Ecsyle | Blog | ExpressionEngine 2.0: fully CodeIgnited!

ExpressionEngine 2.0: fully CodeIgnited!

Kinda old news, but I wanted to post about it. My favorite web publishing platform, Expression Engine, is looking to release version 2.0 sometime this summer. Ellis Lab, the people behind Expression Engine, are also the force behind the Open Source Codeigniter. They have announced that EE2.0 is powered by Codeigniter. To me, this is incredible. The possibilities are endless.

At South by Southwest during our “ExpressionEngine 2.0 sneak preview” I got a chance to reveal some big news about the future of ExpressionEngine that I wanted to explore in some more detail here for anyone who wasn’t able to attend.

ExpressionEngine 2.0 is built on CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter is our Open Source PHP based framework.  You can learn more at CodeIgniter.com, but in a nutshell it’s the toolkit that many powerful applications are built on, and now we can add ExpressionEngine to that list.

This is great news if you’re an ExpressionEngine user, a CodeIgniter user, or both.  As an ExpressionEngine developer you will have a greatly expanded community of talented developers working with you, and for you.  I said during my talk, “The nerds are excited, and you should be excited that the nerds are excited”.  As a dyed in the wool nerd, I stand by this!

If you’re a CodeIgniter developer, this means you can drop a full-fledged content-management system right on top of your existing code base, and have it work.  You want a forum installed?  One click.  You want need member management, a wiki, end-user tools, mailing lists, mobile blogging capabilities, permissions… all there.  One click.  Proven, simple, powerful.

Very exciting! Since I started using Codeigniter at version 1.0, I have noticed a huge increase in my productivity, and a huge leap in my knowledge of php and web programming. There is something about coding with Codeigniter that inspires clean, elegant code. A good example of the power of Codeigniter is a very basic CMS I had put together for Noble Studios. It worked, but it wasn’t pretty. It was one hack on top of another, with a bunch of pieces glued together that was very slowly turning into a usable framework/CMS, but I simply do not have the time or resources to properly develop it. We work very quickly and I had to do what I had to do. However, this latest project gave me a chance to revisit the very core of this CMS and I saw the opportunity to do it right. I chose Codeigniter as the core and was able to produce a marketable, flexible, and maintainable application in a fraction of the time it took to build the original. I am most happy with the ACL/User Authentication system, and I am considering ripping it out and making it available as an app for the community. The point is, a good framework really does allow you to spend more time on the real functionality and value of an application. And with EE as the CMS and the power of this framework, we can tackle much larger development projects in the same amount of time as doing it from “scratch”.