February 19th, 2008
Well, its very publicly out there that we’ll be giving a sneak peek of ExpressionEngine 2 at South by Southwest. On the one hand, I’m really excited by this, and I know that EE users will fall out of their chairs. You’ll love it. It’s coming along great. There’s also the flip side of course to that, of deadlines. Last week I averaged about 4 hours of sleep a night (I’m a normal 7 hour a night guy), and that is mostly due to staying up and working. Of course its not just the late nights, but also working through evenings… in doctors waiting rooms, even in the car. Of course, this is the same for the whole team - Derek and Paul and working their asses off also, as is the whole of the rest of the team. The good news though… is that things are taking shape.
And the good news doesn’t end at ExpressionEngine. When we get this release out, there’ll be big news that will also impact on CodeIgniter, in a very permanent (and positive) way. The next few weeks will bring more sleepless nights, more yelling at my computer, less interacting with friends… and at the end of it, a whole lot of pride.
In the meantime, there’s a few things I’ve let drop. BambooInvoice hasn’t gotten much love from me recently. My studies have taken a backseat in a big way. But I just can’t shake the feeling that this will work out perfectly, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Continue reading “Deadlines!!! South by Southwest means deadlines!”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 6 comments 
January 30th, 2008
Fellow web-nerd, instructor, and ExpressionEngine aficionado Simon Collison has written what has to be the most inspirational blog entry written in Education for 2008, entitled Dear Students.
Its short and to the point, and while I usually don’t like quoting large chunks of other people’s writing (preferring you just go read it yourself) its hard to express the greatness of this post without getting both of its paragraphs. Go read it first-hand anyhow.
Dear Students
On 12th March at 9am, I’ll be presenting the snappily-titled The Business of Web Design: Latest Trends in Web Design and Web-based Applications lecture at the University of Nottingham. This forms part of a great season of presentations for the Development of Digital Business module that also includes lectures from the likes of Microsoft, IBM and a plethora of others.
If you’re on that course, make sure you don’t get pissed the night before and oversleep in a pool of vomit and cigarette butts. I know what you students are like.
Now that is poetry. Well done Simon…
Continue reading “Simon Collison knows how to be a teacher”. Posted in
Education, ExpressionEngine with no comments
January 18th, 2008
There’s been renewed discussion about CodeIgniter moving to a PHP 5 only framework within the community. This post is my attempt to articulate the point of view of the development team, and my personal reasons for why we will not go this route.
First of all, let me just say this “I like PHP 5”. A lot. I use it exclusively for my personal development, and I want to see it adopted more. I don’t like PHP 4 much, and in fact, I’d love to not need to support it. But the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of PHP servers out there are still running PHP 4, and we want our products to be accessible for the widest possible audience. We will not be dropping support for PHP 4 anytime soon.
What follows in this entry is my full reasoning. Want to see a PHP 5 CodeIgniter? Read on…
Continue reading “CodeIgniter will not be dropping support for PHP 4 anytime soon”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, PHP with 20 comments
January 09th, 2008
Ever wanted to pick Rick’s brain in person? Ever wanted to scream at me for introducing a bug into CodeIgniter? Now’s your chance!
If you’re going to South by Southwest this year we’re holding our usual party (last year’s was awesome), BUT we have MUCH more goodness going on. Check out http://camp.ellislab.com/
- ExpressionEngine 2.0 Sneak Preview
- EllisLab Open Panel Discussion
- Party at the Moonshine Grill
- Solspace Night Cap
- Brunch “Click” Event
And of course, just hang out with us… we’re cool like that.
Continue reading “Talkin’ ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter at SxSW”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine with 8 comments
December 06th, 2007
I’m very proud to say that I’ve formally joined the EllisLab development team as a Technology Architect. In the near term future, I’m focusing on code changes to ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter in our goal to get EE 2 out the door (its a major task). I’m looking forward to sinking a bit more time into the codebase, which I really haven’t had the opportunity to do.
Not many people realized it, but I was only onboard with EllisLab part time. I’d spend a few hours each day working there, mostly in the support forums, where I acted as Senior Technical Support Specialist. The rest of my day was spent running my business, which I’m fortunate was pretty busy. So yeah, I was the classic “freelancer” - keeping busy with client projects and programming. Freelancing was very good to me, but it’s a bit “unrewarding” (is that a word) to pour yourself into a project, and then have it end. What I really wanted professionally, was to be part of something “bigger then I am”.
Now EE 2 development is underway, and EllisLab needs a few more hands on deck. If ever there was something worth joining, if ever there was something that I want to have a legacy in… its ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter. So I did something that scares the hell out of me - I put my business (which I’ve proud to say I’ve built up into a nice little organization since 1999) on hold, and accepted a senior role at EllisLab.
Time to start building up a new legacy.
Continue reading “I’ve joined the EllisLab development team”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Personal with 16 comments
November 16th, 2007
A few days ago, I wrote about the release of ExpressionEngine 1.6.1. In it, I highlighted the “live look” feature, as a great new addition. Live look allows you to preview a post within a template, rather than previewing only isolated content. So you can see what your content will look like inside your template. This is great if you have a future entry, or a post that you are leaving “closed” until you have a chance to finish it up.
But there has been a bit of confusion about how live look should work. Essentially, all it does is load your entry into a template, so if you have a future dated entry, or a closed entry, it won’t be visible by default. The solution? Create a “preview” template, and take advantage of the status and show_future_entries parameters. Essentially, make it look like this
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="default_site" status="open|closed" show_future_entries="yes"}
I’d further recommend that you take advantage of Template Access Restriction in your preview template. Without it, anyone who guesses your preview template will be able to see upcoming or closed content. Probably a good idea to restrict it to the same member groups as your authors.
Happy ExpressionEngineering!
Continue reading “Setting up “Live Look” in ExpressionEngine”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine, How-To with 2 comments
November 13th, 2007
Last night, with very little fanfare, EE 1.6.1 was released.
I tested 1.6.1 on this site about a week ago, and I’ve had no glitches, and there are a few very nice enhancements, mostly for me around usability and productivity. With my clients, I love the Pages module that was introduced in 1.6. In 1.6.1 it makes allowing them to update their own content and site that much easier! Specifically, there is a new “live look” feature, so that instead of only previewing content, you can actually preview what the content will look like inside your design. Brilliant. Also, the pages table now offers the ability to have nested pages, which in at least 2 of the sites I’ve got, is a tremendous help.
Many of the rest of the 214 (yes you read that right… 214) feature enhancements and bug fixes address stability, speed and usability modifications. All in all, great additions.
The update process is as easy as ever; just backup your data, upload the new files and run update.php. Easy-peasy! Um… you DO backup your data right? ;)
If you notice anything funny in this site, please do let me know!
Continue reading “ExpressionEngine 1.6.1 released”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 1 comment
November 05th, 2007
I had originally wrote this as a response to a support request, and then wrote it up in the ExpressionEngine Knowledge Base as Times, Localization, and Entry Dates, but given the transition out of Daylight Savings Time (DST) this weekend, I wanted to repost it here.
One of the hardest areas of web applications to get your head around is the treatment of dates across various timezones, servers, and computers with daylight savings time (DST). There are so many variables that ExpressionEngine can never be 100% sure of the proper time, and often the only answer is to experiment. The wiki article Dates Explained may help in this.
Here’s the problem with time. Imagine you and your buddies are trying to meet up at a set time, and you’ve all given me your watches so I can phone you at exactly 7 to tell you to be there. When I get your watches, some of them are set 1 hour behind everyone elses (DST). OK, confusing, but as long as I know that are observing DST I can account for this. Now imagine that each one is set for a different time zone. OK, also confusing, but I can figure that out also. Now suddenly some of the watches stop observing DST (many hosts do), or start observing at different times. Now I’m scratching my head. I get a bunch of new watches, and I don’t know if they are observing DST or not. Now some of the watches are simply set to the wrong time. There’s also a master watch with the official time used for each day you want to meet your friends, and every day there’s a new way of officially adding and removing that hour.
Here’s how I have my system setup to give me accurate time on EngineHosting. I’m in Toronto, so Eastern Standard Time. Both my personal local time (under My Account > Localization) and my system time (Admin > System Preferences> Localization Settings) are set to Eastern time. My “Daylight Saving Time” and also my “Honor the Daylight Saving Time setting associated with each weblog entry?” are set to “no”. Partly this is to avoid the DST problem all together, but also I had originally set it this way as I was moving between hosts, and wanted fine control without needing to worry about what setup they had. Without DST, this puts me an hour “behind”, so I set my “Server Offset (in minutes)” to 60 to make up for it.
When I post, the date and time under “date” is the exact same as my local time, and it posts to screen with that time.
If you wanted the time an entry was posted without any reference to the localization of the author, {gmt_entry_date} is what you want.
The date the entry was submitted in GMT. This variable is not localized for each user’s date settings.
Continue reading “ExpressionEngine Times, Localization, and Entry Dates”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 1 comment
October 24th, 2007
So tomorrow I’m off to a two day open source conference. Not sure how much I’ll be around for on the net, but probably a lot… but still, I wanted to mention a few things before I holed myself away to revel in geekery. First, there are a few well known CodeIgniter community members who are doing some cool stuff, and deserve our attention. I’m a big fan of this work, and this contribution to the community. Guys, you don’t hear it enough. Thanks!
- Michael Wales released “Erkana” another CodeIgniter authorization library. Looks nice.
- Jim O’Halloran continued his excellent series “Building a Complete CodeIgniter Application” with part 3. I never had an appropriate post for part 2 (so there you go), but I did mention part 1.
- pr0digy wrote a great little peice. CodeIgniter - loading external libraries. Well done. I’ve actually been sitting on this one for a few days, as I debated using the Zend PDF engine for BambooInvoice. This post is meant to remind me to do that. Its been sitting marked as “unread” in my RSS feed for 17 days… time to stop hiding it and share the love ;)
Also, just a quick ExpressionEngine tip (EE doesn’t get enough of my attention on this blog, despite the fact that I spend several hours a day working with it). If you aren’t masking your control panel... you should be. It couldn’t be easier, and it will save you from problems like… oh I don’t know… to pull an example totally out of thin air that absolutely didn’t happen to me... your browser histroy showing it while your laptop is hooked up to a projector in a room of 50 people. OK, I confess… it did happen to me. Fortunately, with a masked CP, I just FTP’ed in and renamed it at break. Easy-peasy. Makes me glad I was masking it!
And finally, just for fun, here are 2 links that made me laugh over the last 2 days. How to survive a zombie attack (pure awesome), and the super-est.
Next up, hoping to write a bit about the conference. I’m hoping for a chance to steal a conversation with a few Mozilla guys, and Bob Young (founder and CEO of Redhat).
Until next time! Signed,
Little Bobby Tables
Continue reading “3 great CodeIgniter links, and masking your CP in ExpressionEngine”. Posted in
CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy with no comments
October 05th, 2007
This came up in the forums today, and not many people knew about them, so I just wanted to draw attention to them. Some time ago, we (EllisLab) released a series of developer guidelines that might be of interest to anyone reading this. Included are Performance Guidelines, and security guidelines. We also have a set of style and syntax guidelines, which are useful - and I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point out the Zend coding standards, which I tend to follow more in my personal coding.
Oh! And on the topic of developers (developers… developers… developers) I’d like to publicly welcome Jamie Poitra as a new EllisLab Developer. Welcome!
Continue reading “EllisLab Developer Guidelines”. Posted in
ExpressionEngine with 2 comments
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