ExpressionEngine and our default build

Posted on Tags: ExpressionEngine

Strawberry had been on the lookout for a new Content Management System (CMS) for a while and we finally settled on Expression Engine. Expression Engine is built by the guys over at Ellis Lab and they are the company behind the powerful PHP Framework Code Igniter. The reason we settled for Expression Engine is due to the flexibility and the extensive support we get from using a commercial product - rather than adopting open-source software or building our own system.

The Install

We are now at over twenty Expression Engine installs and having used many CMS systems in the past, Expression Engine is one of the easiest systems to install. With its own install file you can have the core system setup within minutes with no PHP knowledge needed.

To make sure your server is compatible with Expression Engine you will need the following:

You will also need at least minimal experience with HTML and FTP access to your server.

Expression Engine Tags

Having built over twenty Expression Engine websites to date, the first hurdle to get over was understanding the tag system Expression Engine has implemented. We have found that there are a few different ways in which to come to the same conclusion and after our first couple of builds we came up with a standardised way of templating all of our subsequent Expression Engine builds. From this we have made slight changes, but the core template code always stays the same.

The Add-ons

Expression Engine comes with a wealth of add-ons. They allow for every eventuality that you could come across when building a website and to date, we’ve currently not come across anything within a website that we couldn’t implement.

Below is a list of add-ons we are currently using within the majority of our Expression Engine builds.

Field Frame - Field Frame is a field type extension developed for Expression Engine by Brandon Kelly. The extension is a must for every Expression Engine build. Field Frame gives us the ability to extend our field type range, from just simply text areas and text fields to a rich list of field types including Check boxes, Selects, Radio Groups and the Matrix. There are also a few add-ons built on the top of Field Frame most notably Wygwam. (http://pixelandtonic.com/fieldframe)

Wygwam - The Wygwam field type allows integration of the popular CKEditor WYSIWYG editor into Expression Engine. The only issue we did come across with the add-on is the fact you need to use relative image paths and make sure you have the latest Field Frame extension installed.

LG Better Meta - Like the title suggests this module creates easy to use Meta tags within the Expression Engine control panel. Before we found this useful module we spent hours implementing Meta information into every section of the website builds, LG came up trumps on this one. (http://leevigraham.com/)

LG HTaccess - We inherited this extension from tutorial videos when we first started using Expression Engine and have used it on all projects since. This extension allows us to quickly create an HTaccess file for a project that eliminates the index.php from the URL. (http://leevigraham.com/)

The Experience Internet modules and extensions - a range of modules and extensions we’ve used extensively by a friend of Strawberry’s, Stephen Lewis. (http://experienceinternet.co.uk/software/)

Free Form - The Free form module allows developers of Expression Engine websites to easily create forms on the fly and post submissions. We have implemented this module and extended the functionality by building AJAX controls to integrate error and success messages within our web site pages. (http://www.solspace.com/software/detail/freeform/)

Other useful add-ons - We also use Image Resizer, Twitter Timeline, Category ID, Word Limiter, Edit Alert, File, by Mark Huot and REEOrder.

This list isn’t exhaustive - we’ve used others, and experimented with lots. We’re also a big fan of Stephen Lewis’ plug-ins - we would say that though as he’s not only locally based to us but we’ve worked with him on a big EE project too!

Safe to say, we’ve fallen in love with EE and look forward to using EE2.0 in a production environment!