to remind me what I like about WordPress.” Thanks for the informative review, like I said before, I’ll stick to WordPress. Thanks again John.
You really should take another look and this time take the time to customise the CP to your liking with extensions.
Issue 1: use Gypsy fields. If you look at the exp_weblog_data table it should become clear to you why it is safe to do so.
Issue 2: agreed, but I don’t find it a hassle. Create your template, tick the ‘export as file’ button, and from then on edit it in your text editor. Is it that hard?
Issue 3: so… why are you storing CSS as templates anyway? You don’t have to. Just store them is an _assets folder somewhere. That’s what I do for any project regardless of the CMS I’m using.
Issue 4: If you want a conventional page hierarchy and nested URI scheme use the brilliant Structure module.
http://buildwithstructure.com/
The URI routing in EE is a result of the MVC design pattern. Weblogs are generic models extended by custom fields, templates are views. EE modules/plugins provide the controlling glue. Thus EE is a powerful GUI for rapid application development. WordPress is getting there (specifically with the excellent Pods plugin) but it’s got a long way to go, IMHO.
It would be great to have some competition for WordPress. Maybe EE is up for the challenge. Competition helps foster innovation.
very nice, but is there a way to register into your forum ? I have some questions and in the codex.wordpress.org they never answer me !! they just show off with their experience !!
We are avid users in EE. We do find the positive qualities mentioned above useful when sell the solution to our clients. We relish the idea that we are supported by experts in the product and the support forum excellent. EE is a highly scalable and supported product. We also find the Multi-Site Solution a plus for a couple of clients. We can not wait to get our hands on EE 2.0 all driven by CodeIgniter.
Thanks for the great articles on EE. I have recently started researching EE as I have to redesign the website for my employer, and they really want to move to a CMS. After reading some pretty positive comments about EE on sitepoint I thought I would look into it.
After DL’ing the trial version last week, and poking around in it, I was totally baffled. I found I had a lot of the same gripes that you outlined in your first article. I found the documentation on the site to be very lacking, and ended up finding separate tutorials on the net that provided much more insight. Subsequently, I ended up doing a WP site for a friend this past week, and it was sooo freaking easy. However I don’t think WP will offer the scalability and flexibility I need for my employers site.
I think my next step will be to try the trial version of EE2 that I saw on their site. I really like the idea that it is a fully supported solution, and the cost seems pretty darn fair. I have my fingers crossed.
EE2.0 could be good…I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s built on CodeIgniter, which I like for the most part. Hopefully they’ll address some of the issues I had with 1.x
I have recently started learning ExpressionEngine (EE). I have been developing with WordPress (WP) for over 2 years now, and I like WP very much, but I have had times when I am limited to perform some feature for a client.
My new job requires me to learn EE. So far, I am liking EE. After learning how it functions, how it’s organized, and how to create a site, I think I may switch to EE. I may switch to EE from WP not only because EE is so flexible, but also because the ease of use for clients to add/edit content. WP tends to confuse clients needing to update their site for anything other than the blog. EE can be set up in the back-end for a client to easily understand how to add/edit content with fewer clicks.