A Plea To EllisLab
We’re fans of the excellent ExpressionEngine here at The Nerdary. We use it in our work and for some of our extracurricular activities. Mark himself is the developer who launched a thousand ships (of famous add-ons in that community).
The company that created and runs ExpressionEngine, EllisLab is a small little remote-working company. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking with most of them through my own ExpressionEngine client work and the EECI conference. Great people, no doubt.
A couple weeks ago, I was at that aforementioned conference in Europe. The atmosphere was jovial; the community is a great, smart community. There was, however, a change in the air pressure when you brought up EllisLab in conversation.
Everyone was making jokes at the San Francisco conference about the delay of ExpressionEngine 2. This time, I encountered people whom were frustrated with the product, they were considering alternatives. I had numerous conversations with people about Django. It was surreal.
There are clearly some growing pains. Derek Jones, the CTO, wrote this blog post, stating ExpressionEngine is growing at ‘1000+ new members each day’. If you send any member of the EllisLab team an email with a question they will respond to you, personally, with as much information as they can give. So they’re not absent, just not present. Like a bored kid at a school assembly.
So I have some grievances with the way EllisLab handles things, and while Derek’s post is nice, I still feel it’s full of the same platitudes we’ve been hearing. Even though they’re growing, these are long running issues.
Here are my grievances directed at EllisLab:
You need to hire a full time designer. To clarify, if they’re a designer/developer hybrid that’s fine as long as their main focus is design. Brandon Kelly, an add-on developer, gave an excellent presentation about UX problems in ExpressionEngine 2. If you have ExpressionEngine 2 installed I can point out one example. Click on an accessory tab at the bottom of the control panel and watch it slide down. Now click on it again and watch it jump up with no slide. A good UX designer would see that as an issue.
It’s extremely frustrating to read this ‘We’re looking for a talented developer to add to our primary dev team’. The control panel needs a designer’s eye, not just a theme, especially for a CMS that is lauded by designers.
Unleash Flinger. It was announced that in May, Leslie Flinger would become the community relations manager. While Leslie has done a great job of corralling community information, she hasn’t given us much information from EllisLab. When I approached her and asked her about the future of EE, she stated that she didn’t know or didn’t have that information.
Giving Flinger freedom to release information will let her do what she’s great at and stop you from doing what you’re terrible at.
Stop licking your wounds over the EE2 release date fiasco. We get it. Nobody won. ExpressionEngine 2’s release caused a lot of internal and external strife. Stop being so defensive. The Apple silence strategy works when you release high quality, excellent products that surprise everyone. You released ExpressionEngine 2 beta. Start talking.
We need you to step up and communicate to us in a very public forum, about what you’re working on. Take a look at this. Cultured Code’s status page lets us know what’s coming without firm dates, but still shows movement and is updated at least weekly. So there is a reasonable way to let us know what you’re working on. Now just hire that designer to make it pretty. Time for a roadmap. Time to use modern communication.
Your showing at EECI 2010 in Europe was embarrassing. At EECI one (not all) of the following people should be there: Rick Ellis, Leslie Camacho, or Derek Jones.
Flinger is the community manager so she is a must as well, and a great must at that. It is absolutely preposterous that one of the, who I will now call big three, are not at a large near-official community conference like this. This isn’t a meet-up, this is a big deal. It’s an expensive, large event and one of you three need to be there. Always.
Otherwise you lost control of the conversation, and then I start talking to people about Django. You know what happens when I do that.
Step out of the cave, coders. Derek Allard was the most public figure on the development team. As a development platform, ExpressionEngine 2 no longer has a strong person from the development team championing the work publicly. Granted, Derek Allard was in radio silence for MojoMotor, but we need a leader to step up on the EllisLab development team.
Use the tools that the community use such as EE Insider, Twitter, Facebook, Devot:ee. Modern things, not forums (hating forums is a personal bias, I know many use them). Don’t just support them, participate in them.
EllisLab didn’t solve problems from EE1. In fact, EE2 didn’t solve anything and its been a year. Member templates are still stuck in some weird limbo when they should be html files. MojoMotor was nice, but a bitter pill to swallow at the wrong time. We also don’t know why they weren’t solved. Autosaving isn’t great.
Add committers to CodeIgniter. External forces allow open source software to grow. Having one strong leader, a benevolent dictator, is fine. Opening up a little, and sharing a little, can provide a lot of benefits for you.
Generally, this also means that someone works on the framework that powers your commercial product for free. We all benefit if we have a focused leader with a team not all under that leader’s employ. Yes, you can fork and you have taken pull requests, but adding an outside committer is a symbolic commitment to the growth of the framework.
Most of all, please don’t write more platitudes about how you’ve taken the community’s feedback and are considering different ways to approach a problem. We’ve heard the same line for years running now. There are so many ways for you to talk to us now it’s ridiculous. Employ them.
When you do great things like support EE Insider and Devot:ee, we applaud you. Those are nice things. What the community wants is more communication and a roadmap for ExpressionEngine 2.
It’s time, EL.
October, 13th 2010
Comments
I consulted with many developers and asked their opinions. I want to thank them for their time and input, but will let them name themselves due to the nature of this op-ed.
Posted at 02:04 PM on October 13, 2010
I was not consulted nor asked for my opinion, but let the record state that I approve of this message wholeheartedly.
Posted at 02:24 PM on October 13, 2010
Well said Kenny. I believe there are many EE developers feeling the same way.
Posted at 02:26 PM on October 13, 2010
I, like so many other devs, have love using and leveraging EE for projects over the past few years. In general it’s a very easy choice and easy sell to clients when necessary. Lately, though, it has been tougher considering the use of EE longterm due to some of the issues raised above.
I do hope that Ellislab hears this highly constructive criticism and acts on it *openly* soon. I’m sure we’ll have a reply from one of the Leslies soon :)
Posted at 02:31 PM on October 13, 2010
Completely agree.
Leslie hurrying on stage at the last day after the last talk of EECI with a quick “we’re noting your concerns” was just awkward.
I would also like to add 1 point (if I may): don’t let third-party add-on coders take up ALL the slack. Lately when there’s a feature request, a few days/weeks later someone has coded an add-on to fill in the gap, often out of frustration because a particular feature isn’t forthcoming (or there’s no way of knowing when).
While I don’t begrudge anyone making a profit from their add-ons, some feature requests are really common sense and should be part of the core package.
Posted at 02:34 PM on October 13, 2010
I totally agree with the fact that EllisLab is missing a developer that interacts with the community outside the forums. The forums are great for tech support, but interacting with your community is something completely different than answering their questions.
We need a champion to stand up!
Posted at 02:35 PM on October 13, 2010
Kenny - get out of my head. You’ve stolen every single thing I was going to say.
It was really surprising the amount of anger at eeci2010 against ellislab, and the number of conversations I had with people about alternatives systems.
I approve, and endorse this message.
Posted at 02:38 PM on October 13, 2010
An excellent well thought and written article. I 100% agree with all the issues that were raised.
If EL can’t improve their communication I also fear that many EE users will look for alternative products / frameworks. I don’t think the community will shrink in the short term but if the issues aren’t addressed it may harm the long term growth of the product. The last thing I want to see is long-time members of the community leaving.
Posted at 02:40 PM on October 13, 2010
I’ll definitely co-sign this too. EECI showed what a great community we have but it does seem cut off from the company sometimes. I’d put hiring a designer, particularly one with top notch UI skills at the top of the list.
Posted at 02:44 PM on October 13, 2010
I’m not a dev, but we are one of the biggest EE-based sites in existence, and unfortunately even my patience is wearing thin. The fact that there is no upgrade path available to us from EE1 to EE2, solely because we relied on a module that EllisLab decided wasn’t worth continuing (the Photo Gallery module,) coupled with the fact that there’s still no sign of the photo gallery conversion tool that was promised way back when, has us frustrated. We are stuck. It’s like reliving the promise of a discussion board conversion tool that never came all over again.
Hearing some sort of regular interaction/status reports on things that sites like ours are waiting on would be a nice start.
Posted at 02:50 PM on October 13, 2010
Excellent post Kenny - like you say, EE2 hasn’t solved any issues from EE1.
As a front-end dev, there’s little benefit for me using EE2 over EE1.
Over dinner on the Thursday I had a discussion with a few folks who thought the shelf life of EE had another few years tops and I’m guessing those ideas are borne of frustration at the lack communication and product roadmapping.
The community is awesome but if things aren’t being taken on board, people will start to wander.
Posted at 02:51 PM on October 13, 2010
Tag another Here here to the list.
So many points in this have been blown out of the water when mentioned in EE forums and not given time - finally people are getting behind this on mass.
Posted at 02:55 PM on October 13, 2010
Well said - not much left to add really.
One point I’d like to add though - another element that’s seriously worrying at the moment is how long it’s taking to get some very high profile bugs resolved. It’s simply not good enough and lets down a product that has huge potential.
I think Ellislab have forgotten that it’s a commercial prouduct they have - this isn’t WordPress.
If I’m honest, I’d have jumped ship by now if I could find an alternative that offered a similar feature set and had a community that was as passionate as the EE community is.
It’s rare to find a community more passionate about a product than the developers, but unfortunately that seems to be how things are with EE.
Posted at 02:58 PM on October 13, 2010
@KennyMeyers agreed.
I’d like to see more communication from the EllisLab/EE team as well as an understanding of the road map EE2 has (if any?). God forbid I make another website using Wordpress…
Posted at 02:59 PM on October 13, 2010
Picture me as Gabby Johnson from Blazing Saddles at the town meeting, thrusting my fist in the air and shouting ‘riret’ in agreement. Great post.
Posted at 03:04 PM on October 13, 2010
Kenny, spot on! I agree completely that unless action is taken soon, even I might be tempted to look elsewhere for a long term solution I can count on. I absolutely love using EE but at some point, I’ve got to think about my clients best interest and in the interest of my business. EL, I hope you’re hearing this and will respond.
Posted at 03:05 PM on October 13, 2010
If EllisLab can’t improve its communication, there is something pathological going on. EllisLab’s developer community has been near-unanimous for years, literally, in expressing profound frustration at the lack of a roadmap or status reporting on development progress, and the dismissive attitude toward improvement of the core product.
On the one hand it’s nice to see EllisLab steer clear of anything which could be seen as predatory toward its developers. On the other, it’s aggravating for some people to have to shell out $75 for things like Playa, which by this point ought to be base functionality. Don’t want to rip off Brandon Kelly? We got it. You know what real software/technology companies do in this instance? As a matter of strategic planning, they buy the smaller developer, or buy the product from the developer, and roll it into their own.
EllisLab has confused financial success—1000 new registrations a day in the ExpressionEngine forums must translate to at least 100 licenses a day, for a minimum of $900,000 in revenue each month and possibly much more—with some kind of verification that their practices are correct. Seeing so many of the company’s friends try to stage an “intervention” should be a wake-up call.
Posted at 03:05 PM on October 13, 2010
A full-time designer at EllisLab might do me out of the occasional bit of work, but as I’ve said publicly, it is an absolutely essential appointment for the control panel roadmap and beyond. Aside from the vital job of bringing coherence and continuity to the CP, a skilled full-time designer should also work with established devs like Brandon, Leevi and Low, and help devise a solid pattern library and set of UI guidelines for all addons to adhere to.
Posted at 03:06 PM on October 13, 2010
Great point, Colly. Not that all devs adhere to them, but I’d love a set of “UI Guidelines” similar to the developer guidelines that Paul (and others?) established a while back. An in-house designer would be a great source of said guidelines. Anywho…
Posted at 03:08 PM on October 13, 2010
Excellent post, Kenny. You aren’t just a pretty face after all. ;-)
Anyway, all your points resonate with me. I also back Erwin’s point about not letting the 3rd party developers taking all the slack: I hinted as much in the last EE Podcast, with some minor examples, but the overreaching point is that there are a lot of add-ons i simply don’t think should exist because they’re more fixes than enhancements: they should’ve been in the native software already.
Also, adding another designer note to your point #1: while there’s always been a coding standard for 3rd party devs, there’s… let’s just say there’s some UI standards that are being played fast and loose. When you have a strong design person (dare I even think team?), you could also release add-on UI conventions, just like Apple does with all their iPhone interface guidelines. Win-win. Brandon Kelly designs his add-ons like it was a natural extension of the software, and I think more devs should, too. But, it would be easier if there was interface guidelines developed in the first place.
Posted at 03:14 PM on October 13, 2010
Haha, I was formulating my comment the same time Colly was, methinks. Great minds…
Posted at 03:16 PM on October 13, 2010
not a dev, but i agree with these issues. We have 5 very custom EE 1.6 sites running, and i get tired of the issues, work arounds, and lack of support. I feel like I could go open source and get more support. I like the theory of EE2, but without a roadmap or seeing any movement, its hard for me to want to use it too much.
I fear being stranded on an island with no way off other than to jump the EE ship.
Posted at 03:16 PM on October 13, 2010
I can’t comment on everything addressed in this post, but I do agree with several points.
I’ve loved and used EE since day one and we recommend it to every one of our clients. But, one thing that Ellislab has failed to address is the method in which content is imported. We’ve brought this up time and again over the years and often feel it’s dismissed as unnecessary.
I beg to differ. It’s a real challenge lately to get clients converted over from Wordpress or any other platform, mostly because the import process is such a pain in the ass. I realize that bloggers are not the mainstay of EE, but many smaller blogs initially running on Blogger or Wordpress have grown over the years and these sites are looking to expand into more robust small business sites or communities. It would be a lot easier to sell EE if we didn’t have to jump through flaming hoops to get a client’s posts imported… at least in 1.6x (which I realize is no longer supported).
Perhaps it’s easier in EE2 and I’m just not hip to that information, but we’ve not moved our clients into EE2 yet because the add-ons weren’t available that we needed. Now they are, so we’ll be making that switch, but I can only hope that importing content has been made easier.
Are we the only ones with this issue?
Just my 2 cents.
Posted at 03:16 PM on October 13, 2010
Well done, Kenny, and with class.
If it weren’t for the community, I think EE days would be numbered. As Erwin has said, the add-on developer community is the positive side of EE.
Posted at 03:16 PM on October 13, 2010
Amen to everything. I love EE (1.6.X more so that 2.X at the moment), but with a few extra nudges in the right direction, I could love it so much more.
Plugins that should be default and minutae that would make day-to-day working are my biggest bugbears in 2.X - dropdowns for channels in Content>Publish, but not Content>Edit? Madness.
Posted at 03:20 PM on October 13, 2010
Kenny has ‘come out’ and said what I believe many of us have had on our minds for quite some time now.
That said, I do occasionally feel for EllisLab who are clearly struggling to cope with the explosion of demand for their product and limited resources, but there’s simply no excuse for the continued silence.
The best thing EllisLab can do at this point, in my opinion, is to be frank and honest about the situation, start a conversation with the community and collaborate on a real plan of action. Don’t be afraid to interact with your community.
Otherwise, there’s only so long people will put up with it before deciding to move onto a different product (and I know I’ve already started considering other solutions as have other developers I know).
Posted at 03:21 PM on October 13, 2010
I just got into EE a couple of weeks ago, so I am not sure if I should speak up here at all but even I noticed that a lot of bugs on the tracker aren’t being fixed, that a proper WYSIWYG editor is missing (and you can structure your data any way you want, you’ll need one eventually), that relationships are a great feature (one of the reasons I got into EE) but being able to only define one without add-ons (hacks?) is disappointing and that the CP UI is flawed in a couple of places.
Seeing that EE has such a skilled and dedicated (yet partly disappointed) community, I wonder why EllisLab is not turning to the community (paid or not) in order to submit patches, pitch new features and UI changes, work out a road map and all that. At this point and with this post being read by everyone in the EE community it can’t be about pride or whatever any more really.
Once again, I am not sure if I should even say it as I am new around here but maybe ‘the community’ should also stress that they/we are around to help, support and talk about all the problems and the future of EE. This post has great advice but at this point I think it might feel better for both sides to clearly demonstrate that both are up to work hard to solve this, together.
Posted at 03:25 PM on October 13, 2010
Well said Kenny!
I’m a huge fan of EE, but the EE2 release has been nothing but a limp biscuit. The critical issues with this release and the sheer lack of communication is really taking it’s toll.
Posted at 03:35 PM on October 13, 2010
I agree with all of the above.
Oh and please do something with pagination.
Posted at 03:48 PM on October 13, 2010
Kenny, very eloquently put Sir.
I think you have accurately captured the mood of the community, and perhaps this will become the line in the sand that we’d all like to see?
I owe a lot to the product, it has allowed me to bid and win work no doubt, but a continued dissatisfaction will turn it sour, and if clients don’t see improvements in the core product, its days will be numbered.
Let’s hope the excellent community can help EllisLab in making it an industry leader all over again.
This is a great first step.
Posted at 03:54 PM on October 13, 2010
Just an idea that popped into my head…
If EllisLab really does value the communities input, might I suggest that it be worth them considering setting up something like http://uservoice.com/ thereby allowing us to actually submit requests and vote on them as a community.
With a tool like that, it’d soon become clear what the community wants at large, the feedback would be focused in one area as opposed to scattered about on Twitter and random forum and blog posts which makes it very difficult to gauge the real demand for certain issues to be solved.
Posted at 04:04 PM on October 13, 2010
Kenny for President!
Posted at 04:06 PM on October 13, 2010
As echoed so many times here, I agree with basically everything Kenny says here as well.
Posted at 04:20 PM on October 13, 2010
I’d have to agree with the rest.
I’m growing tired of having to immediately shell out an extra $90 for Matrix and Wygwam every time I build a new site (which has become standard on almost every new site we build). No foul on Brandon Kelly, I appreciate his hard work and he deserves every dollar he makes—but as Brendon brought up in a previous comment, it seems like these have become core features which should have been implemented into EE already.
As another example, earlier today I was frustrated that I still have to enter image url’s into the category image field. I know there have been feature requests to make it a file field (which it obviously should be), but for some reason it’s not getting done, and my only hope seems to be waiting for developer to build an extension… and that sucks.
EE, we love you. You’ve made a lot of our lives a hellofalot easier. But please, don’t stop now.
Posted at 04:22 PM on October 13, 2010
Yes!
I’ve been worried the last year about the way EllisLab practically have sealed their lips while a noticeable increasing frustration have been rising bigger and bigger within the community.
Greatly done, sir Kenny. Hope there’s a proper response soon. Nothing else will do.
Posted at 04:28 PM on October 13, 2010
I agree with all of this. EE 2.0 has been mostly a disappointment after waiting, literally, years. I’m honestly tired of the process of having to buy 3 or 4 licenses from different sites and keep all of these different addons versioned up, etc. I certainly don’t want to take away from any addon developers because I believe their products are worth every penny but at the same time it’s amazing to me that much of this isn’t built into the core.
With all things considered, the real icing on the cake is the fact that the price has gone up as well. Seems weird for me to pay more for a product in which one if the main selling points is my ability to extend it. Shouldn’t it be cheaper if I’m going to have to either pay for other addons or develop them myself (addons that *should* be part of the EE core anyhow)?
I’ve been on the fence about EE for awhile and I’m glad to know I’m not alone. I hate being the only one saying “is it just me or is this kind of wack?”.
Hope that EL takes this opportunity to move their company in the right direction.
Posted at 04:34 PM on October 13, 2010
While I have more of a background in CodeIgniter I do understand and agree with most of the points made here. God knows I would kill to be that “CodeIgniter Developer” taking the framework forward for everyone to benefit from. I have spent every day building, hacking around and improving the framework for the last 3-4 years!
That said I believe EllisLab are a solid company with a damn good business plan. They make good work, slowly build, take things on board and get things done in their own time.
I have worked with every CMS under the sun and while many incorporate features and evolve quicker, they all end up becoming Microsoft style behemoths that include EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE and end up being an unmanageable mess.
EllisLab have always been about no roadmaps, and while this is currently infuriating the entire CodeIgniter community with the constant “When is CodeIgniter 2.0 coming out?” questions - very similar to the 2 years of “When is ExpressionEngine 2.0 coming out?” questions we all suffered before EECI2009 - I get it. As a developer of a relatively successful CMS myself the constant “Are we nearly there yet?” is a pain in the ass, but I’d rather I was 100% happy with a system than dumping out something that is half done.
EllisLab have a way to go with development cycles but those have all been recently addressed. I have every faith that EllisLab will turn these issues around and I am more than happy to dedicate 90% of my development career to their products as I have been doing for the last 4 years.
As long as they get my CI 2.0 changes into the core soon that is. ;-)
Posted at 04:34 PM on October 13, 2010
I agree with what a lot of people here have said, EllisLab just need to pull their head out of the sand and start communicating with the community more, some solid facts and release times would be nice too.
Posted at 04:56 PM on October 13, 2010
Excellent post! I hope Ellislab is listening. Frankly, I don’t care too much about the UI grieves of the control panel except for that pesky tab order bug. I think there has been already too much focus on the UI (making it pretty) and less on functionality. Some bugs are unacceptable, not what you would expect form software with enterprise level ambition. I have the feeling that too much gaps need to be filled by third party add-on developers. Since EE2 the number of add-ons for my base install has doubled. Not a good sign.
Overheard : “How is it possible that a core product got shipped with so many flaws whilst apparently there was time to develop MojoMotor. They should have focussed on EE2.”
But it’s not all bad. Coding appears to be a social thing. I have heard and seen a lot of great improvement ideas at the conference. A lot of people individually are trying to add the same kind of functionality with different approaches, e.g. the multilingual issues. Where other companies need to spend $$$ just to find the right people, there are plenty of competent developers within the EECI community that can tackle portions of what needs to be done.
Posted at 05:02 PM on October 13, 2010
Glad to know that I’m not alone. My design agency has a small but high-end roster of high-end clients, and we’ve been using EE exclusively and happily for several years now.
However, during the very early beta of EE 2.0, it became very clear that EE 2.0 was the beginning of a dead-end for us.
The decision to completely re-write the core on top of CodeIgniter, was interesting on a development front. However, to do so while hardly addressing any of the known weaknesses of the EE 1.x line, was at best self-indulgent.
“Look what we can make with our Framework!”.
I understand that this may help augment EE 2.0 in the future, but to leave the NECESSITY for a few dozen 3rd party addons, for basic functionality, and NOT provide an upgrade path which supported older addons, was a huge mistake.
So, our clients have over the years, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars combined, to develop some incredibly complex web sites and web applications, and we cannot provide an upgrade path.
And when EllisLab invariably issue the, “thanks, but we are no longer supporting EE 1.6.x”, as they have slowly started doing, where does that leave the large, complex sites built around their CMS?
EE 2.0 as mentioned above several times, does not really offer anything in terms of improved functionality, that would make it worth investing the time, money, and resources to upgrade our existing sites. Plus it’s not really possible due to missing 3rd party addons needed to run them.
From my continued tests on each release, it’s still not even ready for prime-time. I would not run a production site on EE 2.0.
If EllisLab is really just trying to go after more of a mass-market, they’ve missed the boat with EE 2.0, and left many of us in the dark. I would at least like to see paid support for larger, enterprise level sites / projects like the ones I’ve worked on.
Kenny, thanks for sharing.
Posted at 05:11 PM on October 13, 2010
I agree with everything regarding EllisLab’s communication. They need some sort of public roadmap. Timelines are not necessary, we just need to know what is on their radar. Transparency has been one of the biggest buzz words lately. People are expecting more transparency… but EllisLab isn’t delivering. I don’t expect to see their financial books, but just to know what they’re thinking, and where they’re taking their product that so many companies and developers rely on to make a living.
I blame MojoMotor for the lack of EE2 progress in the last few months. Granted I have no idea what their dev cycle is, but Derek coded most of MojoMotor and was also one of the main developers on EE2. Take one of those developers off a project, and of course it slows down and is neglected. To top it off Derek left EllisLab, and if his departure was like 99% of other employee departures, it probably took EllisLab by surprise, so now they are short staffed and have to find someone to replace Derek and are playing catch up.
I disagree with people’s statements about how 2.0 is not a step forward from 1.6 and doesn’t solve anything. I think those statements are coming from people who don’t actually make add-ons or know PHP. I think everything about 2.0 under the hood is better than 1.6, aside from the removal of a few key hooks (show_full_control_panel_end anyone?). Developers are in a better position, and as stated by EL early on 2.0 was meant to be a launch pad for the future, and not intended to have a ton of new features. The new features will come in 2.2, 2.3 etc. Yeah, 2.0 could use some UI refinements, but shit, 1.6 was worse in my opinion. I feel much more at home in 2.0 now and feel clumsy when I have to edit a 1.6 site. The Publish Layouts offer a huge amount of flexibility for simplifying and customizing the Publish page for clients, even if the concept is slightly flawed. So I made an add-on to improve upon it.
Also, stop complaining about having to rely on 3rd party add-ons such as Playa and Matrix. They should _not_ be part of the core. Just like Phil Sturgeon stated, if add-ons like that are incorporated into the core, it just becomes a bloated behemoth of a CMS, and more EllisLab needs to maintain, thus slower development cycles. The beauty of EE is it’s add-ons are solid, and generally so integrated they don’t really feel like add-ons (unlike Drupal and WP plugins). There are a few black sheep that insist on using their own UI, and for that I don’t use them.
Adam Smith: That category image upload thing has been one of the longest standing feature requests from what I’ve heard.
Posted at 05:30 PM on October 13, 2010
@Brian - I think the reason people keep complaining about having to rely on 3d party add-ons is due to the price tag on EE. If it were $100, fair enough. $300 for a CMS without even the *option* for basic WYSIWYG editing (not wrapping words in a tag) is a bit much.
I could be wrong but I don’t think that people are expecting to have Matrix, Wygwam and Structure standard (although being able to buy some of those core, popular addons with the EE package would be great).
Posted at 05:59 PM on October 13, 2010
Mike, I was in that exact same boat a few months ago. We just tell our clients the EE license is $600. For every site we buy EE, Matrix, Structure, and Playa, and have a little extra for another add-on or two. Not a single client has flinched or questioned it. If you’re doing a $20-80k or higher site, the small license fees are almost laughable.
Again, if those add-ons were offered by EllisLab a la carte like MSM, it’s yet another 20,000+ lines of code they have to support, thus slowing down their main product.
Posted at 06:09 PM on October 13, 2010
I totally understand what your saying Brian, and agree. It amuses me that things like ip to nation and emoticons make it into the core product, while others ( which are seemingly more important) don’t.
Posted at 06:21 PM on October 13, 2010
@Phil Sturgeon - I think the majority would like a roadmap, not necessarily a timeline.
Posted at 06:23 PM on October 13, 2010
Amazingly well put Kenny. Thank you. I agree on every single point.
Posted at 06:31 PM on October 13, 2010
Brian: if EllisLab can’t handle supporting additional code with their current team, they should hire more developers - easy. Like others have pointed out before, getting tons of add-ons and keeping all of them up-to-date just puts more work on your customers and that’s definitely not the solution.
Providing a WYSIWYG editor in a $299 CMS and turning a ‘relationship’ feature into ‘relationships’ has nothing to do with bloat, not at all. And as I have recently written my own add-ons to cover these two things in basic ways, it’s much less than 1000 lines of code, even. Not sure if I’d even consider adding/modifying these functions ‘add-ons’, it’s more like hacks and tweaks. (Also as far as I can see Phil’s very own CMS has a WYSIWYG editor too, now what.)
Posted at 06:36 PM on October 13, 2010
I am glad to see this post and comment thread, as I’m frustrated by EllisLab’s plan for our (web developers / designers / content managers) transition from EE 1.6x to EE 2.x.
We were really on a roll for a while with EE 1.6 being a great match for the web CMS projects we do for our clients, but we have not been able to find a way to get that momentum to rollover to EE 2.x—we just don’t find EE 2.x to be as workable yet as EE 1.6.
So, we probably will find a way to use EE 2 for some projects in the future. But, while we’re waiting to find a good match between our clients and EE 2, we’re already using other engines / CMSs. Our clients aren’t waiting for EE, and they’re perfectly happy to use something else that does the job.
I admire the folks at EllisLab a lot, for what they do. But, unfortunately, I feel like they’ve fallen out of step from where people like me (using EE since 2004) expected EE to be now.
Posted at 06:37 PM on October 13, 2010
What a crafted piece of work. Being my first year using EE I cannot speak personally on the missteps of EE1 as I only skimmed the surface before diving into EE2.
My two increasing concerns with the product have been lack of communication from the producers and the acute degree of it’s design. From a purely aesthetic view, its too little too late. We need more now.
If I solicited a clients opinion they would say it’s good because everything that is not bad is good unless you see better. EE needs to be better than good by hiring a full time designer as suggested above. Simple details would make a great start. Take a look at look at NSM Morphine CP Theme by Leevi Graham. It’s ‘simply’ beautiful. Imagine what full time developer with a fresh approach could accomplish?
My second concern is flow of communication. It reminds me of a childhood fish tank globe. A motionless self contained eco-system. The culture code is perfect example as well as WordPress’s approach for a better approach. People like to know what’s going on in their communities otherwise they will move, having been give no reason to stay.
Don’t say your wrong, just do right.
Posted at 06:52 PM on October 13, 2010
Add one more co-signer to this list, especially in regards to the appearance and experience of the backend. User experience matters as much as good code. What does it matter that software can do amazing things if the end user can’t effective use the tools that are supposed to make amazing things happen?
It’s already been mentioned here at least once, but for a product that costs as much as it does and took as long as it did to get to us, it’s absurd how many EE2 add-ons are meant to fix things rather than add functionality.
Solspace’s User is a great example. It provides a great way to do member templates, but to be sure, it’s just doing a much better job with something that EE already does. (And since User was around and popular for EE1.6, that should’ve been a big signal to EllisLab while they planned out EE2.) I shouldn’t have to shell out $99 for something that should be core functionality. And what if EE’s popularity wanes to the point where Solspace can’t make money with User sales? I don’t want to be stuck in that situation.
Tagging functionality is another one. Name another CMS that doesn’t come with tags as a core feature.
Steve Abraham hit the nail on the head. It’s really the community that keeps me here. EllisLab may be struggling to cope with demand, but that explanation only makes sense in the short term. What explains the long-term frustrations we’ve had with EllisLab? And what explains the length of time it took to get EE2 out the door? It’s been over two and a half years since the EE2 preview… they’ve had time to get more people working on this.
Many of my heroes in this community have lamented here. I hope EllisLab understands that these aren’t the usual moans of a bunch of customers. These are the pleas of a loyal community who has long championed their product and is now looking for alternatives. We’re worried about the long-term viability of Expression Engine. And as soon as that exodus begins, they’ve lost one of the main reasons most of us are still around.
(That said, I don’t want it to just become a popularity contest in terms of features by using something like Uservoice. I still want someone with a proper vision guiding the whole thing, and there’s huge value in holding caution against feature bloat. But simply regarding the core, EllisLab needs more devs and designers working on it, and they need to be way better about communication with us.)
Posted at 07:13 PM on October 13, 2010
@Christopher: Thanks for the NSM Morphine shout out!
Posted at 07:16 PM on October 13, 2010
Looks like I’m late to the party… but here, here!
I’ve been a full-time EE developer for five years now and have worked on hundreds of project ranging from bitty sites to large big brand sites. I was very content with v1.6.x but eagerly looked forward to v2. When I installed the first beta version released to developers, I remember saying out loud “this is it?’. I was really disappointed. Since that day I’ve avoided v2 completely, preceding instead to stick with v1.6. Recently I started a project where I had no choice but to use v2. I was instantly frustrated. Enough so that I started a “hate.txt” file that now has about 40 Items listed. I even started to think about finding a new CMS.
I will continue to pick v1.6 over v2 for the foreseeable future if I have the choice… or it might be time to move on.
EL, don’t hire one full-time developer, hire ten! Get these bugs fixed. Get se innovation momentum going.
I appreciate the desire to want to grow slowly and to keep things all lovey dovey. But it’s not practical. It’s living in the past a little too much. Time to step up and start running a well oiled, high energy, fast moving software company that can keep up with us developers!
On a final note, the lack of image uploading for category images speaks volumes to the disconnect between what EL wants to build and what devs want. We have asked for this for years.
Kenny, you rock.
Fellow devs, you all rock too.
Anna
I agree with most comments posted by fellow developers.
Posted at 07:27 PM on October 13, 2010
As nearly everyone above has said: well done, Kenny.
I’ve been developing with EE for about three years now, mostly 1.6.x but have three projects with 2.x under my belt. It’s a great tool. While I’ve only interacted with Leslie once, at the EE Roadshow that was held in Seattle last year, I walked away from that conversation impressed by the company he was representing.
I agree that some sort of public feedback would be nice and am pleased that, judging from their tweet, that EllisLab’s is reading this. But I think progress / development is far more important. Give us regular as possible releases and try to let us know when the next one will come out (“we’re committed to new builds coming out every four to six weeks”). We’re developers, we know there might be / will be some delays so it if takes four to seven weeks, we’ll understand.
http://twitter.com/#!/EllisLab/status/27279742435
Posted at 07:51 PM on October 13, 2010
yes, yes, and YES.
i may have missed a yes.
Posted at 07:56 PM on October 13, 2010
As everyone else has said, very well thought out articulated.
To echo one of the issues that others have raised, I still can’t understand how a WYSIWYG editor and multiple relationships aren’t in EE2. I have no problem with third party developers making a living by providing useful tools to the community that might otherwise bloat EE (after all, we set aside $500 for every EE project that we work on), but some things are a no brainer.
Posted at 08:19 PM on October 13, 2010
As I am agreeing with most of the above, it must be stated that EE (no matter whether EE1 or EE2) gives us as designers a flexibility that is second to none. And that is a feature that is worth gold.
Posted at 09:09 PM on October 13, 2010
Well done Kenny for raising common sentiments lately with in our community.
Posted at 09:18 PM on October 13, 2010
Wow…Excellent post and great comments. I agree with most and see a lot of familiar EE users have piped in.
I had several paragraphs composed but they’re mostly issues we’ve all had and discussed, or bitched about, for almost ever and nothing ever changes. Many of them brought up here in the comments.
A couple of biggies I’ll note though…
I’ve never felt EL (exec staff anyway) really listens to it’s community even though they pay homage. It’s a “we always know more and always know better” attitude. Could just be a communications problem but I’m not entirely sure.
The reliance on add-ons has gotten out of hand and kind of ridiculous. Many absolutely need to be incorporated into the base product. The CI is the underpinnings means nothing to me, it’s the functions/features that count and the base has stagnated.
I’m still a big EE supporter but am always hopeful that at some point EL will get the message that many out here have been sending for quite some time. If not, it might be time to move on - Tough decision and I’m hoping I don’t need to make it.
Posted at 10:25 PM on October 13, 2010
Even though EllisLab will have a few bruises after today, it shows we still care as a community.
They should worry when there is silence.
Posted at 10:47 PM on October 13, 2010
Anyone who thinks any good will come of this needs to read this EE Forums thread from TWO YEARS AGO. None of our complaints are new in any way. And EllisLab was “listening” to its customers then, just as they say they’re going to “Acknowledge, Identify, React” now. In the end, the reaction will be—as it has consistently been—to smile, nod, and continue to dismiss critics and critical opinions as mean, misinformed, drunk (!), or otherwise not worthy of respect.
Maybe that works when what you ship is insanely great, but when it’s clearly deficient it kind of rankles.
EllisLab: The people making these criticisms of you are your FRIENDS. Just imagine what your enemies, or the indifferent masses, must think of you and the way you interact with the community.
Posted at 11:01 PM on October 13, 2010
@Brendon
While I appreciate your commenting and reading here, your comments have shifted from criticism to attack. This doesn’t help anything or anyone. Please watch your wording, while avoiding the capslock key.
Thank you.
Posted at 11:06 PM on October 13, 2010
I agree with so many comments it’s not even funny. And I thought I was turning into a traitor, or something.
On top of the Kenny’s awesome post Erwin Heiser’s comment especially made me go “YES, YES, YES!”
I’m all for add-on developers making money and maybe even a living, but there are basic features that SHOULD DEFINITELY be part of EE2. It’s almost 2011. Seriously, guys?! I don’t care if you bump up the price by another $50, Wysiwyg + Structure are basic needs for any serious CMS.
Yes most of my clients don’t mind paying the EE license and the same amount for various basic add-ons, but I still feel they should be part of the core. To make the product better and to make upgrades work better. Just imagine if they came with EE how much more you guys could be making, if you’re saying money is the issue. Hire three new developers and charge more for a better product. Just make sure it works and that it’s better!
There are definitely a ton of things EE has over WP, but I don’t get how so many EE fan boys play WP down and praise EE. Out of the box WP gives you Htaccess system that works, Wysiwyg that works, navigation tool that works, comments, URL structures, pages, posts, tags, categories… it’s all there, instantly and for free. And don’t even get me started with Flickr, Twitter, sharing etc.
Hope this results in a clear roadmap and EE3 will convince all of us and prove EL still makes the best CMS.
Posted at 11:15 PM on October 13, 2010
I’ve no intention to take money away from 3rd party developers but “Employ Brandon” and include all his addons as standard would fix most of the issues I have with EE2.
Along with Levi and Stephen Lewis I think they have the keenest sense of what makes a good UI and good addon too.
Perhaps EL could have a community council that provides some feedback and guides development as the community sees it?
Posted at 11:27 PM on October 13, 2010
All I want is what you want, Kenny. So I thank you for your authorship on this important topic, and I’ll take your suggestion.
Posted at 11:29 PM on October 13, 2010
Let me start off by saying Kenny this article was well written and I hope that EllisLab will take this to heart more so then they have with other complaints that people have posed. There is something to be said about a thoughtful argument.
Having said that I have taken my time to respond so that I didn’t have another EEMatrix comment.
EllisLab we want you to communicate with us and we want you to do it regularly and organically. We don’t want fluff saying that you appreciate our honesty if you are not going to do anything about what we commented on. Don’t pay us lip service, we see through it. Show us you heard our concerns with progress and we will thank you for it. I know that it is to early for you to show us how you are going to respond to this discussion but trust me we will remember this discussion.
Communicate with us where we are, don’t make us come to you. I can only speak for myself here but I only going to your site now if I need to download/purchase a copy of EE or I have a bug to report, now that add-on based support is handled elsewhere (but that is a different debate). I do however have my Twitter feed open almost all day and I frequent EE Insider and Devot-ee. Why is that? Each one provides an instant way for me to be a part of the conversation. Speaking of Twitter maybe a few less RT’s and some more EllisLab original content, we have EEHub and EEHash to RT the latest news about EE.
We are tired of hearing how the transition to EE2 was hard and we do not doubt that it was but it has been long enough that you no longer need that crutch. The community needs you to get back on the horse and start fixing the problems from the hard transition. I would rather be 30 build releases behind because you are pushing updates for every few little fixes then be waiting weeks to have an update because you wanted to have 20+ bug fixed before you put out a new version. If you were shipping a CD with software on it I could see why you would want to take that approach, but you don’t so push the little updates and push them often. Look at the CartThrob team their Commit feed has at least an update every other day and often multiple in a single day.
I am going to wrap it up now. We as a community want to want to hear from you EllisLab and regularly. We want to know what you are up to, we want to see updates and we want to know that when we repeatedly bring something up that it is not falling on death ears. We need to know that you are 100% behind ExpressionEngine because many of pay our bills using it. I don’t think you will quite the community by writing a blog post about the changes you are making unless it include real world results of the changes you have made.
PS - I would really like to see the sidebar in EE2 remember across multiple tabs/sessions if I had it collapsed or open.
Posted at 11:41 PM on October 13, 2010
As more or less everyone else already stated, I think it’s a really well written article. And, I do agree with more or less all of Kenny’s opinions.
For us, as a business, ExpressionEngine still fits in perfectly compared to more or less everything else and we’re very happy with the customizable publish pages (even if they’re still a bit buggy) and the revised method of saving templates to disk in 2.1—despite the long wait.
I do also agree with @Erwin Heiser’s opinion about add-ons, a lot of things are perfect for add-ons (and I have no trouble paying for good ones) but there are some things that really should be in core. Things that just makes sense, since it would make upgrading a lot easier when you have a lot of client sites running.
There’s a lot of good opinions in here, from people that been around for a long time in the community and who love working with the product, so I hope that this can inspire EllisLab to take it to the next level.
At the end of the day, most of us use EE because it makes sense both business wise and development wise—if Django, or something other, would be a better match in two years time I think people will move along.
Posted at 01:15 AM on October 14, 2010
A much needed and constructive ‘intervention’.
I won’t add to the points above as I think it’s all been said (tranparency, tranparency, tranparency!).
What I would like to suggest is that this conversation branches elsewhere to discuss the merits of alternatives to EE. Any of you devs with blogs want to host that?
I’m a big fan of EE and it will remain my CMS of choice for the time being - mainly because I’ve not found anything better. But if Ellis Labs is “running on fumes” as I heard suggested recently then it’s time to make a backup plan.
Posted at 01:42 AM on October 14, 2010
I still think the best alternative to EE2 is if EllisLab listens to its community and gets onto fixing and extending EE2 straightaway.
Posted at 02:13 AM on October 14, 2010
Well i figure if everyone and his aunt is going to have his 5 cents then i may as well too.
The re-engineer of EE to sit on codeigniter 2 is a wondrous thing for me personally and to my mind the most important thing for EE2 to have had. I (and others) can now develop for EE much more easily and quickly. Has EE2 come out prematurely? Maybe. Am i glad it’s out so i can work with it? You betcha!
I totally agree that some addons should be in the core that instead have to be paid for, however, i feel that soon the time will come where there wont simply be one commercial developer offering a addon that everyone needs. There will be a choice of free and commercial options for relationship type addons or field grid type addons so you’re not beholden to paying an extra $300 for every new project if you don’t want to. I don’t think that future is far away either.
As for the communication from ellislab, well i agree it’s lacking. If you say you’re looking at something you need to keep people abreast of it’s progress and not just make it seem that your responses are throw away comments.
People need to have trust and confidence in a product they pay for, if it’s not there people will naturally question it’s quality, direction and ultimately value to them. I’m not surprised in the slightest that people are looking at other options now as the confidence and trust seems to be ebbing away.
The End (i hope not anyway)
Posted at 02:21 AM on October 14, 2010
Most of everything I was going to say has already been said so I’m not going to harp back over all that again.
Sufficed to say I’m disappointed too in the forums and EE2. Locking off old topics and not allowing developers to use the forums as they used to do was definitely the thing which has stopped me from visiting anywhere near as much as I used to. I did have a personal crisis which also stopped me from visiting for a while but once that was over then the way the forums had changed pretty much sealed my fate.
On to EE2 and yes whilst there are tons of add-one that are missing, this is for me more because developers (myself included) haven’t updated them for EE2. Most of what was in 1.6.x is in 2.0 although I have to say I personally won’t be using it for some time yet. This is because I haven’t really gelled with it yet.
Some of that is due to missing functionality but mostly I just don’t want all the flashy stuff in the admin panel and without that I really don’t see 2.0 as much of an upgrade.
I really hope that EllisLab can address all of these issues. I’m sure they can but until then I’m going to have to stick with what I know best which is 1.6.x so please EllisLab don’t go pulling the plug on it fully just yet.
Posted at 02:41 AM on October 14, 2010
Mmmmm, link bait.
Tasty, tasty, painfully accurate link bait.
Posted at 02:42 AM on October 14, 2010
Huge thanks to Kenny for this article. It almost perfectly expresses what many developers feel.
The whole story of EE2 was a series of one disappointment after another for me. When I was invited to join preview it was so buggy, CP so slow and UI with so many inconsistencies that it felt rather as alpha and not beta at all. Much time went through, many bugs were fixed, CP became more responsive but as a whole EE2 now feels as beta and not as production ready software.
Here are my major concerns:
1. CP is still too slow, still noticeably slower than EE1.x CP.
2. EE2 still too buggy and important bugs are not fixed quickly enough. Releases containing important bug fixes should happen much more often.
3. EE2 introduced unnecessary limitations compared to EE1.x
Much used hook “show_full_control_panel_end” was removed. Developers now must rely on hacks in order to port older extensions or in order to change some aspects of CP. The news that many add-ons will be not portable to EE2 without using hacks came as a real shock to me. When I and other developers were asking EllisLab to return this hook the answer was in effect that some developers went too creative changing too much of the way CP is functioning, and that such interventions are dangerous and not really needed.
Dear EllisLab, “show_full_control_panel_end” is probably the most used hook and if overworked developers are writing extensions which use it instead of doing something else it means that it is vitally needed!
4. Not providing compatibility layer for EE1.x add-ons was and still is a big mistake. Of course, some add-ons, e.g. those who make changes in CP, in principle could not work in EE2. But others can be made to work in EE2 using compatibility layer. It is strange that EE2 was architectured without having in mind that such layer should be one of its most important components.
5. A next one big surprise might be coming - adding of “final” declarations to EE2 classes. This feature was not discussed with developers; all we know is a passing reference to it in this forum post. Adding “final” declarations might break some add-ons. Is this feature really needed? When it will be introduced? - EE community knows nothing about it.
6. No Gallery module in EE2 and no smooth way to transition content created using that module to EE2. This also came as a surprise and this is simply unacceptable.
EE 1.x was too early relegated to “legacy” status. I should not be considered this way until EE community feels sure that EE2 is a success. And for EE2 to be a success major points which is discussed in Kenny’s article and in the following thread should be fixed and fixed without delays at the same time communicating openly with the community.
I’m loyal EE community member and I believe in the wisdom of basing EE2 on CI backend but the road to EE2 was so bumpy and communication between EllisLab and developers so superficial that I almost lost my faith in EE2 success.
ELlisLab has hardly listened to community members except when the topic concerned bugs. One very representative example would be this: how many times developers complained that they hate to click Content > Edit in CP and asked to return Publish and Edit tabs as in EE1.x? It’s a minor change which would make many of us more happy. But nobody listened. Maybe EllisLab team likes this feature, but one may ask to whom EE is being developed - to EllisLab team who likes it or to its customers who hate it? And there are many other examples analogous to this which might suggest that EllisLab team lost direction.
I hope it have not but to be sure much should be changed in EE2 development and in the style of communicating between EllisLab and EE community.
Posted at 03:28 AM on October 14, 2010
I’m also in agreement with all of the above especially Lea’s post about importing from other CMS’s it’s a major PITA at this point.
Posted at 04:25 AM on October 14, 2010
Wow, I didn’t realise that so many *names* in the EE community felt the same as I do. all my points and concerns about EE have been raised above so I won’t go over them again.
However, my overriding feeling is that if there wasn’t such a strong EE community then the product would have bit the dust by now.
Posted at 04:29 AM on October 14, 2010
I hear ya Kenneth. I’ve been spending a lot more time in EE2 than I ever have lately, and while I enjoy lots of the improvements, it feels nowhere near as solid as version 1 did. EllisLab’s opaqueness has been pretty dang maddening. Far more than ever before, I hear veterans of the platform searching for something better.
EllisLab seems to be experiencing the pains of growth and not really dealing with it very well, but there’s still plenty of chance for them to turn things around. Here’s hoping for the best!
Posted at 04:49 AM on October 14, 2010
Let’s not turn this debate into another feature request thread. As Jamie Pittock said, it’s not about features or lack thereof. That’s the byproduct of a much more important issue: EllisLab’s current communication policy. Their current stance of silence can be perceived as apathetic or even arrogant, whilst I’m sure that this isn’t what they wish to purvey.
If they weren’t already aware, this discussion will certainly make them realize that what we would like to see, no, what we need to see, is a profound change in their mentality. We need EllisLab’s communication to be open, candid, honest and frequent, so we can get a sense of direction and gain trust in the company and product so many of us rely on on a daily basis.
Once communications have been restored, technical shortcomings will be handled appropriately.
Posted at 05:00 AM on October 14, 2010
At this point, most every thought I’ve had has been covered in a comment somewhere, but I do think that three things stand out as almost “must haves” for EE to grow, and are worth reiterating:
1. A dedicated designer
I would love to see the CP design see small visual refinements every few releases. ExpressionEngine is already known as an easy-to-use and powerful CMS, what if it were also known as one of the most beautiful? Some progressive modifications to the CP, posted for feedback to Dribbble, could really boost the popularity of the system, and make it easier on the eyes.
2. An effective user feedback system
Uservoice.com is a great tool that could be used by EllisLab to find out what the community as a whole really cares about. The forums are nice, but they are a bit outdated of a technology when better solutions are out there. They could even roll out something like uservoice within EE itself. Just provide a community-powered way to rank feature requests.
3. A roadmap
This one plays off of the previous one, but anything that rises to the top of the user feedback system, should have a status on the roadmap (much like Cultured Code), or at least be addresses as to why it isn’t implemented. Just keep up informed as to what is going on, and what is coming down the line.
—
At $300 a pop, the system is still a good deal, but it feels a little stagnant.
Posted at 05:05 AM on October 14, 2010
What’s been said up-thread.
Short version: I regret updating two of my licenses to EE2, I’ll continue to run my sites on EE1 until that’s no longer feasible, and along the way make a decision whether it’s worth upgrading to EE2 or to migrate to WP or back to Drupal.
I’m more of a user/blogger and I couldn’t have cared less about the advantages of the CI rewrite for developers. From my point of view, EE has stagnated (if not regressed) for something like three years while other platforms have improved vastly. A couple of my fellow bloggers have recently migrated from EE to WP, in part because of EE’s stagnation.
I could vent more, but I’ll spare you.
Posted at 05:46 AM on October 14, 2010
I am not currently using EE very much but I use CodeIgniter daily. I agree 100% it needs some form of more community involvement and I would nominate Phil in a heart beat.
It is frustrating to submit pull requests then never hear anything. A simple ““your idea is stupid” is better to me than nothing.
The good thing about CI is that it is open source and can be forked which I have been hearing more and more folks wanting to do.
Posted at 05:49 AM on October 14, 2010
Likewise. EECI Leiden was my first EE event other than some local meetups and I was quite shocked at the absence of anyone but Leslie Flinger, and how little she was able (allowed?) to contribute.
Coming so soon after SF, I didn’t expect any huge announcements, but a little more on the roadmap would have been useful and comforting.
We’re trying to ditch a number of other systems at the moment to consolidate on EE2 for new developments, but I have to admit to being increasingly nervous about it.
Mojomotor made that worse, not better, it just looked like a huge distraction. I’m sure it has a role but the market who want a $50 CMS is so different from people like myself and many here who are pushing EE to professional organisations it can’t do anything but draw away already scant resources. If the aim is to draw more people into the EE community, fix that directly with an easy entry level license like 1.6 had.
We’ve heard so often that the best thing about EE is the community, and long may that continue, but Ellis Lab now need to catch up a bit. This is supposed to be a commercially supported, not community supported product, and the number of add-ons that are really fixes that should be in the core is way too big.
Posted at 05:53 AM on October 14, 2010
Thanks, Kenny, for writing this post. Your suggestions mirror those that have come up in conversations at the past few Boston ExpressionEngine meetups. I hope EllisLab is listening.
Posted at 06:20 AM on October 14, 2010
+1 for uservoice by the way. An ecommerce platform I used to use had it in place and it was excellent. The EE community could then see what’s being done by EllisLab and focus development efforts where they’re not.
Posted at 06:28 AM on October 14, 2010
We are.
I can appreciate that similar communication in the past douses the efficacy of my latest entry, but such a blog post was necessary. I can’t communicate that we’re waking up to the reality of the struggles of our growth without, well, communicating it. But I also appreciate that it is our actions from here going forward that are going to define whether my post is later viewed as platitudes or a notification of change.
Thanks Kenny.
Posted at 06:32 AM on October 14, 2010
Another one “late to the party” but what’s been discussed here I can generally empathise with.
I get the impression that the growth in customers has left EL way understaffed to cope with the volume of work that adds. Looking at the forums I see support requests go unanswered for more than 24 hours each and every day, the support team do an excellent job but 6 or 7 of them probably isn’t enough to cope with the volume, and that’s not including email and off forum support.
Despite it’s niggles, EE is still an excellent platform to work with. Sure it suffers from too much [pointless] javascript bling in the Control Panel, and the UI isn’t brilliant but I’ve not had any clients complain about it.
My biggest fear is that EL don’t address these issues sooner rather than later. To my mind we should be seeing job openings right now for at least one developer to help with tidying things up, and extra support staff to cope with the extra demand.
Posted at 06:46 AM on October 14, 2010
I love EE and helped several designer start using it, but this post a thousand times yes! I’ll be giving a lecture to other designers about EE some time in the near future and I’d like to know I’m still recommending the best product out there.
Posted at 06:54 AM on October 14, 2010
Derek—If it takes you six more months to show drastic improvement, many of us will no longer be here. If it takes you two more years, probably EllisLab will no longer be here. Good luck!
Posted at 06:58 AM on October 14, 2010
dog pile on kenny!
well said, sir. well said.
Posted at 07:04 AM on October 14, 2010
I imagine this has been mentioned in previous comments but I will mention anyway.
I thank EllisLab for providing such a flexible CMS, for a reasonable price, that being said…
EllisLab probably does make a list of feature requests that are submitted but in my opinion, they should create a page that lists changes they are working on and an anticipated date for when it will be released.
There are a handful of common features that are not included out of box, which make me scratch my head about.
I am very thankful for all the EE add-on developers, they truly make EE worth using, otherwise EE would fall short.
I know you listen to your community, which is a huge reason why I love EE, but you need to put into action what the community wants, sure, the community can not dictate EllisLab, but when there is a lot of chatter about some of the common sense features EE is lacking, EllisLab should be pro-active, by either identifying the exact features they are lacking and giving a approximate timeline for when they will be added to the next release.
Posted at 07:08 AM on October 14, 2010
Great post well written Kenny. <3
+1
Posted at 07:22 AM on October 14, 2010
Wow, I actually read the whole post and all the comments. That rarely happens this days.
Excellent post Kenny, and as most of the people above I agree completely. I hope, and do think, that EllisLab will listen. But will they be able to react? Time will tell.
My thoughts summed up; I think they made a great choice for the future when moving to CI for EE 2.0. MojoMotor was a miss imo; they should’ve focused on EE2. And yes, we need a system for feature request where we can get actual feedback on the requests. Also, bugs that are clearly bugs should be handled even though they might be consistent with 1.x behaviour (“meant to work that way”).
But all in all I think EE is a unique product with a great community, I’d hate to see that go away.
Posted at 07:38 AM on October 14, 2010
Spot on, now lets hope Ellis Labs rises to the challenge.
Posted at 08:01 AM on October 14, 2010
Since one of Kenny’s grieves are about UX problems and the CP needing a designer eye I felt that I needed to clarify a few things about my involvement in the design process of EE2.
Posted at 08:05 AM on October 14, 2010
Feeling some sense of relief in reading this piece Kenny, thanks.
After using and loving EE for a couple of years now, many times I would just endure the lack of information coming from Ellis Labs and continue to reassure myself they knew what they were doing with the product.
That was ok for a while, but when it carried on, each EE blog “update” post I read just created a bit more pessimism in me about where EE was headed.
Re: The Designer. I agree completely and as someone who used to make his own cp themes, the EE2 css completely stopped me from continuing this work. It’s so inefficient and bloated it’s just not worth the effort, and I don’t like saying that as I’m not one to give up easily when faced with challenging work.
Documentation: Another source of lack of communication.
Most of the time it is incomplete, not clearly written and often straight copy/paste from other areas. Google search provides more help in finding answers than the in house documentation.
Lastly, the community. I love the EE community and have always been frustrated in the EE forums that there wasn’t more activity and involvement.
It was places like Colly’s Jambor-ee and Boyink’s site that I really used to learn a lot from in the early days. Now there are many more EE community sites which fill in the support gaps.
Here’s to hoping that this articulate, well written post and the massive amount of insightful comments shakes some stiffness out of EL. I can’t imagine using anything other than EE. Unless I have to.
Posted at 08:07 AM on October 14, 2010
Nice post.
I do agree on most of the comments made but not on point 1. Yes, the control panel has it shortcomings (although Veerle did a very nice design job) but it is a big improvement compared to version 1 in my belief and it’s not the number 1 priority.
Ellislab really needs additional development capacity. Most of the EE community are designers but that is exactly the reason why development needs to increase in quantity and quality. Ellislab needs to enable its community to focus on their design and get them as far as possible away from technical stuff (without limiting the graphical creativity) and therefore you need additional development and developers, not just one.
The only way that can be done is to get rid of certain technical design mistakes from the past and add all core functionality to the core system, to avoid reliance on add-ons for really basic stuff. Yes, this will clash with certain older versions of the system and make the upgrade path less evident and it will clash with certain add-on developers too, providing currently the basics through their add-ons. Alternatively Ellislab could think of acquiring a few of those add-ons and integrating them in the core.
They should leave behind the “it’s done when it’s done” strategy as most of us now already that you should never judge an application based on its roadmap. But it is very necessary for us all to know where Ellislab is heading to. Ellislab should publish its roadmap for the next 3 months without trying to hit for aggressive timelines, but give the community insight in its plans and create momentum. They’ll only need 2 releases in time to convince most of us again of their strategy.
In other word, Ellislab will need to be brave and it will in the end disappoint a few people maybe, but that is for the good and many of us will benefit from it.
Posted at 08:08 AM on October 14, 2010
Clint: Credit for Jambor-ee goes to Jamie Pittock. I was merely a guest author.
Posted at 08:10 AM on October 14, 2010
I’m sad to return to the EE community after a 2 year hiatus only to find it in disrepair.
All of my clients have complained about the clunky UI passing as a control panel. This is what happens when you get an engineer to do a graphic designer’s job. Has there been no user-acceptance-testing? If there has, what kind?
Does the templating engine have exception handling and template debugging yet? Does EE still throw you _blank_ (zero output) when something goes wrong in your template?
From what I have seen briefly, the changes between V1 and V2 are negligible. What is the justification for charging an upgrade fee to V1 users?
People need to see tangible change that matters.
The competition is moving ahead. Wordpress is now becoming somewhat of an “industry standard”. Which is a shame really.
Posted at 08:20 AM on October 14, 2010
Good Post. I agree.
We made the decision to move to EE2 regardless of the bugs, however, we have spent recent months describing 2.1 as a beta to clients. We shouldn’t have to do this but it provides us with breathing space until bug fixes (hopefully) come along.
Of all the points, number 3 struck home the most. Just to have some transparency with the on-going development would help a great deal.
Posted at 08:30 AM on October 14, 2010
Step one should be the near-immediate creation of a small working group (<7) of devs responsible for critical addons, plus key vendor staff (including Rick Ellis) to reshape the communication process, plan coordination of addons/core, consider future path of support and publish informal roadmap. Actions. Schedule. Actions. Schedule.
Of course, this is commercial software and EllisaLab makes all final calls. But a developer board is a no-brainer win-win for EllisLab first of all. Whether it has that name is irrelevant. Absent the functional reality, not even enhanced ‘transparency’ will turn the tide.
Alas, increased ‘communication’ will slow down, not accelerate, coding so desperately sought (for devs as well as staff). Devs can be incented directly or indirectly for their help.
Reducing bandwidth noise while rebuilding trust will become the next challenge. That’s show-biz. Runaway success is a bitch.
Posted at 08:34 AM on October 14, 2010
Count me in for participating on a developer’s board!
Other ideas…
Get the feature requests out there so we can start voting. Get this done this weekend.
Next, start getting the community to help fix bugs and add new features. There are very solid coders here. Though EE is commercial, treat it as quasi open source. Let us start helping whip this into shape! In a way, we know what the software needs more then your inside team. We use it every day in a ton of different situations. You have the code guidelines posted, so let us at it! You be the filter and implement into core code.
Next, start releasing quicker builds for these bug fixes.
Next, start categorizing support requests so you know where the problems in the software are… and start fixing those problems to reduce support requests.
Next, do a thorough rewrite of the docs… error on the side of more. Use the info from the support categorization to understand what’s missing… or better yet, turn the support docs into a Wiki. Let us do the work!
Anna
Posted at 08:44 AM on October 14, 2010
Agree with everything.
You’ll have to prise 1.6.x from my cold dead hands - fast brilliant CMS, with my custom hacks here and there.
EE 2.0 - a grave disappointment. It would be a stupid business decision to upgrade at this point.
Posted at 08:45 AM on October 14, 2010
Laisvunas caught my sentiments above - I am a user, not a developer - but I count on devs to give us what EllisLab doesn’t…and that has usually been fine. No big deal. But two points he made stick out:
—————————————-
3. EE2 introduced unnecessary limitations compared to EE1.x
Much used hook “show_full_control_panel_end” was removed. Developers now must rely on hacks in order to port older extensions or in order to change some aspects of CP. The news that many add-ons will be not portable to EE2 without using hacks came as a real shock to me. When I and other developers were asking EllisLab to return this hook the answer was in effect that some developers went too creative changing too much of the way CP is functioning, and that such interventions are dangerous and not really needed.
Dear EllisLab, “show_full_control_panel_end” is probably the most used hook and if overworked developers are writing extensions which use it instead of doing something else it means that it is vitally needed!
6. No Gallery module in EE2 and no smooth way to transition content created using that module to EE2. This also came as a surprise and this is simply unacceptable.
———————————-
Point 3 is a big one for us. In a nutshell, now when we work with the EE devs who we’ve counted on to give us the things that EllisLab leaves out, the answer we get as far as EE2 is that “the hook for that is missing” or “we aren’t sure when we will be able to port that to EE2 due to its limitations.” In other words, a software upgrade was released that simply doesn’t allow us to upgrade the add-on that you’ve used and counted on for the past few years. My choice is to drop those add-ons, or be stuck on EE1…well…forever if those hooks don’t come back.
On point 6, again, we rely on something and trust that when the upgraded version of the software comes out, that we will be taken care of. Instead, it feels like we’ve been forgotten about. EE 2.0 came, then EE 2.1…if there isn’t gallery support, then where is the conversion tool?
As a USER, I see nothing but frustration. I’m not a dev but the message I got from EL about EE2 is that it will be much more of a joy for devs to use, better to code for, etc…yet all I hear from devs are that its so limited that a lot of the stuff they made for EE1 simply can’t be ported to EE2.
I’m glad this post was made. It’s interesting to see how more than a few people mentioned that it was nice to see that others had similar feelings because they were starting to feel like a traitor. I didn’t feel that bad, but I know I was definitely one of the people who would yell the loudest about how awesome and amazing ExpressionEngine is to anyone who would listen, and that stopped a little under a year ago because I started to feel irresponsible recommending it to peers. That’s sad. I want that excitement back.
Posted at 09:18 AM on October 14, 2010
Im a little surprised no one has mentioned how completely dated the framework itself is… Starting a CI project right now is roughly analogous to jumping in a time machine, going back in time to php 4 and starting your project. There is so much going on in the php community and it seems like CI is just not even paying attention.
Posted at 09:20 AM on October 14, 2010
@rich
That’s not true. The website hasn’t been updated (which is part of the communication issue) but the actual repository on Bitbucket was updated 2 days ago (by the lovely Greg Aker): http://bitbucket.org/ellislab/codeigniter
Posted at 09:27 AM on October 14, 2010
I’ve been trying to formulate a response that has meaning and is not what everyone has said, and well, I can’t.
So, all I have to say is Kenny had the audacity to say what we all wanted to say, but didn’t have the balls to do so.
Kudos to Kenny, and I really hope EL takes this to heart, which I’m sure they will.
As a community, we’re all in this together.
Posted at 09:30 AM on October 14, 2010
I hope this a help rather than a hindrance but I’ve registered Road-EE.com and pointed it at a uservoice account for the purpose of getting community members to suggest and vote on improvements.
I know there’s a feature request thread in the forum already, but I’ve found that thinking about where your vote goes means that the really important stuff tends to rise to the top. I’m more than happy to hand this to Ellis lab if it gets used and they want to make use of it, or to shut it down to stop duplication of effort if something official comes out.
If nothing else, add-on developers might want to keep an eye on it to see if there’s demand for work they may be able to fulfil?
I set this up one night in Leiden after all the criticism kicked off there, but never followed through until I saw the weight of demand on this thread and Twitter. Thanks a million to Kenny for providing a catalyst for this discussion.
I appreciate that the thread is about more than features and add-ons, and more about communication and demonstrating commitment to EE keeping its place in our hearts, but I hope this can become a handy piece of the solution.
Posted at 09:57 AM on October 14, 2010
Are you sure the accessory tab jumping up rather than sliding up wasn’t a UX decision? When a user clicks to hide something, they don’t want to spend time watching it stroll off into the sunset, they want the fucker to disappear.
But, I don’t actually use EE…
Posted at 10:00 AM on October 14, 2010
Hats off to Kenny, who’s comments and ideas are right on the money.
I’ve been a user and fan of EE1 for the last 4 years, as well as a recent CI2 convert. Using EE is beginning to seem like work and recommending it to clients is becoming a little frightening.
Please Ellislab, bring back that wonderful sense of community involvement. Bring back the ease and excitement of creating a new project we came to expect from such a high caliber product.
Posted at 10:06 AM on October 14, 2010
So many familiar names, from the plug-ins I’ve used, to the forum threads I’ve read—but seriously, why are you all still using EE? The violins started playing months ago, the life rafts are nearly full, and you guys are just emerging from your cabins cursing the listing of the ship.
The next great CMS will emerge from the failures of EE, but it will not come from EL.
Posted at 10:09 AM on October 14, 2010
@Ron.
Sounds like the most sensible thing said in the entire thread.
There’s the acrid smell of death in the air.
I vote we build the next one using Cocoon 2.2 ...
Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha ....
Channels implemented by the XML Pipeline and templating implemented as XSLT2.
Oh look. I’m nearly finished!
;)
Posted at 10:24 AM on October 14, 2010
Excellent comments, all.
I’d also like to see the functionality of my 5 or 10 must-use add-ons integrated in to EE2.
- Playa
- Matrix
- Cloner
- TinyMCE/WYGWAM
- Low ReeOrder
And, anything that can be given a drag-and-drop sort should.
Posted at 10:48 AM on October 14, 2010
I agree wholeheartedly and actually believe you were too nice. EE2 was a MAJOR failure. Worse than Windows Vista. And the way it was handled should have killed the company. Thanks to the community EE has lived on, but I from a developers perspective we are more than ready to jump ship.
Posted at 11:48 AM on October 14, 2010
Hm. I think some of these comments are getting a little harsh. While EE does have it’s faults, it’s been a great platform and can still continue to be as long as EL steps up and listens to the community. And I hope they will. Having used EE since it’s first release, and having gotten to know the team over the years, I do know they do have the best of intentions.
I think Kenny said everything very diplomatically and with care for the community, which is constructive and the majority of the responses show that we still care about this product and the company. Share your thoughts, but I don’t think we need to burn them at the stake.
Posted at 12:11 PM on October 14, 2010
I agree with @Joelle.
If you don’t have some criticism backed by substantiated feelings, an actual experience that happened to you and is made of calm well thought-out reasoning, I’m going to start deleting your posts.
I don’t think EE 2 was a major failure, plus those are big adjectives that mean a whole lot of nothing if you don’t back it up with metrics. Sales metric, for example, is clearly against it not being a success.
The Nerdary is a place for smart things (with the exception of maybe this author). If you are not acting like a smart thing, you will be a deleted thing. Personal attacks or insults too.
Last warning, then I go all delete-y ban-y. Also, I’ll make fun of you.
Posted at 12:33 PM on October 14, 2010
Joelle—some of these comments are getting a little harsh—Share your thoughts, but I don’t think we need to burn them at the stake
—————
Here, Here.
Posted at 12:55 PM on October 14, 2010
I completely agree also. I feel the design of cpanel took a step backward with EE2 and it’s just frustrating to use compared to the really modern feeling alternatives out there. I love using EE and I hope all these issues will be fixed sooner than later.
Posted at 01:01 PM on October 14, 2010
Well said Kenny. The slow pace of EE2 fixes has shaken my confidence in the product. Would be great if someone from the lab can guest regularly on the EE podcast to update the community.
Posted at 01:15 PM on October 14, 2010
Kenny, your post and this thread might just be the sounding alarm that saves the ship from disaster and steers it onto a new horizon.
Thank you!
Posted at 01:41 PM on October 14, 2010
Point 6 really resonated with me.
The way a client interacts with their content is very high on the list for us and when we first saw MojoMotor we thought someone had finally nailed it - here is a company who understands the client!
We were pretty disappointed to discover that this kind of UI functionality is somehow only considered “right” for small and/or simple sites.
Not only does MojoMotor serve as a painful reminder of what EE2 could’ve been from the client’s perspective, it kind of seems (from the outside anyway) like it was the distraction that stopped EE2 from being totally awesome.
However, EE2 is still great but as echoed above, it’s important to know if there’s a plan to make it rock the house.
Posted at 02:00 PM on October 14, 2010
Looking at the sheer number of comments on Kenny’s plea, it seems to me that we, as a community, care enough about EE to take the time and effort to formulate our concerns.
EllisLab needs some tough love from time to time I guess.
Posted at 02:06 PM on October 14, 2010
@Wouter Well sort of. The comments are being censored.
Posted at 02:13 PM on October 14, 2010
@Bob I prefer “tastefully curated with love and care”, but yeah, I’m absolutely censoring.
Posted at 02:19 PM on October 14, 2010
Man. This was really painful to read. Painful because I think it articulated a lot of things that had been brewing in my head.
Posted at 03:01 PM on October 14, 2010
@Kenny (I’ll just go ahead and assume you’ll pull this one) EL is asking for our thoughts, so wouldn’t they want to hear everything and not just what you’re interesting in having them know? It’s your post…. but at this point it’s the same thing you complain that EL is doing; only listening to what you want to hear, or have heard. It’s not going to do us any good this way.
Posted at 03:54 PM on October 14, 2010
@Bob I’d argue that EL want to hear constructive posts that move this discussion forward and not inflammatory ones.
Kenny has the right idea.
Posted at 03:56 PM on October 14, 2010
@Bob,
Thank you for moving this interesting comment thread into meta commentary about the commentary of this thread. I think it’s an important conversation to have.
I have deleted one post so far where someone called Derek Jones a jerk. For the sake of protecting his anonymity let’s just call this commentator captain compensating. If you believe calling someone a jerk is fair, valid and needs to be a part of the conversation then you won’t be offended if I call you Dr. McDouche. If you’d like to be in the same company as people who would call someone a jerk viscously (and not playfully), might I suggest the Devot:ee Support forums?
Just as I expect EllisLab to respond to what is the best balance of their business to their relationship to the community, I too must respect the other people who have taken the time to write something interesting and with reasoning behind it, or at least is not spiteful. However I did promise I would make fun of people who were tacky so please consider this response my fulfillment of that agreement.
Also, as you can tell from this long-winded reply, I too have no problem being a jerk. This time you’d have great evidence behind you. That I couldn’t delete.
Posted at 04:04 PM on October 14, 2010
The vast majority of the perspectives here have been from professional designers and add-on developers, but as someone that has been using this product since its pMachine days, I think the hobbyist view is important as well.
I could be wrong on this, but it seems that EE is moving toward the “power user” or the professional only. As evidence for this there is no functioning layout in EE2. Sure, there is a demo layout, but no one is going to use that as a starting point. In EE1 there was a handful of templates available as installable options. I didn’t like any of them, but they were at least a nod to the fact that some people are going to want to have a turn key option.
I got excited for EE2 to come out, then I got tired of waiting, then I got bored, then I got upset and didn’t really care anymore. It took mojomotor to get me excited enough about EL to even consider trying EE2. Mojomotor felt like a beta as well (probably a third of the first three bug fix revisions were from my reports). So after playing with MM I put down my money for EE2 and started building a site with it (I thankfully didn’t try updating my actual site). I ran into at least two show stopping bugs that will be “fixed in the next release” and one bug that I was told I should add to “feature requests.” (A bug fix is not a feature.) One big difference between EE2 and MM is that when MM gave the “next release” line it was usually a wait of days.
I don’t want to be an ass and ask for my money back, especially since once stuff is fixed I’d want to buy it again, but it’s unusable right now. I’ve played with other CMSs and for the most part I haven’t found one I like better that EE1.6.
This brings me to my final point. Why stop support of EE1.6 if EE2 isn’t ready? By this I mean why did 1.6 core go away? To just have it no longer be available at all kind of startled me. I had a site I’d been using it on that was at 1.6.8, so I figured since I was planning on updating my main sites to 1.6.9 I should do so for the core site as well, but the core isn’t available at all. It’s fine to say this isn’t needed, since if you don’t like EE2 you can have your money back, but I would argue this only gives the people the option to go elsewhere. It would be nice if there was an EL option to use until EE2 is ready.
The lack of the gallery module completely took me by surprise, especially since the file manager doesn’t work for me (I can’t see any files in my image directory if I use ftp to upload them). It’s also buggy in my hosting environment (can’t delete anything I use the manager to upload). Rock/hard place.
I think EL should buy the electronic rights to one of the “How To” books and give that as a download option to EE users. Sure, most pros and devs won’t need it, but it would be a nod to the hobbyists again. I think there needs to be a weekly tutorial series (again). There should be some installable base sites (blog, magazine style, brochure site, etc.). Wordpress is gaining because it does what people want out of the gate and it skinable.
And like many have mentioned many of the add ons need to be incorporated. I am never going to buy an add on. I’m just not. I’m not a pro/dev. I don’t have a budget. I don’t make a profit. I don’t have the time to learn them. I don’t need the hassle to make sure I’ve got everything updated, backed up, and installed properly. But basic things like tags and polls should be an option.
I could go on.
Posted at 04:51 PM on October 14, 2010
Kenny thanks for the great post. I think it brought up lots of good points and great ideas for EllisLab. I also agree with Mark Bowen—I’ve kind of stopped using the EE Forums, and that saddens me. I use to love to just stop by offer assistance when I could and learn from others. It was just a great resource and now I stop by and leave or go to the old forums.
I still know the software is excellent, way better than a wide array of CMSs so I’m not out for EllisLab’s head. But I am concerned that I spend way more time on the Solspace website, forums and documents than I do on EE. That’s a notable change of behavior and I don’t frequently need help with their modules. I find their recent changes and the website, forums, and blog more enticing, so I’ve been going there for my EE fix.
Here’s hoping EllisLab reads and the communication changes for the better.
Posted at 04:58 PM on October 14, 2010
Since I have a fairly unique viewpoint, I thought I might comment, even though I have retired from programming life as I pursue a career in medicine. I have stayed rather quiet about all of this for the past two years, but this post and Veerle’s have pinpricked me into speaking.
—-
These problems that Kenny mentions have been long standing at EllisLab, and I agree that they should be fixed. Otherwise, the company and its products might not survive. Or, at the very least, not live up to their full potential. Something that, even now, is still important to me.
When I left EllisLab, I obviously left a large gap in the development team, which greatly affected the development of ExpressionEngine 2.0 and contributed to its delay in release. There is no doubt in my mind on that front. Still, it should not have taken an additional two years to finally release the new version and definitely not with the myriad of problems it has had.
One of the main reasons I left EllisLab was because of my serious doubts about the management of the company. For being the CTO and being in charge of development, I had a surprising lack of control over the management of my own employees and often the direction of development. ExpressionEngine 2.0’s direction from its very beginning, specifically with the UI and CP design, come vividly to mind. As I just commented on Veerle’s blog, I left EllisLab shortly after the SXSW presentation of that new Control Panel. That presentation and the process leading up to it were the proverbial straw.
The reason for this lack of control in my job was a lack of leadership. While I am not sure how EllisLab works internally now with Les as President, at the time it was all on Rick’s shoulders. Rick, while a brilliant programmer and one of the best friend’s I have ever had, is not very good at communicating and leading when he is not focused on a specific, interesting task. Leading a company never seemed to be where he found his true joy and focus. Quite a bit of the professional development of the company had to be pushed by Les or myself during those formative years. And this situation was incredibly difficult to work under, as you never quite knew when you were going to be led, told in no uncertain terms what to do, or completely ignored for a few weeks.
With that bit of history in mind, Kenny is definitely right. EllisLab needs a full time designer. The boys over at ShopIgniter showed me what you can do with you have a brilliant UI designer working with a talented group of programmers. Having a solid, beautiful vision for your application can do wonders for motivation too. Going by what I hear, another brilliant developer or two on staff would be a great help too.
That said, the team at EllisLab is incredibly talented and dedicated already. I know for a fact that they have and always will work their asses off. The above? That’s just staffing.
What is really needed is leadership. All of these problems can be solved. You get someone in charge with the will, the power, and the money…anything can happen. The EllisLab ship can be righted, I truly believe this, it just requires those in charge to figure out what is important for the company and the community, and then find a way to make it happen.
Posted at 05:59 PM on October 14, 2010
Very interesting discussion, especially hearing Paul’s perspective, which hits on the biggest issue that hasn’t been addressed so far: where _is_ Rick? It seems a bit hard for this to all fall on Les’ shoulders when I guess Rick has final say. It is *Ellis*lab after all…
Posted at 06:18 PM on October 14, 2010
I wonder if this will increase pressure on EllisLab to sell up to a company that could take ExpressionEngine to the next level?
Posted at 06:21 PM on October 14, 2010
It is remarkable how the original post and comments seem to be a flood of held-back feelings. I have felt similarly for a long time, but didn’t know where to express it.
I was a small-potatoes single-site potential user: I encountered EE when I had been looking for a CMS for eight (now ten!) years for a non-profit organization for which I volunteer. That site has been maintained as static HTML plus a bespoke calendar system I wrote.
I had mostly been looking at open-source alternatives, none of which fit the bill. When I finally looked more carefully at EE, it seemed just right: easy to theme, powerful tagging, extensible data types, etc. I bought a non-profit license and started experimenting. I then ran into caveats: screwy datetime handling (fixed in 2.x, I think), weak membership functionality, no out-of-the-box standalone edit forms, no WYSIWYG, clunky control panel.
But the community was wonderful; I read the forums every day. And 2.0 was coming: I was sure all the obvious flaws would be fixed, since many other people wanted the same new features I did. When the 2.0 technology preview came out, I still thought those features were on the way. I renewed my license and waited some more.
2.0 turned out to be a lateral move. It’s great and necessary that the guts were rewritten, but I still wasn’t any closer to getting the CMS I wanted.
Now I have moved on, and am still circling, circling, trying to find something. In the meantime other CMS’s have moved forward. I am considering Drupal, Wordpress+BuddyPress, ModX, Concrete5, etc.: many of the same candidates I had two years ago. None is exactly what I want, but EE is in some ways further behind. Now I have a deadline of a few months, and have to get started with something soon.
An aside: Drupal 7 is going through “big rewrite” pains as well. The UX is much improved, but it is very late, and there are a number of last-minute changes that have been frustrating to long-time users and developers. It is interesting to see the parallels.
Posted at 06:30 PM on October 14, 2010
Hey Paully - Nice to see you joining in - Miss ya :-)
Posted at 06:31 PM on October 14, 2010
@Paul: “..... you never quite knew when you were going to be led, told in no uncertain terms what to do, or completely ignored for a few weeks.”
Without assuming what I don’t know (e.g., the degree of accuracy here), it is very disquieting that these words echo the oft-stated experience of many users on the support forum re: future direction, roadmaps .... that is, a lack of clearly communicated leadership with consistent, trackable follow-through, plus the feeling of being ignored and/or ...
If this has become embedded in the culture of the company itself, then, Houston, we really do have a problem. A Big Problem. The fact that you don’t know yourself where things stand now hardly enhances confidence. I hope that can truly be put down to simple absence from day-to-day affairs.
I said earlier that Rick Ellis should be part of a development board. I wasn’t dissing Leslie Camacho by that suggestion, for whom I have great respect. To the contrary, it sounds like Rick’s strong participation is needed to make sure (among other things) that long-term direction and lines of authority are clarified (reasonably) openly.
So, I’ll put things a bit more strongly than I did earlier:
Without Rick’s full buy-in and personal share of this process, well, uh-oh. ‘Uh-oh’. How’s that for strong ;-) ?
(Note: I, in no way, viewed your post as disrespectful towards Rick, nor am I going there myself in the slightest. I would have been surprised - disappointed - if he was passionate about administrating EllisLab day-to-day. I hope he will discover intense excitement in helping to ‘architect’ the company’s trajectory, partly by demonstrating as a leader how to distribute authority first to staff and then, partly, to this committed community.)
Posted at 06:39 PM on October 14, 2010
Great post Kenny, I think everyone can need a wake-up call (or at least a heads-up) from time to time in any aspect of life. This goes for individuals, companies, etc, and it can be very positive. Thank you for providing that call.
With such a cooperative and energetic community, I’m interested in seeing what lies ahead for EE, EllisLab, and the community. Whereas other (CMS) communities might fight, argue, then pack and leave, I think everyone involved in some way with EE are strong enough to handle criticism and do something about it.
Admittedly, I was also somewhat disappointed with EE2 on some aspects (member management not really improved, CP glitches, wonky autosave, still no channel dropdown under the top navigation => Edit section (!)), but I personally feel EE still does a better (and easier/faster) job than many other CMSes out there. Not to say that there isn’t much, much work left to do, but if EllisLab is as pumped as the community behind EE is (and I can feel that they are), I can only imagine positive things coming from this rough patch.
Looking forward to that Roadmap ;)
Posted at 07:44 PM on October 14, 2010
Kenny, great post. Thanks for getting the ball rolling, man. I’m inspired by this post and the cavalcade of comments that have followed.
Honestly, I could say that I’m as vested in Ellislab’s and ExpressionEngine’s success as much as the rest of you. Or conversely, I could also say that I’m not. I found ExpressionEngine in May of 2008, back when I was slowly, painfully, teaching myself how to design websites well. There are a lot of names here that I recognize from my time spent in the EE forums. You guys all helped shape my career as it exists today, so thank you for that.
This should serve as a wake-up call to the folks at Ellislab. I don’t believe that most of us here are looking to crush ExpressionEngine, but we really need it to keep pace with what’s out there. I’m currently running a creative community that branched off of my portfolio, and a mobile development company that will soon find it’s home in that MSM installation. This is all hosted at EngineHosting.
I upgraded to EE2 back in April. I have to rebuild the galleries on my portfolio. All 3 of them. I’m an artist first, developer second, so I have 3 galleries that I have to re-approach. Boo.
As far as the control panel is concerned, I find it superfluous. I used Anti-pink and Levi’s Morphine CP theme to give me a starting point to play in the CSS and de-funk the CP for my sites. I don’t want to go through all that for every client. Veerle, coming from another designer, I feel your pain. Given what you had to work with, and when you tackled the project - you rocked it.
Paul, you left right after I found EE. I read a lot of your posts on the EE blog. I read Rick’s post about your departure. You’re still imparting valuable insight that makes me a better businessman. I see a lot of parallels in how EL rolled back then, and how I do things now. I’m driven by passion like Rick. You just filled me in on how people that I work with probably feel, so what it’s worth, thanks man.
I genuinely feel like this whole deally will put EE back on track. Leslie isn’t going to let this go. Neither is anyone else at Ellislab. I’m thinking that they’ve already been working on our concerns over EE’s tech. They also seem primed to re-open the doors and let us know what’s been up, and where EE and CI is going.
Ok, I’m as vested in the success of EE as much as the rest of you.
Posted at 09:20 PM on October 14, 2010
This is an amazing, insightful discussion. Hearing many grievances I never considered and some that I share, but moved to chime in partly just to get updates from this thread.
In many ways, my whole career has revolved around and is staked on the success of EE. I went all in on an early version of pMachine, and every beta or release since then. Maybe not the smartest investment strategy, but I feel lucky that EE has gained wide popularity and that I have been to execute all my projects for the last ~8 years within it’s constraints.
I have been pretty happy with 2.0, native fieldtypes, better template management, custom publish layouts, keyboardable CP nav have all made me more efficient. I wish the UI blew me away, but I don’t think brilliant, perfected control panels are the future. MojoMotor has the right idea, inline administration. I’ve been using SAEFs to obscure the CP for years (in 1.6, where they actually work). I want to train clients to use their site, not EE.
Looking forward, I want to see new ideas from EL, not incorporations of existing add-ons (even if they fix something thats “broken”). It might be nice to save a few $$ and get user, wygwam and matrix for free, but I think it’s healthier to have add-on developers thriving than wasting time not innovating.
Better, cheaper, faster. If I have to pick one, I want “better”.
Posted at 10:58 PM on October 14, 2010
Great post - I’d like to add something on the add-on community:
ExpressionEngine users are in my experience mostly designers and/or front-end developers who buy the product to allow them to leverage a framework to boost their back-end skills and deliver enterprise level websites. This was the initial attraction for me at least.
ExpressionEngine2 was largely a rewrite of existing EE1 functionality on top of CodeIgniter. This was a logical step for EllisLab but in the process there was a void of new features that was filled by add-on developers. Almost all add-on developers went from smaller free add-ons to developing bigger add-ons and charging for them. It quickly became the case that without using add-ons EE was half the CMS.
This is the biggest change from EE1 to 2 for me. I’m not sure if this has occurred strategically or organically but when the cost of add-ons is starting to exceed the cost of an EE license (neither of which I mind paying) it points to the fact that EE customers are finding as much or even more value in add-ons. This is a dangerous thing for a product in my opinion.
Posted at 12:05 AM on October 15, 2010
Thought I’d just weigh in and say thanks Kenny for kicking that off. Definitely looks like you hit the nail squarely on the head there…
I’d also agree with a good deal of the above comments. EE 2.0 seemed like an awful long time coming with not a lot of information to go on in that time. Overall I’ve found some nice improvements and looks like great basis for moving forward but there’s definitely some broken bits and after that long a wait I’d have hoped for more…
I’d echo the general unease about the lack of info coming through on what’s happening and planned to happen, the unease about relying on an increasing number of add-ons to sort out things that really should be part of the core by now (simply to get things right - not bloat) and the disappointment at the things that are broken or removed from 2.0. EE is still a great product and as mentioned it has a community second to none but competitors catch up and communities move on if you don’t look after them…
It’s time indeed (make or break time…)
Posted at 02:21 AM on October 15, 2010
Interesting to hear several people mention that they “feel like a traitor” or words to that effect. I emailed Les after a frustrating period of trying to move a site from 1.6 to 2 and those were the words I used to describe how bad I felt complaining.
I build sites for non-profit clubs or associations who often have no or small budgets and the increasing cost of a basic install has gone from free (Core) to $250+, but I accept I’m not the norm and for many this is a tiny part of the budget.
There are two areas that always make me question my commitment to EE:
1. Image management (placing, resizing, uploading) I seem to spend an enormous amount of time working out how to achieve what seem like simple requests from clients.
2. E-Commerce, the limited options for something more than a PayPal button but not a full blown store with a large turnover.
I have paid the upgrade fee for 6 of my sites but am yet to convert the live sites due to add-on issues and the still buggy/slow CP.
I’m still here as I have invested so much time in the product and the community and I’m not sure where I would go, but that’s not really a ringing endorsement of the product.
Posted at 03:06 AM on October 15, 2010
Thanks, Kenny, for this and the way you’ve been clear about its tone and the spirit in which it is intended.
I love EE. As a front-end focused designer I love the way it helps me do way more than I could without it.
I love the fact that EllisLab are available and responsive. It’s a shame that their response isn’t always helpful though. Whilst that’s bound to happen with a complex, flexible product, this thread highlights that poor communication happens to a lot of people too often to be healthy—too often for us and for EllisLab.
This thread prompted me to take a closer look at Django than I have before and I note that it majors on trying to adhere to the DRY principle.
So much of my frustration with EllisLab is that their community comms need to apply some DRY.
Posted at 03:25 AM on October 15, 2010
Well, I have to say I agree with many of the comments posted thus far, and what I have to say won’t be cutting new ground but simply add another voice/perspective. I came to EE at what I now discover to be a pivotal time. I started with EE just a month or two before the release of the 2.0 Beta. As a designer and not a developer, I’d been using other content management systems to deliver client sites and I was over the moon about the high degree of flexibility that had suddenly been unleashed upon me with EE. Not quite finding the resources I needed with EL to get into the learning process, I went over every of Mike Boyink’s tutorials, bought his screencasts and read a few other site’s articles and my eyes were opened. EE was/is terrific. Props to Mike for being a great teacher. Just wish I lived closer to Michigan so i could do a class in person.
It took me until right before 2.1 was finally released for me to really achieve a high degree of proficiency with EE. So then I faced this dilemma - how much re-learning will I have to do with 2.1? As it turns out, now that I’ve worked with 2.1 for two sites now, not all that much. That is really great news in some respects and kind of frustrating in others. One of the recurring themes I have noticed in the above thread that I will reiterate here is that 2.1 didn’t, from this designer’s perspective anyway, introduce much. It didn’t solve too many issues I had with 1.6.9. I didn’t have all that many really - sure the CP was a bit clunky, but it was highly functional, which was largely the point, right?
2.1 felt to me like a renovation more than the next innovation on the CMS. Perhaps more of what’s going on with 2 is the under the hood transition to the CI framework - since I’m not a developer, I really can’t say. EE invariably makes my job as a designer easier and makes my clients feel terrific about the control that have over their content. With 1.6.9 I got into the habit, as it appears many of you have as well, of building several “must have” add-ons into every site plan (hats off to Brandon Kelly, Solspace, Low, Derek Hogue, Leevi, and Max Lazar, among others, for filling the functionality gap). Surprisingly I still have to to that with 2.1 sites - largely the same set of add-ons, updated for 2.1. I’m certainly not the only one that thinks that at the very least, a WYSIWYG editor - even a more basic one that Brandon’s WYGWAM, should be part of the core release. Certainly I don’t want EE to get bloated, but a few tweaks to functionality that we designers could see would have been appreciated. The image uploader was the only really noteworthy change I saw, and there are still some issues with that as well in my view - having some configuration of the file field to lock it down to an upload directory, in my view, would be a logical thing to include - nGen File field already did that on 1.6.
The thing that stung me a little is the very rapid push to make 1.6 a legacy product when 2 not only didn’t add that much for designers, but upon which so many of us were dependent. I hadn’t been in the community all that long and i still found some wind taken out of my sails when the sites I had just finished were relegated to “relic status” by EL’s push to phase out 1.6 in licensing and the forums. For people that had been in the community for longer than me, and become even more entrenched with 1.6 due to the long delay of EE2, it has to have been a bigger deal.
I’m rather hoping that what we have seen is that EL, while rushing to satisfy the demand for the overdue 2.X version, while clearly distracted by the MM development, put something out more as a stop-gap than a full release. Perhaps all that’s happening under the hood with the CI framework was more of the point and in fact 2.2 or whatever will see the most significant update. I have not considered jumping ship to this point, but I have definitely experienced some reservations of my throwing myself so wholeheartedly at EE. It’s a terrifically flexible system and continues to deliver on my promise to my clients, but I would like to get a better understanding for the vision of where the system is headed.
As someone who put EE in the hands of my clients, I need to know what to expect from EL going forward, and it feels like they’ve been radio silent for a while. When my clients ask about other CMS options (which I don’t work with anyway), I SELL them on EE and its community and the fact that EE is a commercial product. The experience of the past several months has shaken my confidence a bit, so I’m greatly looking forward to hearing from the EL team, hopefully soon, so I can put my reservations to rest and continue delivering EE solutions for my clients with confidence.
Posted at 05:46 AM on October 15, 2010
We have about a dozen EE1.x sites under our belt and made the decision to go for EE2 for perhaps our most high profile job to date. We asked around at the time to see if people thought it was ready and the message seemed to be ‘go for it’.
Right now, with a week to go to launch, I can say I wish we’d stuck with EE1.6.9.
It’s nothing catastrophic, just lots of annoying little bugs which slow us down or stop us outright. And it’s not just the core, we’ve had lots of problems with the third party add-ons.
Our experience has definitely shaken our confidence in EE and Ellis Lab. I’m not saying we won’t continue using it, but next time we will look around and consider alternatives.
Posted at 06:16 AM on October 15, 2010
(Tried to post this earlier but think the links in it prevented it from appearing)
Thanks, Kenny, for this, and for the way you’ve been clear about the spirit in which it’s intended and the tone of conversation that’s appropriate.
I love EE. As a front-end focused designer, I love the way EE helps me do way more than I could without it. And I love the fact that EllisLab are available and responsive.
It’s a shame that their response isn’t always helpful though: http://expressionengine.com/archived_forums/viewthread/137192/—an EE forum thread where I tried to help with “handling the pent up expectation of what’s inside EE2” and ended up wishing I hadn’t: http://expressionengine.com/archived_forums/viewthread/137192/P18/#679752
Whilst differences of opinion and breakdowns in communication are bound to happen with a complex, flexible product, this thread highlights that poor communication happens way too often to be healthy—for us or for EllisLab.
It’s ironic that some of Kenny’s comments above prompted me to take a closer look at Django than I have before, and that I find it makes a song and dance about the DRY principle (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DontRepeatYourself).
Ironic because so much of my frustration with EllisLab is that their *comms* need to apply a big fat helping of DRY. The forums are the antithesis of DRY—a necessary tool, I’m sure, but EllisLab are far too reliant upon them.
Posted at 06:46 AM on October 15, 2010
I agree with most of what’s here. Things need to be prioritized though, and although I’m a designer, I’d put issues like ‘a tab that slides down but not up’ at the bottom of the list.
When 2.0 was about to come out, EllisLab released a video demo of the new version. As evidence of the “level of detail” they’d put into it, Derek spent about 30 seconds talking about how the drag-handles for the fields in the Publish Form slide in and out when you click on the sidebar.
I remember thinking even then: “My clients can’t get a calendar event to repeat and you’re focusing on animating the drag handles?!”
Forget about the look of it for now. Yes, the control panel is pink. Get over it. No client has ever complained to me that the control panel doesn’t look good, or that the panels haven’t had slideToggle animation applied properly.
Clients do complain about functionality issues. A public road map of which feature requests you’re working on and when should be the primary focus.
Posted at 09:42 AM on October 15, 2010
What I take from all of this is that communication is really key.
The passion in the EE community is clearly evident all throughout this post and comments. I would love to see EllisLabs capitalize on that more by embracing the community for better community.
The ‘official’ support for Devot-ee, EE Insider, and Show-EE is a great example… Devot-ee especially. It’s this centralization of resources that really brings out the strength of this community.
A features roadmap is the next logical step. I second the notion that the Feature Requests forum is too haphazard of a way to collect and organize ideas from the community that many of us stake our livelihood on. A regularly updated roadmap with community feedback is necessary.
Use our collective brains, EL—we’re here to offer ideas.
For what it’s worth, here’s a nice example of a simple but informative roadmap: http://virb.com/roadmap
At least it’s clear what’s out there, what’s being worked on, what’s a priority, and what’s not.
We need this communication for EE.
Posted at 09:46 AM on October 15, 2010
First, thanks so much to Kenny for making this plea. I do hope EllisLab will take it to heart and rise to the challenges posed by those who have posted so far.
I agree wholeheartedly with many of the sentiments I see expressed here, but I wanted to add just one thing that I don’t think anyone else here has touched upon yet.
Sure, I sympathize with the concerns of the developers and designers who are frustrated with how the transition to EE has been handled, but my primary concern is how my clients are seeing EE evolve. I’ve spent a fair amount of time explaining to them how the underlying framework has changed to make EE better going forward, but in spite of the cool new control panel and some of the other new features, their primary concern is that EE hasn’t made much progress at all in two areas that have been a big concern for all of my clients for quite some time now: Membership management and registration spam.
When I talk to my clients, these are the things that concern them most. These are different from my own concerns, which largely follow those articulated by previous posts. My focus is normally on how to get things done, but for the clients, these shortcomings are causing them genuine pain (particularly in the case of registration spam).
At the end of the day, it’s the clients who are paying the bills; their concerns absolutely must be addressed. I hope EllisLab can respond to the issues raised above without losing sight of that one very fundamental point.
Posted at 03:50 PM on October 15, 2010
As Laisvunas said: “No Gallery module in EE2 and no smooth way to transition content created using that module to EE2. This also came as a surprise and this is simply unacceptable.”
Posted at 11:11 PM on October 15, 2010
Clint Fisher wrote:
“Documentation: Another source of lack of communication.
Most of the time it is incomplete, not clearly written and often straight copy/paste from other areas. Google search provides more help in finding answers than the in house documentation.”
I wholeheartedly agree!
“Lastly, the community. I love the EE community and have always been frustrated in the EE forums that there wasn’t more activity and involvement.
It was places like Colly’s Jambor-ee and Boyink’s site that I really used to learn a lot from in the early days. Now there are many more EE community sites which fill in the support gaps.”
My experience exactly.
Posted at 12:46 AM on October 16, 2010
Andru Edwards said: ” I was definitely one of the people who would yell the loudest about how awesome and amazing ExpressionEngine is to anyone who would listen, and that stopped a little under a year ago because I started to feel irresponsible recommending it to peers. That’s sad. I want that excitement back.”
Me too ...
Posted at 12:59 AM on October 16, 2010
Ian Ebden wrote: “Would be great if someone from the lab can guest regularly on the EE podcast to update the community.”
I would like that too ...
Posted at 01:17 AM on October 16, 2010
I agree with all of Christopher Jorgenson’s post from a ‘hobbyist/EE-challenged small business owner perspective and especially liked this point:
“I think EL should buy the electronic rights to one of the “How To” books and give that as a download option to EE users. Sure, most pros and devs won’t need it, but it would be a nod to the hobbyists again. I think there needs to be a weekly tutorial series (again). There should be some installable base sites (blog, magazine style, brochure site, etc.). Wordpress is gaining because it does what people want out of the gate and it skinable.”
Posted at 01:30 AM on October 16, 2010
I’m a casual EE’er - at the most I’ve done 5 sites, all in 1.x line. I’m updating a site now with 2.0, and it’s working for me - no major problems (really).
I think part of this change is going to involve a formalization of ellislab. They have been a relaxed lose company, and that worked, but this problem to me seems like Rick is going to need to create an organization that looks a lot LESS informal.
1000 new users a day isn’t something that can be handled in an organizationally diverse and relaxed company. I see a more formal ellis lab coming.
I would like to comment on the comments about the intentions of ellis lab staff. I’ve been using ee since it was pmachine, and I must disagree with the notion that EL dont care or are arrogant. I think this is unfair. I think what we are looking at here is unbridled growth. All my experiences with everyone at EL has been about passion, humor, and absolute competence.
I think the tricky part now is for ellis lab to ramp up it’s organizational efficiency and processes while at the same time maintaining the excellent customer service we all want and need.
good Luck, Rick
Posted at 08:19 AM on October 16, 2010
Good post Kenny. I live in Australia so I’ve never had the opportunity to meet the Ellis Lab folks, but I’ve had plenty of interaction with them on the forums. I’ve found them to be fairly good at supporting their users.
I don’t have a list of clients like many EE users, but I’m employed full time to look after a slew of sites I’ve developed for my employer in EE, so it’s my ‘bread and butter’. I haven’t upgraded to EE2, and I won’t be until it supports everything I’m able to do in 1.6.
I came to EE from a Zope/Plone and WP background, and loved it because it enabled me to do what I was good at design, and not have to worry so much about programming. I still think EE is one of, if not the best CMS in this niche.
I agree that we and Ellis lab would both benefit from a community-driven feature requests system and more transparency. I agree that many of the add-ons from developers should be part of the core product. Although I don’t mind paying for quality products that add value, some things really should be part of the core.
I’m surprised that people find the docs wanting - I think they’re pretty thorough. There was an attempt to get the community involved in the wiki (the EE Wiki Taskforce), but that seems to have quietly died…
It’s interesting hearing that fewer of you are visiting the forums - I too have stopped visiting, but I didn’t realise this was common. I don’t really know why I stopped visiting, but it’s interesting that it seems to be a commonality.
I wish the folks at Ellis Lab all the best and hope this conversation contributes to a better product for all of us.
Posted at 08:58 PM on October 16, 2010
Adam, one reason I’ve stopped using the forums too much is because of the frustration of the separation of the EE 2 posts and the now archived 1.6 posts. What this has done is to effectively stopped some very interesting threads from reaching conclusions. It’s also made searching for answers a bit of a nightmare really.
Not much left to say about Kenny’s article that hasn’t already been said except to back up the comments about add-ons that SHOULD BE core features. C’mon guys, you know what we are all looking for.
Posted at 11:39 PM on October 16, 2010
Royboy, you hit the nail on the head, re: the forums.
Posted at 12:03 AM on October 17, 2010
Well, for me there was an obvious reason to slow down on my forum usage, and to be frustrated with the new setup.
The reason I stopped is that my EE 1.6 sites did what I wanted them to do. I worked until I got them functioning how I wanted and styled the way I wanted then I stopped checking the forums. I’ve been running my sites with EE for years. At some point you just don’t need the forums that much.
When I decided to try EE2 I had a few problems. They were all either known bugs or something I was able to figure out on my own after much head banging. This kind of conditions you to stop going there. If I am told the problem I am having is fixed in the next release I have no incentive to check the forums until the next release. With plug ins and add on developers no longer doing support on the EE forums they don’t have as much incentive to visit. That means they aren’t going to do any drive by support. At least that my theory as to why questions are taking longer to get answered.
I’m much happier with the look of my EE2 test site. So much so that I am thinking of applying it to my EE1.6 production site. Since there is nothing new featurewise in EE2 there’s really no incentive to upgrade. In fact, since you lose features (like gallery) and only pick up bugs there’s a major disincentive to switch over.
Posted at 11:38 AM on October 17, 2010
Comments are now closed… although I really appreciate how idiotic it got at the end there. Thanks guys!
Posted at 08:56 PM on October 17, 2010
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