Why Expression Engine CMS Is Our Publishing Best Friend
Posted by Andy Williamson on June 08, 2007
Filed Under Expression Engine CMS
Have you noticed how professionals in many fields always have certain essential tools or must-have equipment that they consider to be so vital to their business that they believe it would not function as well without it, or at the very least it would mean a whole lot more work for less profit? For anyone moving into on-line publishing that single must-have tool is your CMS or Content Management System. If you’re serious about starting your own on-line publication and you just said “What’s a CMS?” or maybe “I know a little but I never thought it was so crucial,” then you need to read on to discover your new best friend.
This article isn’t about the technical specification of a CMS - after all you don’t need to know too much about how your washing machine works in order to appreciate the benefit of clean clothes do you? And the level of knowledge you need to appreciate a CMS is much the same, plus if you do want to get down deep with your CMS there’s a heap of sites and forums just for you which will do a far better job than I ever could.
As a web based publisher you only really need to know enough to achieve your primary publishing goal, getting a great publication on-line in a manner that it can grow, evolve and always be positioned to take full advantage of future technological developments. A good CMS does all of the above and leaves you free to focus on making your publishing business profitable and successful. Over time it will save you money, time and frustration and what’s more, if someone steps in with that amazing $20 million buy-in offer, you’ll know that you’re all ready and primed to go big time.
A Content Management System manages your content - there you go I said it, I knew I’d have to at some point, but that statement just doesn’t do a CMS justice! It’s like saying your thumbs are really just opposing fingers, so what? Well you really need to try a day without using your thumbs to appreciate their value, and you could try starting up your publication without a CMS - I most definitely don’t recommend you do either.
CMS’s come in all shapes and sizes - some are free and some cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - now here’s the really weird thing about CMS pricing that is so strange it defies the fundamental laws of economics… CMS costing is like that for no other product I’ve ever come across…
Let’s take a more typical market to illustrate this fact - the motor car market - now lets say you’re in the market for a new car and you’re scouting through your local newspaper, well you can normally tell quite quickly why one car is for sale for $500 and another for $50,000 and more importantly you can generally expect to get a whole lot more for your 50K that for your $500!
Well, not so in the case of your CMS system - you see these amazing and vital pieces of publisher software used to be made almost exclusively by the type of specialist company that always feels a need to fill your office with smartly attired, doughnut munching, caffeine fuelled consultants who spend an inordinate amount of time creating ever more elaborate Gantt charts and insisting that the only way to go is custom build. 100 thousand dollars later and you’ve got your own unique system and your slippery consultant friend has promised it will do everything you want in the next version (hopefully) and the clever company who developed it, installed it, configured it, support it and now own your soul lock stock and barrel will always be there for you, like a well orchestrated corporate protection racket.
As with all of these software-based cash cows, the open source world is giving these CMS ‘old boys’ a real run for their money and lo and behold the best CMS systems are now pretty well free, or as near as damn it.
Joomla and Drupal are excellent examples of free CMS systems, they really are developing as extremely robust and mature products that will out gun the best of the old school CMS systems. For our business the real gem in the current breakout of low cost, high functionality CMS systems is Expression Engine, it does actually cost some money, (around $99 for a private licence or $249 for the commercial licence at the time of writing), but to be honest you’ll most likely have to buy a few commercial components to get Joomla or Drupal the way you like it so the price is pretty well academic.
Technically I tend to believe Expression Engine has the edge over the competition, it definitely enables me personally to design sites with functionality that I couldn’t manage using other CMS flavours - but I’m not really one for slugging it out at the technical level between CMS systems, it starts to sound like those school boy debates - ‘which is better Lamborghini or Ferrari?’ - and it’s not really that important when both can go fast enough to totally scare the pants off just about anyone with a pulse anyway. So here’s the non technical reason why we prefer the Expression Engine CMS route: -
First and foremost it has to be the support offered by the Expression Engine team and community, they have a great forum with full time EE experts who live, eat, sleep and breathe Expression Engine. You can ask the most difficult or confusing question and they always come back with well considered answers, plus when you’re asking for something a little ambiguous by nature or beyond the basic remit of a CMS they’ll still spend time working with you to find a solution, you’ll find the Expression Engine people to be one of the most helpful and friendly communities out there.
Of course I fully appreciate the other open CMS’s have equally devoted people, but I personally get an extra feeling of security being able to call upon a dedicated full time professional support team member in times of need - and when your primary business depends on your on-line presence you really do appreciate that little extra security.
On a slightly technical note, I always find the learning curve with the other CMS’s takes me longer. Expression Engine is extremely intuitive, I personally found it to be a lot easier to get to grips with and manage things than I did with the other CMS’s
Most CMS systems tend to have a modular approach, each module performing a separate role: EE manages to do this in an incredibly seamless manner so you tend to feel you’re dealing with a single entity with heaps of functionality and power rather than a primary engine with lots of 3rd party extensions each with their own individual quirks. EE provides publishers with a very neat and satisfying environment and anyone who’s made the move from a PC to a Mac will know what I’m talking about!
So to summarise - your CMS will be your best friend, it will make the impossible possible, it will literally enable you to get on a level playing field with multi-million dollar publishers enabling you to focus on providing higher value content, the real reason for anyone spending time on your website. The current range of open source CMS’s provide you with a great deal to look at and try but when anyone ever says ‘Andy, look I just want a system that gets me up and running as quickly as possible, is easy to get to grips with has great support and will scale with my publication’ - I always say ‘get Expression Engine.’
Finally for any sceptics out there - we don’t work for Ellis Lab which is the EE’s developer, we don’t belong to any affiliate program of theirs and we don’t have any financial incentive for recommending Expression Engine whatsoever, we just feel that if we’re serious about running a website that helps people to get their own web based publication into production we need to be open about the tools that we prefer to use. You can get a free copy of Expression Engine core from their web site ExpressionEngine.com plus you’ll find stacks more info about it there and you can ask questions on the forum.
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