Blog: April 2010

Truthdig Nominated for Two More Webbies

April 22, 2010

It’s become a part of Spring for us: our client Truthdig has been nominated as a finalist in two categories again this year for the 14th annual Webbies. This makes four years running that they’ve been won or been nominated, and this year it’s again in political blog as well as in the politics category. Not bad, in a competition that sees more than 8,000 entrants a year.

I love it when they get nominated in the Politics category. Perhaps you’ve heard of the other nominees: The BBC, CNN, AOL and FactCheck.org? Truthdig is small, but they do belong in the company of such behemoths; they’re that good. Not that the Political Blog category is a cake walk: Other nominees there are The Atlantic, The Economist, The Huffington Post and The New Yorker.

Congratulations to the Truthdig team, and I hope that this heralds another great year for them!

Oh, and also a quick hat tip to The Tyee, which was a News Webby honoree this year, and tcktcktck, a nominee in the Activism category. Both are Vancouver-based, and congrats to them and their design, development and marketing teams. Any other Vancouver award winners, let us know in the comments!

Posted by Travis Smith at 2:44 AM | Comments (0)

Why Is My Content Not Appearing on the Home Page?

April 20, 2010

A client emailed me to tell me content was not appearing on a certain section of his home page, and he asked why that might be.  There are a LOT of reasons why… so many, that once I started listing them, I thought it was actually a useful little guide and an interesting overview.  So, here they are:

* missing content
* faulty selection / display logic
* improper PHP/EE code
* database corruption or malfunction
* memory or config error
* caching problem
* CSS error or conflict
* browser bug
* temporary or permanent network error somewhere between you and the many servers that might control or influence that content

Have I forgotten any?

Posted by Travis Smith at 12:30 PM | Comments (1)

Candy Blog Now Even Sweeter

April 8, 2010

Long-time client Candy Blog came to us again recently.  They wanted to modernize their site, which has been up and running since goodness knows when.

The biggest change for us is that we added several new data types so that candies could be cataloged and cross referenced in multiple ways. Going forward, there’s no limit to how you might be able to receive candy information when you need it most. (The biggest change for them was that their URL finally changed to CandyBlog.net, but that’s not as hard, technically, with EE.)

Other simple but essential modifications included adding sharing icons and modernizing the way Candyblog’s categories were organized. Candy Blog first launched with EE 1.2.1, so as you can imagine, there are many under-the-hood settings that can be done differently now.  Some of this work required crawling into the database plumbing of ExpressionEngine and doing direct database manipulations, but it all turned out well.

To assist in the site’s work flow, we created some additional entry statuses and hooked that up to the “What’s Next” box on the home page. They’ll find it easier to orgnize entries, while readers will automatically get more current information than they used to.  We added smart ads to the RSS feed, and customized the user profile pages.

We also installed SolSpace’s Tracker module so they could tell instantly what candies were hot each day.  All in all, a fun renovation with an immediate traffic bonus, site revenue increase, and efficiency boost.  As always, it’s fun seeing what Candy Blog will come up with next—all while we learn about the latest sweet trends.

Posted by Travis Smith at 5:20 PM | Comments (0)

Free the ExpressionEngine Extensions

April 6, 2010

So it’s been more than a week since the controversy over EEMatrix / FF Matrix, and the rhetoric has faded a bit, but I’ve been left thinking about it and wondering what caused such a heated debate.

I believe the greater issue that’s been exposed is the rift between the initial add-ons that were created by the EE community, and the current batch.  There’s a shift that’s happening, a shift that’s like that fable about the frog in a pot of cold water that’s slowly being heated.

In the beginning, there were plugins, and then extensions and modules. They were usually free, and they were pretty good. Some were VERY good…  Reeposition, Freeform, LG Add-On Updater, FieldFrame, Pages/Tome, ImgResizer... they were hard to find sometimes, but the support was OK, especially if everyone who used it pitched in on the forums.

And then Tag came along.

SolSpace started selling Tag for $39.95, and it was also good.  Good because it was a big, useful module, and also it seemed good because it was a supported commercial product that you paid for and could get help directly instead of through a forum ... well, OK, through a forum, but the SolSpace forum, which was different.  Tag wasn’t the first commercial add-on, but it certainly was the MOST commercial add-on to come along, if you know what I mean.

And ExpressionEngine let SolSpace sell Tag through their store. And many EE developers liked this idea, of getting paid to write code instead of just giving it away.

And so, for this reason and because EE developers were getting more experienced and were starting more ambitious add-on projects, lots of EE developers started charging for their EE plugins, extensions and modules.  They charged for big projects, like Structure ($65), but also for medium ones, like LG Better Meta ($39.95), and for small ones, like onSubmit ($5) and Landing Page ($14.95).

Today, of the 784 add-ons listed at Devotee, 90 are commercial.  That’s 12% and growing. Individually, each developer feels he or she has justification for their own commercial choice.  Together, this migration towards pay hurts the community in two significant ways:

1) If the total cost of ownership of ExpressionEngine must now include the many additional commercial modules necessary to develop robust, powerful Web sites, and an EE install realistically costs $100, $200, $300 more than it used to, then CMS shoppers will be less likely to choose ExpressionEngine—not just because of the additional cost, but because of the complexity of assessing, buying, installing and maintaining the necessary add-ons.

A good example is Eric Miller’s recent article about building BMI, where he talks about using User ($100), Related Entries ($70), Primary Category ($25), LG Polls ($40), Super Search ($85) and Importer ($80). That’s $400.  A recent site I worked on required Tag ($40), Rating ($50), Tracker ($33), Forums ($100), LG Polls ($40) and Low Variables ($40); that’s $300.  This added cost of an EE site is especially apparent when a previously free add-on becomes paid, like FF Matrix or Repeet.  It’s the classic “How many grains of sand is a heap” problem.  One isn’t a heap, and adding one to that isn’t a heap, and adding one to that isn’t a heap, but at a certain point, you’re buried in a heap of sand, though no individual grain of sand can be said to be responsible for the heap.

2) EllisLab so far seems to be restricting how they improve their base product, if it means integrating functionality that others are now charging for.  They were happy to create or integrate first-party versions of Pages, FieldFrame and JQuery for the Control Panel, likely in part because those add-ons were free; other additional site improvements were made in ways that made free add-ons obsolete.

But I can’t think of a single case (nor could anyone I asked remember one) where they’ve co-opted the functionality of a third-party commercial add-on into their core product. Please correct me if I’m wrong.  This indicates that once a third-party developer stakes out a commercial product to fill a need—like Structure, FF Matrix, Tag, LG Better Meta, or the commercial plug-ins, EE is not going to expand to include that functionality in the base product.  Therefore, as more developers charge for more expanded functionality, that leaves less development space for EllisLab, and a restricted core offering.

I know the counter-argument. You can say, look the EE ecosystem is thriving because more and more people are selling add-ons successfully.  And 12% paid, that’s hardly a problem.  It’s the trend that worries me.  The move towards commercial add-ons as the default will stifle the growth of the core product, and the core product’s wider adoption, which hurts everyone.

So, what’s my solution? First, I should be clear—I’m not calling for add-ons to be open-source; I’m talking about the price point of add-ons, not their licensing model.  That’s a post for another day.

I think EllisLab has to be more cold-hearted and realistic about taking the best ideas and either buying them or doing their own version and integrating them into EE. I know this is sad for the individual developer, but it’s better for all developers, and better for ExpressionEngine’s health itself.

I’d like to see a renewed commitment to free add-ons.  NGen File Field and DC Template Manager are two lovely examples of recent developers who show that sharing is caring.

I’d also like to see EllisLab offer more support to the developers of add-ons. The fact that devot-ee is a third-party effort is surprising to me—it’s so clearly needed, and of such value to the community.  EllisLab in 2007 adopted the EE Wiki and brought it into the company to the tremendous benefit of the community; I’d love to see the same thing happen now with Devot-ee.

Posted by Travis Smith at 10:18 AM | Comments (23)

The Georgia Straight Profiles Susannah Gardner

April 5, 2010

Just a quick and oh-so-belated mention: The Georgia Straight did a long profile of Susannah Gardner, one of the partners here.

Susannah (we call her Susie sometimes, too) got to talk about how social media changed blogging, Hop Studios’ approach to Web design, and what’s going to be revealed in the all-new third edition of Blogging for Dummies.

Thanks, Stephen Hui, for the interesting questions and the chance to talk about our favorite topics: media and the Web.

Posted by Travis Smith at 6:42 PM | Comments (1)

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