These people’s roles really depend on the channels that are working for you and the channels into which you want to invest. You might have a full-time person who just does video content. You might have a full-time person who just does blogging and they do very little else. That could be a content marketer. You might have multiple people who are managing your community because you have so many people following you and interacting with you on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, through your own social sources on your site if you have a social platform, a high level of community contributions, user generated content, those types of things.

The nice thing about how this whole platform works is that it can organically grow. It can build off itself, and you develop strengths in all the areas without ignoring any channels. Early on in your stages, these people and then these people are going to be experimenting with all types of different channels. As you get here, you have specialists who can perform in those channels, leaving the CMO, the VP, the director free to explore new channels and find places where they might want additional specialists.

This video breaks down exactly who it takes to build a web marketing team (hint: it’s not just one dude with a laptop). Business owners, you need to start realizing that it takes a team to do good work. Invest in your brand and it will come back around ten-fold.

Related posts:

1. Who Are My Marketing Heroes?
2. Glengarry Glenn Ross and Web Marketing
3. Improve Conversion Rates & Sales With These Three Marketing Strategies

I love Basecamp and have been a 37Signals customer for the last three years. In that timespan, lots of challengers have sprung up–some plainly stealing Basecamp’s features, and others, like the three listed in this article, have come up with new and interesting takes on the project management realm.

These three project management plans offer options for every business need and budget for small and big businesses and every day, I’m temped to switch over to one of them. If you’re not already a loyal Basecamp user, do yourself a favor and take a look at what I think are the three best new project management applications.

Projecturf

Projecturf is a project business management application loaded with user-friendly features is design to optimize business workloads.

• Real time tracking on work groups includes whiteboards, privacy controls and a global dashboard.
• Documents are readily integrated and managed and an event calendar offers scheduling for events with a drag and drop feature.
• Data, file and other media are easily exported and stored on the personal computer for backups.
• Backups are automatic and additional security is protected by an EV SSL 250-bit encryption.
• Dashboard views and RSS feeds are unique features, which help a business ensure optimal work status by tracking function in all areas.
• Email and address contacts are offered as well as an archive for storing discussions for future references.
• Tasks and tickets are effectively designed to be printed for on-the-go or for conveniently working offline.

Plan and pricing for Projecturf start with a fourteen day risk-free trial on every plan purchased at $35 a month. Individual plans are low as $10 a month. Projecturf also offer a 30% discount to non-profit organizations and higher level plans.

This project management application offers a pay-for-project pricing. From one project plan to one-hundred and fifty projects, pricing starts at 9.99 a month to 169.99 a month. The plan that offers a business unlimited projects comes in at $199.99 a month. The pricing difference depends on the number of projects needed, with all features available, no matter the number of projects.

Rule.fm

Rule.fm is a contact management business software application that allows a business to track staff, departments, work groups and companies.

The ability to edit and manage details, activities, documents, tasks, discussions, projects, sharing and permissions offers a tactile way to manage a business from the ground up. Rule.fm is an application that helps a business wisely manage its customer relationships and financial related activity. The interaction with live stream ability enables a business to monitor the activity of staff, projects, tasks, current documents, team divisions, discussions and keep abreast with calendar activity.

A mobile application for iPone, Blackberry and Android will keep a business at the fingertips 24/7 and readily enables a business to be managed on-the-go.

Rule.fm has plans that offer unlimited access to all current and future Rule.fm features. All plans are pay-as-you-go and offers a 30-day free trail, with no long-term commitment.

• The free Rule.fm plan offers a business a workspace for up to three users and 20MB of storage capacity.
• The Espresso offers a plan for unlimited users and 3GB storage capacity for $24 a month.
• The Tall purchase plan offers unlimited users and 7GB storage capacity and is $49 a month.
• The Grande comes in at $99 a month and offers unlimited users with a 15GB with its purchase plan.
• The Double Venti comes in with 40GB of storage capacity and unlimited users with its $149 a month plan.

Each of these plans include unlimited Rul.fm features for documents, projects, staff and wikis management abilities.

Producteev

Producteev brings into play an iPone application that makes it easy for a business to keep organized even when offline. Push notifications will bring important alerts to the user and easily connects with existing tools already installed like social networking media sites, email and instant messenger.

Producteev can automatically prioritize tasks that are waiting and filter reports effortlessly. This software business management program has multiple team support and privacy settings. A real time overview and user-friendly workspaces are offered, as well. Incentives for task managements can be monetized through the built-in Producteev Academy, which awards badges and levels according to completion of tasks.

This project management software program comes with the ability to competently handle from two users via workspace to unlimited users and also offers a free sign up plan for two workspace users. This plan includes a support forum and 100mb of file storage. A monthly customizable workspace and email for 200mb of file storage space is only $5. The fee covers SSL security and a logo. Optional savings for this package is $55 annually.

At the next level, the premium package of Producteev offers 300mb more of file space, a customizable workspace and priority E-mail for $20 a month, or $220 annually.

At the platinum level, for $30 a month or $330 annually, a business receives 1.5 GB file storage, support vie phone, SSL security, customizable workspaces and generates reports.

Each Producteev plan comes with:

• unlimited tasks
• Gcal synchronization
• task labeling
• a free app for iPhone
• Gmail gadgets
• Producteev Academy access
• file attachments
• import ability
• notifications via email and instant messenger.

Project Management Feature Matrix

Related posts:

1. How To Create And Assign To-Do Lists With Basecamp
2. Is it wrong to volunteer web development?
3. Who Are My Marketing Heroes?

Almost everybody has a great web store idea, but few people understand how easy Shopify makes it to turn that idea into a profitable business. I’ve worked with a lot of clients and on a lot of e-commerce project and I can honestly say that for beginners and even advanced website builders, Shopify has everything you need to create a successful e-commerce website. The best part is that their plans start at $29/month!

I’m not saying that you can’t get an amazing custom-built e-commerce site created for your business. In fact, that’s one of our specialties at Item-9. A lot of potential customers don’t have a $5,000 budget, though. And many other customers are so worried about being ripped off by a web development studio (present company excluded, obviously:), that they’re paralyzed from pushing forward with their dream site.

If you’re looking for the quickest, least expensive and least risky way to get an web store going, continue reading to learn the five best reasons why Shopify and cheap e-commerce doesn’t have to suck.

Reason #1: Shopify is Flexible & Easy to Learn

Nothing is worse than selecting an e-commerce package that uses coding languages and file structures that only a veteran programmer can understand. This makes building a website a hassle; it’s truly demotivating. Even worse, your project might never get completed and you’ve just sunk thousands into dead-end development cost.
With Shopfiy, you exchange the stiff and convoluted for flexible and logical. Without even touching a line of code, you can have a fun and professional e-commerce website that looks exactly the way you want. If you do want to play around with the code, though, you’ll quickly understand how the themes are shaped and be making changes to your site in no time.

Reason #2: Low Cost Doesn’t Mean Low Value with Shopify

You can usually get a comparable outcome by spending $5,000-$10,000 to have a developer to create a site for you. You can also spend about the same amount of money in time trying to figure it out yourself (but you’ll likely give up well before then). You could also use a “bargain” service, and the once you see how crappy the final product, you’ll probably go back to square one.

When you decide to use Shopify, you can immediately create your business with a very low monthly cost of $29. The basic plan allows:

• Unlimited bandwidth (no other competitors offer this)
• The ability to sell 100 products
• No hidden fees or start-up costs
• Most importantly, an incredible 30 day free trial to show their confidence that you will like what you see.

If you really start selling products, you can easily upgrade to one of the four other plans that fits your budget and needs.

Reason #3: Don’t Stress about Software if You Don’t Have To

Not many people can create even a basic website from scratch. There’s no shame in that. Unlike HTML and CSS, creating and setting up a new e-commerce website with Shopify is exceptionally easy and fun to learn and use. It should really only take 10 minutes to create your first Shopify site and subsequently earning money.

Unlike nearly all other e-commerce systems, you don’t have to worry about installing software on your computer or a web server, or even worse, keeping it constantly updated and protected from malware and hackers.

Shopify’s e-commerce software is by far one of the easiest ways to start any kind of internet business.

Most business owners forget this, but it makes a lot more sense to spend time on making money instead of playing around with tools used to make money. To begin,

1. Create an account with Shopify
2. Pick a theme
3. Add your products.

That’s it. You’ll have your own professional business on the web in just a few minutes. Shopify is by far, the most beginner friendly e-commerce web based software anywhere.

Believe it or not, Shopify now makes it even easier for you. Not only does Shopify give you an easy means to create an online business, but they also provide you with statistical tracking for your products and customers. By turning on these features, you can track traffic to your site, sales numbers, inventory, prices, and even customer demographics. You’ll learn more about your business by doing less work.

Reason #4: Pick or Make a Shopify Theme that Works for You

In this Shopify review I’ve shown you how easy it is to start your own web based e-commerce business, but one of the most difficult tasks in any internet business is creating an attention grabbing website that people enjoy. Luckily, Shopify provides style with ease.

Even a basic website can take over 25 hours and thousands of dollars to design for a professional web development company. With Shopify, it doesn’t matter whether you are a complete novice or a HTML or CSS pro. Once you create your account, you’ll get to choose one of the hundreds of beautiful, free themes Shopify provides or even select a premium theme for under $200.

Reason #5: Build an Awesome Shopify Theme and Get Paid

Any web developer can create a Shopify theme and earn money as an affiliate. If you can, take advantage of your design skills and submit your theme for a Shopify review. If approved, you cam earn a lot of extra money.

WooThemes is the most famous example of this. Last October, they created three unique themes for the Shopify system, all of which are available for purchase today.

Conclusion

When you’re building anything that’s poised to make money, it’s important to prioritize your pain points. If you go with a platform that is cheap, fun, exciting, and isn’t a pain in the ass to set up, you’ll have a lot more energy (and money) to spend driving traffic and marketing your products to your customers. You don’t have anything to lose, so I suggest you take Shopify for a spin today.

When you want to thank me, you can do so by hiring Item-9 to help grow your Shopify site into a monster e-commerce site!

Related posts:

1. Thesis Should Become the New Default WordPress Theme Options Page
2. BackupBuddy: A Great New WordPress Server Migration Plugin
3. WordPress Plugins are About to Get Real

A lot of the feedback I received was positive, but more importantly, I think that I started a great discussion between Envato and many members of the WordPress community–exactly the outcome I was hoping to achieve and exactly the situation that the article noted had been missing in the past.

A Universal ThemeForest WordPress Framework

One of the ideas that I proposed in that article was creating a WordPress theme framework for ThemeForest authors. This idea actually looks like it has traction now; the two Envato staffers disclosed that they are indeed working on the project and hope to release the framework shortly.

I love the idea of an options page framework. I really think this is a big step in standardizing what is almost always the same bit of functionality (i.e. logo, footer text, etc).

A lot of authors may resist the idea of someone else creating their theme’s code, but somehow, I bet when the authors who insist on doing everything themselves see the increased sales for themes using the Envato framework, they’ll likely change their minds.

I’ve always believed that theme developers need to focus on designing beautiful themes, not writing variants of the same options page we’ve seen over and over again. I’ve never bought an ugly theme with a great options page. Eventually, authors need to determine how much ROI there is in being a complete independent.

For argument’s sake, I wouldn’t want a developer to rewrite the WordPress core every time they publish a theme, either. It’s obviously best for everyone to use a centralized, updated version of a software that works and can be built on top of.

Stricter Coding Standards

Keeping with the standardization idea, there certainly needs to be higher coding standards for templates ThemeForest sells–framework or no framework.

Many of the comments on the original article alluded to the issue of these themes having sketchy javascript code, thus leading to plugin incompatibilities. This becomes even more evident when theme updates are few and far between–long after developers have had to edit the theme’s code in order to get it to work properly.

A lot of the detractors were specifically peeved that they had to spend so much time fixing ThemeForest authors’ code, when obviously, a theme should probably work with common WordPress plugins right out of the box. There’s no excuse not to play well with GravityForms. If your theme doesn’t, though, there are going to be quite a few unhappy customers.

More Detailed Theme Rating and Theme Details

Right now, how do you determine the quality of a theme on ThemeForest prior to purchasing it?

Other than the number of sales and other experiences with a particular theme author, I usually go by the kinds of questions I read in the theme’s latest comments. If they’re all newbie questions (“how do I load the XML file?”), then the theme is probably fine. The amount of updates is a huge indicator of author involvement, too.

Unfortunately, that system leaves a lot to be desired.

With any marketplace (i.e. Amazon.com), ratings are undeniably crucial. But the ratings on ThemeForest are worthless. They don’t collect comments, they don’t reflect version numbers and they aren’t specific at all. A great rating system needs to tell a product’s story quickly and concisely but a simple 0-5 star rating tells us little if anything about what we’re purchasing.

Ideally, there should be multiple ratings for each theme; one for design, one for code, one for uniqueness and maybe one for compatibility. Those four criteria would certainly help buyers make a better informed decision about the themes they’re purchasing.

It also wouldn’t hurt if the comments were separated by theme version number–version number being something else that should also be listed generously throughout the theme purchase page. Adding a change log to go with that would go a long way to helping alleviate update questions, as well.

WordPress and WordCamp Participation

The Envato team is spread around the world and I can’t see why more of their staff hasn’t appeared/spoken at the WordCamps equally spread around the world. I mean, I spoke at WordCamp Chicago in June and I hardly represent the zeitgeist of WordPress.

I also think that there needs to be more communication (like that in the original article’s comments) in the WordPress community. We’re not going to improve the project if we keep bringing the same people to the table, all with the same background and opinions. Envato as a whole as very valuable to WordPress and it just seems weird that they aren’t more represented in WordPress community events.

ThemeForest won’t improve, either, unless the experts let them know what needs to be changed with their service. It would be great to have more open discussions about ThemeForest at events like WordCamps–it wouldn’t be a bad marketing move by Envato, either.

Better Affiliate Payouts

This might be a stretch to include on this wishlist, but I can think of one other reason why so many bloggers and developers love companies like StudioPress and WooThemes: they have much (much) better affiliate programs than ThemeForest.

[To note, ThemeForest provides affiliate payout, but only for a customer's first deposit. That doesn't really provide any compensation for selling to people who have already purchased an item from one of the Envato marketplaces. The other theme companies have more traditional affiliate programs--a percentage of each sale for referring customers.]

So, in the end, it may be the lack of economic incentive that keeps folks quiet about ThemeForest (although maybe they want to keep the service a secret, as well. Who really knows?).

So, did I miss anything?

Chime in with your comments below.

Related posts:

1. Thesis Should Become the New Default WordPress Theme Options Page
2. Improving WordPress Theme Development through Standardization
3. WordPress vs. Expression Engine

Matt:

Would you guys have any interest in working with me to redesign your website?

I’m not really trying to get paid as much as I’m just perturbed at the appearance of your site (I kid, but seriously…). I’ve been reading the Filthy Critic for four years or so and I figured one day I’d go to the site and it would just look better. Since that probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon, I thought I might volunteer to help implement a redesign, as well as get the site into a content management system like WordPress.

I’m a developer and web consultant out of Chicago and normally I volunteer my services for nonprofits, but again, your site needs some serious attention. We could probably monetize it a little better, too, but the look and functionality are easier first steps.

Let me know if you interested–I think it would be a fun project. Thank you in advance.

Here’s his response:

Fuck off. The term monetize tells me you have no fucking clue what I’m doing or why.

So, I wrote back:

Matt:

As far as monetization goes, I was more thinking along the lines of just allowing people to find your site. Promising to make folks bucket-fulls money isn’t really my style. I really wasn’t trying to come off as shady–I was just trying to be professional and give you every reason to want to work with me.

I wasn’t trying to come off as some kind of SEO expert, either, but I know that just getting your site into a standard CMS like WordPress, you would be able to put your title and meta tags where they’re supposed to be nearly automatically, and all your content could be indexed more efficiently. Obviously, improving the look/usability of your site would be icing on the cake–it would increase the amount of time your visitors spend on your site and decrease the amount of folks that jump off after viewing only one page.

If you’re writing all your reviews for yourself, I understand your reluctant to change your site. If you are writing for an audience, though, then I don’t think it was out of line to suggest increasing your audience size. (Anecdotally, I’ve probably read 95% of all your movie reviews over the last few years but I don’t know anyone else who has heard of your site. Every person I’ve shared it with, though, either laughed their ass off or stopped talking to me altogether.)

I’m sure you know this, but five ga-zillion idiots read the LOLCats blog every day and that site is garbage compared to yours. Their site actually makes its viewers dumber, but no one seems to care–they keep coming back to be hypnotized by baby talk and cat pictures. They also have several books for sale for some ungodly reason.

I know you don’t want to be the next LOLCats, but I’m really surprised you haven’t have a book published. I think you’re a great writer, with a unique voice and an interesting topic (the continuous trough of dumbass cookie-cutter movies). These days, those are the only three qualities you need to get into the bookstore or even on TV (i.e. Shit My Dad Says–and that started from creating about 50 Twitter posts).

Anyway, I’ve told plenty of hacks to fuck off, so I don’t take offense. Really, I just volunteered my services to help you out and take on a more interesting client/project. You’ve got a lot of content on your site and again, I’ve got a pretty good idea of how to display it. In the end, I think that both you and your readers would appreciate a site revamp, especially one that comes from one of your actual readers, to boot.

Truth be told, all I was looking for was a small credit link in your footer once your site was complete. I’m betting that I can really improve the look/usability/findability of your website, and some how, that would help you gain an ever larger following than you already have. If a few folks are impressed by my work, they might even click that credit link and check out my portfolio, as well. It wouldn’t be bad for me to tell people I built the site for the Filthy Critic, either. Right now, the only site I’ve built that a few people might recognize is What’s the Matter with Kansas and I’d like to add more conversation-worthy names to that list.

If your not interested, it’s no big deal. Again, I’m volunteering free work. To note, I’m a legitimate person with a legitimate career that I’m looking to grow through choosing better projects. Check out my portfolio if you get a chance and whatever you decide, I wish you good luck with your business and I thank you in advance.

To which he responded:

What you’re coming off as is an asshole who thinks he needs to tell me how to do my hobby.  I didn’t ask for help, so don’t offer it.

As I said, fuck off. If I wanted to do my site different… guess what.  I’d do it different.

At that point, I was quite frustrated, but after gathering my thoughts, I realized it was just best to move on, so I wrote:

Matt:

You’re right. My apologies.

How would you have handled this situation? Do you think that I was out of line to offer help redevelop his site? Should I have asked permission to offer my services? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. For the Best Development Experience, Get Your Clients Editing their Content Inside of WordPress as Early as Possible
2. Improving WordPress Theme Development through Standardization
3. BackupBuddy: A Great New WordPress Server Migration Plugin

Mullenweg Vs. Pearson on Mixergy.com

A good example of this assimilation was integration of WooTheme’s menu functionality into WordPress 3.0. Of course, the finished product ended up being slightly different (and in my opinion, slightly better) than the original Woo menu, but the important point is that there is now a menu standard that has been readily adopted throughout the theme building community. Almost every new theme takes advantage of this functionality, so it becomes easier to build universally on top of this technology now that you have a set of conventions on which to work.

“Originally themes were designs. Then they became designs with functions stuck on.” –Alex Denning, WPShout

Now, as everybody in the WordPress community has already covered, long-time GPL-hater Chris Pearson has begrudgingly agreed to adopt a partial GPL (Gnu Public License) for his Thesis theme (which he considers to the most important WordPress theme ever, btw). The partial adoption refers to the fact that he has actually decided to split-license his theme, meaning that he GPL’ed the PHP and WordPress functionality that he stole borrowed (seriously, though, you can’t steal GPL code–that’s the whole point of the GPL), but also instituted a more strict propriety license on the theme’s images, CSS and javascripts (which to note, is absolutely kosher).

What does this all mean? It means that Thesis is now GPL compliant because of a hard-fought war of attrition and the dual licenses (which was Matt Mullenweg of WordPress’s idea, btw) really do seem a win for everybody:

1. Automattic (the company behind WordPress) and Matt don’t have to incur a PR nightmare by dragging Pearson to court to set an inherited license precedent (especially silly since so many other major theme authors already adopted the GPL last year). In fact, Matt kinda looks like a bad-ass (Ghandi-style, at least) for persuading Chris to go GPL, using just some well-formed arguments and a couple of online soapboxes, including the infamous tipping-point discussion on Mixergy.com.
2. Chris gets to keep making a fortune off of theme sales (around $2 million so far, according to Chris’s first Mixegy interview), since nobody is allow to resell his theme outright (not with his images and CSS, anyway).
3. Most importantly, the WordPress community can now use Thesis’s functionality in other themes, and hopefully, take what many consider to be a standard-bearing theme admin panel, and turn it into the actual WordPress standard theme admin panel.

As an active ThemeForest downloader, I’ve seen dozens of different options panels, and while some are excellent, most are imitations of older versions of admin panels from the major theme developers, like WooThemes. Imagine, though, if every theme had the same easily updatable options page–making customizations a snap, as well as allowing you to reuse code (or create plugins) that added functionality to each and every theme options page right off the bat.

Another obvious feature that comes with these standards and conventions is exporting/importing. If all future admin panels shared the same hooks, actions, filters and even input id’s, you could easily transfer settings from one site to the next without fear of corrupting your database.

“Sure, there are some limitations with this system. With a set standard, new plugins will likely emerge to fill in the gaps.” — Justin Tadlock

As you can tell, I’m glad to see the walls of proprietary licensing finally fall away from long-time WordPress theme holdouts, like Thesis. There is work to be done, though, and the next step is taking this newest open-sourced theme and integrating either into the core of WordPress, or maybe even into a core theme admin plugin like the import/export function did in WordPress 3.0. One way or another, we need to create efficiencies by aiming to standardize as much of the WordPress backend experience as possible. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d like to one day see WordPress developers focus on web design once again;) If Thesis can become the de facto admin panel, we’ll be well on our way.

Related posts:

1. Improving WordPress Theme Development through Standardization
2. Five Ways to Improve ThemeForest and their WordPress Marketplace
3. The Item-9 Big List of WordPress Themes, Plugins and Resources

• Sitemaps and SEO
• Supporter
• Google Analytics

They’ve also got an upcoming plugin to allow automatic default blog content that I’m looking forward to. If I’m lucky, this post will get me a year-long WPMU Dev subscription—fingers crossed!

Related posts:

1. WordPress Plugins are About to Get Real
2. BackupBuddy: A Great New WordPress Server Migration Plugin
3. Get the Image – A WordPress Tutorial

Argument #1: Open-Sourced (Free) Beats Proprietary ($)

Expression Engine licenses costs money (here’s their pricing chart). WordPress is free (and open-sourced). Here’s a 2004 post on WordPress.org describing Movable Type’s (at that time, WordPress’s major blog publishing rival) new pricing structure for their developer brand of their software. Here’s the response from WordPress’s Matt Mullenweg regarding MT’s pricing changes:

I have been receiving emails all morning asking if I have any plans to charge for WordPress in the future. The answer is no, but my answer doesn’t matter. The license WordPress is distributed under —the GNU Public License—ensures that the full source is available free of charge, legally.

We saw how well that pricing structure and propriety licensing worked out for Movable Type (it didn’t). Three years later in 2007, MT dropped the licensing costs altogether and officially went open-source. By then, though, a lot of damage had been done to their brand and thousands of their users jumped ship to WordPress.

Open-sourcing WordPress from the beginning was a double-sided advantage for the development of the software. In the short-term, it was obviously free to try WordPress, so lots of people did. There was little commitment to give it a go. As a long-term strategy, though, being open-sourced has  encouraged thousands of people to become involved in the WordPress community (see WordCamp for a great example of what community really means), which is exactly why the software keeps getting better and why there are so many add-ons to help complete a project (this is a great example of Metcalfe’s Law).

Expression Engine, by comparison, has a small community, so you won’t be able to find pre-built themes as easily (just check out ThemeForest to see how many inexpensive, excellent WordPress themes exist) or, more importantly, plugins to fill in the content management systems’ blanks. There are almost 10,000 plugins in the WordPress repository and this isn’t counting all the great premium plugins that are now becoming a viable marketplace on their own (i.e. Gravity Forms and BackupBuddy).

This also means that there is no dearth of WordPress tutorials, blogs, books, forums, meetups, workshops, conferences and consultants (wink, wink) to help you out when you get stuck.

Argument #2: Timely Updates Appease the Masses

Expression Engine is slow to ship.

The EE developers been working on version 2.0 of the software for almost two years now. When I first heard about this big software upgrade, I was like, “Oh, I’m so gonna become an Expression Engine guy”. Well, where the f@#k is EE version 2? Apparently, it’s still in public beta and at this point, it should be done around 2045.

In the meantime, WordPress will have had 50 major upgrades and it will probably be able to cook your toast by then (WordPress averages 2-3 major feature upgrades a year). And somehow, Expression Engine expects its customers to pay for its software when it seems to over-promise and under-deliver.

And did I mention WordPress is free?

I know there have always been a lot of great features in Expression Engine, but WordPress refuses to stand still. The WP 3.0 release is scheduled to be shipped in May 2010 and it will contain all kinds of great changes and features, including multi-site capability, menu editing on the fly and–a long-held Expression Engine feature–custom post-types with custom taxonomies.

Remember, though, even if WordPress is/was missing a killer feature that other CMS’s may have had, plugin developers could usually be counted on to provide that functionality in a stellar manner. Again, the community ensures timely updates, new features and when it needs to, it fills in the gaps through plugins and creative theme development.

With all these great additions to WordPress, I’ll be amazed at what comes next in version 3.1 (due in August 2010). I’ve heard rumors that dynamic image resizing will be included in that release (goodbye TimThumb). And what’ll be included in version 2.1 of Expression Engine? Who knows–I guess we’ll have to ask our grandchildren…

Conclusion

I think that should clear up any questions about the WordPress vs. Expression Engine debate. The clear winner: you (right after you install WordPress through Fantastico–it takes less than 60 seconds). WP is better supported and loved by millions because of (and through) its community.

Expression Engine may someday overtake WordPress as the defacto self-publishing web content management system, but not without first converting all those talented WordPress developers and users.

Related posts:

1. Five Ways to Improve ThemeForest and their WordPress Marketplace
2. Thesis Should Become the New Default WordPress Theme Options Page
3. BackupBuddy: A Great New WordPress Server Migration Plugin

As the newest product from the iThemes-spinoff, PluginBuddy, this plugin is a unique and surprisingly simple solution for both WordPress developers and end users to prevent data loss (through complete, rather than just database backup) and to migrate their WordPress sites to new servers. The second feature was the most interesting to us—several database backup options already exist (and backing up wp-content files isn’t difficult to do manually) but until now, there has been no true WordPress migration tool. And as developers, we can attest to the amount of site migrations that go on in the site-building world.

After reading several positive reviews, we decided to put the plugin through its paces, so we bucked up and dropped $75 on a Business License (which supports up to 10 sites) to fully test BackupBuddy’s backup and migration capabilites. And here’s what we found (hint: it’s awesome).

BackupBuddy Product Tour from WebDesign.com on Vimeo.

Getting Started with BackupBuddy

Just like any other plugin, BackupBuddy can be installed from the Plugin menu in WordPress administration.  Simply click on “add new,” search and locate the plugin zip file, and start uploading. After uploading, the plugin creates a new Backup Buddy drop down menu in WordPress with the following options:  Getting Started, Backups, Scheduling, and Settings.

The Getting Started menu option is obviously the best place to begin. After a paragraph-long promotional blurb at the top of this menu page, the plugin provides a very concise list of instructions for backing up and restoring the site.

Backup & Restore Instructions from the Backup Buddy “Getting Started” Menu Page

Before making a backup, the user is required to create a password in the Settings section of the Backup Buddy menu. This password will be used when restoring the backup file. After creating the password, the user is ready to navigate to the “Backups” menu section and perform the backup.

Making Your Backup

Upon visiting the Backup menu section, the user will notice that there are two backup options: full backup and database only. Either backup can be initiated by simply clicking the button bearing the name of the backup type. The full backup we performed on a simple WordPress site took only a second. After the zip file is created, the following items appear in the same menu section: file name, date modified, file size, and sending options.

Backup Zip Files Created by Backup Buddy

The two sending options available to the user are “send by FTP” and “send by email.”  We tested the “send by email” option.  On the first attempt, a message with the zip file attached was received in our email account after approximately one hour.

The backup zip files created are given a unique file name containing the date of the backup.  It is important for the user to not change the name of the backup file.  Later, when the backup file is restored, any changes to the file name may cause the file to not be recognized by the PHP import buddy function.

Now that the user has a backup zip file, when he or she is ready to restore the file, the importbuddy.php script must be downloaded.  The Backup section of the menu displays a link for downloading this importing tool.

Restoring and Migrating Your Backup

We took our backup zip file and importbuddy.php script and plugged them into a sandbox web host account.  In order to start the restoration process, the user must navigate to the domain containing the import script (http://2createanebook.com/importbuddy.php, in our test).  The user will then see the following screen:

After entering the password created previously,  the user is taken to step 1 of 4.  In this step, as long as the user has not changed the file name provided by Backup Buddy, the drop down menu should include the name of the zip file loaded onto the destination server.

Step 2 of 4 involves checking to make sure the backup file is indeed the correct file.  In this step, the user can see the site URL, the blog name, and the blog description.

Step 3 of 4 involves the user modifying any old settings in the backup file prior to uploading the contents to the destination server.  In our test, we received a notice that the URL of the backed-up site, https://theschedulecsite.com, did not match the destination URL, which was created purely for testing purposes. While this appears to have not caused a problem during this step, the migration ultimately did not succeed, and this difference in URLs may have had something to do with the failure.

After the user determines that the import data is correct, clicking “Next Step” will start the restoration.

This step passed very quickly, but unfortunately the next screen indicated that an error was experienced during the restoration:

Our First Attempt Failed

Originally, The restoration/migration function did not work for us.  We expected to complete step 4, and then be able to navigate to the destination URL and find a fully functional and restored version of the original site.  Luckily, the plugin developers are busy guys, and the plugin was undated later in the afternoon. The update included a “compatibility mode” that helps migrations on Windows-based webhosts or servers with other wonky configurations.

Wrapping Up

So, in the end, BackupBuddy worked exactly as advertised. It helped me transfer the site exactly as it existed on its previous server. All the images were in tact, and the content was preserved and maybe most helpfully, every single WordPress setting was migrated over, as well. Resetting all those plugin and WordPress settings generally takes a significant amount of time (and a very good memory), so that feature is worth the money alone.

We highly recommend purchasing a BackupBuddy license for your WordPress sites. It’s cheap, easy and you can’t beat the sense of euphoria that comes with a successful website migration. Also, with a purchase, you’ll have access to unlimited BackupBuddy upgrades for a year, including any new features added to the plugin.

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Mr. Hudson:

I read an article last week about passing along gratitude to those who deserve it. If the article was correct, most people do not get thanked much, so when this morning, I again thought about your astrobiology class I attended while at Eckerd College in Fall, 2001 (I actually think about the class quite a bit), I decided I would take a few minutes and give appreciation for a very interesting, very educational and very enjoyable semester with you.

I still think (and talk) about the lessons–both book and otherwise–I learned in astrobiology. In a post-Wikipedia world, that class stands out as the last big information digestion I’ve had in my life. I learned a lot from you and I actually had fun doing so. The class was obviously challenging (this was the last semester before the class went Honors) and thus, incredibly rewarding to receive an A at the end.

I also thoroughly remember completely failing the constellation identification test on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week and having to stay at school an extra day to study and pass the exam the next evening (I appreciate the second chance you gave me, as well). I worked hard in Astrobiology and I’d like to imagine this one class having positively affected my work habits henceforth.

Mr. Hudson, I thank you for your dedication to science, students and learning. Never imagine that your efforts are in vain.

Appreciation is a very rare currency, so it never hurts to say thank you to someone who deserves it. I hope that you’ll take 10 minutes and try it out yourself today!

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