I’ve been thinking about moving over to EE for a while now, especially version 2 seems to be great considering it’s built using Codeigniter. Up until yesterday I didn’t feel like moving because of the price tag involved, and simply because I’m too lazy to recreate my entire website using EE. The reason I decided to move over after all was that yesterday I was trying to add a search box and only make it appear on the blog page. The problem? I had to install a widget in order to hide the search widget on certain pages. This isn’t something I want to do, as the widget is not only poorly developed (http://cl.ly/1S2L), but also an overkill if you just want to hide/show a single widget on a few pages.

However, plugins aren’t the biggest reason for making the switch. It’s Wordpress itself. Wordpress is great for a small blog or for someone who doesn’t do that much with their website other than posting cat videos. Its ease of use makes it the ideal system for both users and designers that have a limited knowledge of the things they’re working with. The problem is that as soon as you want to do something more than just blogging you’ll have to start hacking or installing loads of plugins, something I absolutely hate.

Hacks

The problem with hacks is that they tend to be buggy most of the time and might get broken when you update the system you’re using. Imagine patching your copy of Windows so that it no longer comes up with a BSOD - a day later you install a new update and the hack no longer works. Why? Well, windows thought it was wise to modify the file you hacked (or patched, whatever you’d like to call it) in order to fix one of its many issues. The solution to this is to modify that file yourself again, but the process will start over again whenever the file is modified by either the system or a third party.

Widgets/Plugins

Compared to hacks, widgets/plugins are a men’s best friend. They add functionality without messing with the core system. The problem with Wordpress is that in order to add extra functionality, you quickly have to install a load of plugins: 10 in my case. I just don’t feel like installing a lot of third party - and in many cases badly supported - plugins/widgets. I’d rather build something that has all the required options from the start and only have to install a plugin for that very special feature.

This is where ExpressionEngine kicks in. It’s not a blog tool or a regular CMS, it’s more like a platform that provides you with the features required to build what you want. This means that you have full control of pretty much everything, but it also means it isn’t something the novice would use. Installing a new theme isn’t as easy as it is when using Wordpress or other general systems. For me this is just perfect, I need a system that handles the management of my content but doesn’t restrict me.

ExpressionEngine is something I’m really looking forward to. It will take some time getting used to, but we’ll see where this train ends.