Wriging Thread: ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

lalindsey — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:40:12

I've been interested in using EE, but quite frankly like people mentioned above - I don't have the $100 laying around to invest in it. I'd much rather expand my knowledge of the free CMSes I already know and Wordpress does everything I want/need it to even really complicated things. I've not used TP in a year or so, but my experience with it was wonderful. Also, I know so many people hate it, but I also like MT too, although haven't used it at all lately either. I really want to get into learning drupal too, but haven't found the time.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Alan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:21:47

I found this preview of ExpressionEngine 2.0 quite enticing. :)

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

erinchew — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:35:06

Having just been involved in an Expression Engine project gone horribly wrong... I'd have to say Wordpress or Textpattern are much better choices. Though EE is supposed to be extremely flexible, I ran into quite a few limitations that caused me to write my own plugins to get the job done. Wordpress and Textpattern are simple clean. Textpattern especially has a wide array of tags that allow for some pretty complex templating.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

darkmotion — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 05:25:39

Wp ftw. Simple, powerful, clean :)

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Alan — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 03:57:29

Here's an interesting post froma thread on EE's forum:

"I primarily use EE. Occasionally, a client wants an OS alternative in which case I use Textpattern or WordPress.

Out of those three, EE is the most sophisticated and the most flexible content managing system. If I were to compare WordPress to Textpattern, I’d vouch for Textpattern as it is far more flexible than WordPress but not quite as flexible as EE.

The advantages of EE over WordPress for me are (in no particular order):

1. Templating system (this is by far the most intelligent, powerful feature EE has)
2. Custom fields (have not seen any other CMS, commercial or non-commercial that handles these as well as EE does)
3. Weblogs, template groups, category groups
4. Extremely high flexibility - perfect separation from content/presentation/behavior
5. No need to fiddle with php inside templates unless absolutely needed for extra capabilites
6. Great templating language, easy to understand, easy to implement, manifold combinations possible
7. Plugins that actually work and are well designed and don’t cause security issues
8. Wonderful support
9. Ability to set up complex information architecture

These are the main features that make EE invaluable as a primary content management tool for me.
WordPress also has custom fields but its capabilities do not compare in the least.
For simple sites or blogs, WP is good. For more complex tasks than the tool is initially intended for, it requires so much customization that it can become a true pain and is nearly impossible without a good knowledge of php. Not to speak of the upgrading hassles that occur with a heavily customized WP installation.

Textpattern does a better job in many regards than WP in my opinion but that is another topic."

IMO, $99 isn't unreasonable for a full personal license. The core version is free. IMHO, a one template basic setup would make EE a lot easier for a beginner.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

arthus — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:58:58

I am totally a WordPress fan. For one thing, Expression Engine is expensive and has too many features out of the box. I like the fact that WordPress relies upon plugins to add features. Since I am relatively experienced PHP programmer it is easy for me to make a plugin to do what I want. That is why I use WordPress for almost all client jobs since it really works as a CMS.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

alexsuraci — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:53:45

I've found that I hate anything that's too big, whether it's the FTP structure or MySQL, whatever. WordPress completely fails me in that area, it has so many things that I simply don't want or need.

So, for the past couple of years I've been working on my own blogging engine, recently named Lingua. It's extremely lightweight, and is filled with features, pretty effects, and AJAX used wherever it seems sane, and nowhere it doesn't (Aside from live-updating comments, which is just cool). To me it's a perfect engine. There is no admin panel, I built everything directly into the website, and it all adapts to the users theme. I feel that it makes no sense to have to log in to another section of the website to change something that's staring you in the face.

If you want to see it in action go to my site or my buddies site. I have a somewhat buggy version uploaded (I don't know why, but the theme editor broke for my buddy at SquidBodies), you can grab it here. A warning though, there's no installer. I included the SQL tables it uses, you just need to edit /includes/settings.php to suit your needs. Don't use the theme editor, if you want you can just copy /themes/v3/ to /themes/THEMENAME/ and edit the files within it. You'll just have to change the theme in the site settings.

Woops, almost forgot - when you import the SQL tables, insert a row into the users table, make sure the password is MD5 encoded. Set the group to 1 to make the account admin. If you have phpMyAdmin you can MD5-encode your password by selecting MD5 in the dropdown next to the input field. If not, go here.

If you find any bugs feel free to give me a yelp. :P

Also, I'm not very good with .htaccess, so it's kind of screwy.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Stardog — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 18:36:41

I tried a lot of CMS' over the past few weeks and I've settled on EE.I'm not a PHP coder, so the CMS had to have an easy to use template system, and for me EE's was by far the easiest. I tried Joomla, Wordpress, Textpattern, Drupal and a few more. I was happy with WP for a while but some of the template tags were throwing in some preformatted HTML with it's own CSS classes which annoyed me, but EE doesn't do any of that.Be sure to get the new admin template from 31Three.com

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:01:15

Do you guys think that lounge72.com is powered by Expression Engine ?

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:44:19

Tyme, i found a way to import the entries to Expression Engine from Wordpress.

wp-export

This is a php file u put inside your wordpress instalation, it creates a txt file in movable type format. And then u can save this, and import it to Expression Engine.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:41:05

Well i'm happy that i started exploring in. I'm almost done porting my wp theme to ee. So far ive been working on it for a few hours. Not bad since it's my first time with Expression Engine.

I think after you get passed the whole template part, and get used to new markup. Its fairly easy.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Tyme — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:35:41

Yes, you can definitely have registered users. EE is one of those where it's so simple I try to make it harder. For example, on one of my sites I used to have a custom field for personal reflections on reviews. In the template I simple had and if/then statement. It showed when there was one, didn't when there wasn't one (not borking my design). On export I placed the custom field in my export template so I was able to take that add-on to the entries with me.

EE is supposed to scale over WP because it's commercial. It does - out of the box it does what WP does with plugins. For example I can, with a click of a button cache my site and throttle bandwidth if I want to. I can cache templates. When editing templates I can save revisions of what I've done - same thing with entries. I can allow one author to access one blog over another and bar each one from specific areas of the control panel - yet they have the same title. I can give out separate URLs for control panel access and completely mask the main one. There is a lot that can be done (that's just the tip of the iceberg). Just takes some time learning it. :)

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:18:19

I was surprised how easy it is to modify a wordpress theme and port it for EE. Expression Engine templating system is really confusing at first, however after a while, i got used to it.

I already see alot of advantages over wordpress, such as custom fields for entries.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:27:47

For a while, I was considering switching over to WP from EE. I canned the thought after I worked with WP for a while.

Yes, EE has a much steeper learning curve and is still too clumsy when it comes to templating, BUT

a) compared to WP it is more (than) spam-proof out of the box and
b) it is so much more flexible (custom fields, etc., etc.)

I'm going to stay with it and bite into the sour apple, meaning I'll live with the complexity of it.

Re complexity: My biggest complaint is that EE is basically only for people who work constantly with it. I've done lots of stuff with EE on an irregular basis and I find I have to relearn stuff constantly. That means, at least in my book, that it is far from intuitive ... I constantly have to look up tag usage with tags I've used many times over (but "programmed" only once or twice a year).

Maybe I'm also just too old (and I mean that).

Still, once you get started and get the hang of things again, it is amazing what you can pull off with it. There's hardly a limit. If you can imagine it, you can do it with EE.

My 2 cents.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:13:08

Tyme, what i want to do is enable registered users to blog. Lets say you sign up to my site, and u have ur blog, besides other things. So by typing in myurl.com/username i would get to that persons page and view their posts. This is just one of the features i am looking at.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

RightOn — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:09:25

Personally I HATE expression engine.

A former employer of mine used EE for their blog and I SWEAR I had the "can we upgrade to WP" discussion with him and other employees about a MILLION times.

He claimed it had better expandability than WP... but I've never seen the data to support that claim.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Tyme — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:43:35

You mean multiple users/authors? Most definitely (with many more options than WP), and multiple blogs.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:26:53

Another question, can i enable user blogging in ee?

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Tyme — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:51:41

Haha, you can export EE into WP. But exporting WP into EE? WP does have an export function but at the time I used it none of the CMS's supported it yet (no doubt they eventually will). That is something you might want to try (EE has an import system) wand if not, ask on the forums BEFORE you purchase it.

Also on the core version look at the template system. It's easy once you get the gist of it but very different from WP.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:40:01

Well thank god that i am a designer. Lol. I am using wordpress now and i really want to give ee a try. Is there a tool that will enable me to transfer posts from one to the other ?

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

Tyme — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:36:40

It depends solely on what you want to do, then get the CMS that best suits your needs. Many people go with WordPress because it's free, and that's fine, then they hack away at it to get it to do what they want. I prefer to have the features out of the box so I don't have to deal with hacking/addons/plugins etc. When an update comes out I don't want to think "crap, I can't update because all of my plugins will break".

Keep in mind if you are not a designer you will not have the thousands of themes to pick from that WordPress has. Of course you can do what I did - I ported the WP theme I was using over to EE when I switched back. :)

EE has a free core version (it does not have all the features the full version does) but it will give you an idea if EE is right for you.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

frotzed — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:12:48

Meh, Drupal is way behind WordPress and Textpattern. Both WP and TP are more than just blogging software, they're full fledged CMS's. I mean, if you've got a $100 laying around and REALLY want EE then go for it. But for 99% of the people out there will do just as well with WP or TP. Chances are WP and TP will give them more power than they'll ever need.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:10:29

Well im interested in going beyond just a simple weblog, i know there are quite a few things you can do with wordpress and i love it. However i think expression engine has its benefits. Drupal is also great.

Right now im trying to figure out what i need to use to extend my website. So far i think drupal has the best built in feature set. Forums, blogging for all the users, and so on.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

frotzed — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:00:23

IMHO I think it's a running race between Textpattern and WordPress. The main reason is they're both extremely versatile, open source, and totally free. Expression Engine may be a great CMS but since it costs (last I checked) $100 per license it's never going to have the sheer market force and mass following (read: support system) that TP and WP have.

ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Others

talkaboutdesign — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:33:17

What do you use, whats best. Is expression Engine underestimated?