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Muscle Geeks

Jason Pelker — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:10:41 +0000

http://www.musclegeeks.com Related Posts Wired PR Works PAWS Chicago What’s the Matter with Kansas?

WordPress vs. Expression Engine

Jason Pelker — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:57:16 +0000

A friend of mine recently asked me, “Have you ever used Expression Engine? Do you have an opinion on it in comparison to WordPress? Is it just personal preference, or is one superior?”. I did a quick search to compare the two, and although I did find a very good article from Web Designer Depot on the matter, I thought that the post missed a few major arguments, which I’ll provide here for you.

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.

TaSo2 Fashion Styling

Jason Pelker — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:26:56 +0000

http://taso2.com Related Posts What’s the Point of Facebook Fan Pages? When You’re Running WPMU, WPMU Dev is a Powerful Plugin Resource Get the Image – A WordPress Tutorial

Jason Fried Drops Item-9 Some Love on Signal vs. Noise

Jason Pelker — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:17:53 +0000

In his December 2 article Creative Haystack Listings, Jason Fried of 37signals used a sample from my advertisement on Haystack as an example of creative marketing on the service:

I’ll quote the exchange we had in the article’s comments:

(Me) Thanks for the mention! Haystack has [cliche alert] changed the way I do business. I’m booking clients with bigger budgets who actually come to me. That’s a vast improvement on trolling Craigslist where hardly anyone replies to emails and when they do, they “have a limited budget” (read: spec).

…Last month was the most profitable since I went freelance eight months ago and I don’t think it’d be possible without this service. Keep up the good work!

(JF) AWESOME . That warms us up inside! So glad to hear Haystack is bringing you good business. Thanks for listing. Continued success.

Wow, that whole writeup and exchange definitely made my day. Not only is Jason Fried one of my business heroes, but since I began freelancing, I’ve never been an example on a public blog. I feels great to be recognized—one of the things I miss most about working in an office.

Another funny thing is that the logo/slogan I created actually did take a while to get just right, so I appreciate the fact that someone took notice (I hope potential clients do, too). It was a design and marketing experiment that seems to have worked. By the way, I also appreciate the traffic spike I received from Signal vs. Noise that day. Thanks, guys!

What’s the Matter with Kansas?

Jason Pelker — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:13:01 +0000

http://whatsthematterwithkansas.com Related Posts What’s the Point of Facebook Fan Pages? When You’re Running WPMU, WPMU Dev is a Powerful Plugin Resource Get the Image – A WordPress Tutorial

I’m Speaking at a Chicago WordPress Workshop on 11/14 + Link Dump

Jason Pelker — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:47:38 +0000

Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at OfficePort Chicago for the official 1-Day WordPress Workshop. This event seems to be sold out but hopefully, there will more workshops in the near future for those who can’t make it.

My topic list includes WordPress themes and plugins, so I thought I could provide a list ahead of time of some links we might use during the discussions.

Finding the Perfect WordPress Theme

40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes (via Smashing Magazine)
40 Awesome and Fresh WordPress Themes (via SpeckyBoy)
Free Themes Reviewed on Weblog Tools Collection
What I consider to be the best value in WordPress themes: ThemeForest
WooThemes
WPBest
Theme Atlas

WordPress Plugins List – The Most Useful + Highest Quality

…And Other WordPress Resources

PAWS Chicago

Jason Pelker — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:02:24 +0000

http://pawschicago.org Related Posts What’s the Point of Facebook Fan Pages? When You’re Running WPMU, WPMU Dev is a Powerful Plugin Resource I’m Speaking at a Chicago WordPress Workshop on 11/14 + Link Dump

Lucy Slivinski – Sculpture Artist

Jason Pelker — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:11:57 +0000

http://lucyslivinski.com Related Posts What’s the Point of Facebook Fan Pages? When You’re Running WPMU, WPMU Dev is a Powerful Plugin Resource Get the Image – A WordPress Tutorial

Wired PR Works

Jason Pelker — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:27:40 +0000

http://wiredprworks.com Related Posts What’s the Point of Facebook Fan Pages? When You’re Running WPMU, WPMU Dev is a Powerful Plugin Resource Get the Image – A WordPress Tutorial

Zap Antiques and Props

Jason Pelker — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:10:20 +0000

http://zapprops.com