EE is not for me
03.11.2008 @ 9:18am
filed under: Web Design
I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about Expression Engine that doesn’t connect with me. And I have no idea what it is. I “get” Expression Engine more than I have any other CMS. It’s easy to work with and I’ve yet to tap into some of its more powerful abilities. Plus I’ve really only worked with the free ‘Core’ version so there’s a bunch of other stuff it could do if I would give the good folks over at Ellis Labs some cold, hard cash. But as I sit here, looking to redo my guild website yet again so that it becomes more of an actual community site, I hesitate before diving right in and doing it in EE.
Why is that?
It’s not open source
It’s not so much that you have to pay for Expression Engine (good stuff is worth paying for, after all). It’s just that I really like the whole philosophy behind Open Source – the focus on collaboration, how harnessing the power of the Internet and sharing knowledge results in phenomenally cool things. I could be all curmudgeonly and say that in some ways the web was far more appealing before it was ‘discovered’ by marketers and opportunity seekers, but then I’d have to wave my Zimmer frame around while yelling “Get off my lawn, ya damn kids!"* So I won’t say it (but I’ll think it).
I want more community & passion
There are some great Open Source communities out there. While EE has a strong and helpful community, I don’t read about people going to EECon or acting as EEEvangelists – there doesn’t seem to be a lot of passion about it from the people who get involved with it. I know, I’m probably asking for a bit much. I mean, why do people have to get passionate about a software product for me to use it? Well, I guess because I assume that there’s something behind that passion. There’s something that gets people excited about the product and drives them to work on making it better, work on helping others learn to harness its power – without any significant compensation from external sources.
Not a lot of ‘big’ companies are using it
When I tried to introduce EE into my workplace, it was met with some resistance in a few areas (mostly our server admin types). So part of my sales job was going to be “Look! Big Huge Company X uses it! University of Y uses it! And everybody’s heard of Internet Publication Z – and they use it too!”. But I couldn’t find a single example of a ‘wow’ name that’s using EE. A few designers whose work I admire, but if I mentioned them I was likely to get glassy-eyed stares and slack-jawed exclamations of ‘Who?’. Again, I think that if there was something there I’d have a larger number of examples to choose from. Why aren’t people using it in a big way? While you could say it hasn’t hit the tipping point, there are other frameworks and systems like Django and Drupal where you can sense that there’s a buzz builiding about them. People are talking about them, using them. I’m not getting that same sense from EE.
There don’t seem to be a lot of EE jobs out there
I’ll fess up that someday I hope to ditch my day job and work for myself. And one option would to be to do some web design/development. In addition to jobs where people are looking for someone to create or redesign their website, without any tecnical considerations upfront, there are a fair number of jobs where people want work done in a specific platform. So while EE may be perfect if you’re starting from scratch with a client who doesn’t have any preconceived notions as to what platform they want to use, you don’t see a lot of people who looking for someone to work in EE specificially, as you do with other platforms. If I’m going to take the time to reeducate and reskill myself, I want it to be on something that has a fairly robust job market.
Which is why I’ve been reading up on and debating (with myself) between Django and Drupal. Yes, I know. They’re not quite the same kind of thing. Django is a Python-based web framework while Drupal is a PHP-based content management system. But they appeal in different ways, based on some of the things I want to do. I was leaning towards Drupal, but just today stumbled across Pinax – “a Django project intended to provide a starting point for websites” – which looks intriguing as well.
Bah. Too many choices. But at least I’ve pushed one option off the table.