ExpressionEngine

In trying to improve the performance of an ExpressionEngine-powered web-based system, I came across the following database fields within MySQL query WHERE clauses that therefore should be indexed but aren’t:

• exp_actions: class, method
• exp_categories: cat_url_title
• exp_ce_cache_tagged_items: item_id
• exp_channels: channel_title
• exp_channel_fields: field_name
• exp_extensions: enabled, hook, priority
• exp_fieldtypes: name
• exp_members: in_authorlist, screen_name, username
• exp_menu_items: sort
• exp_modules: module_name
• exp_playa_relationships: parent_is_draft
• exp_plugins: is_typography_related

Every little helps.

ExpressionEngine (EE) is the content management system that until recently I used for building every web property. In November 2018, EllisLab, the producer of EE, was sold to Digital Locations, Inc. (DLOC) and EllisLab owner Rick Ellis joined the parent company’s payroll. The acquisition is detailed in Digital Locations’ Quarterly Report (Form 10-Q) dated August 13th, 2019.

But the Digital Locations acquisition seems downright skeezy. Despite the company’s tagline about Artificial Intelligence, it appears to be nothing more than a holding company for Mr Bill Beifuss. Moreover it looks like he’s scrimping on incorporation fees: the company was founded in 2006 as Zingerang, then became Carbon Sciences for a decade, before morphing again into Digital Locations. It self-reports never having had any revenues.

According to the linked-to Bloomberg profile, Mr Beifuss is also CEO of some other companies: Warp 9 Inc, Coeur D’alene French Baking Co, and Cumorah Capital Inc., none of which appear to provide any actual products or services either.

Rick must have been aware of and a party to this bullshit. With ExpressionEngine he had a great thing going; I wonder what happened. All I can speculate is that he very much wanted to segue EE’s success into enabling him to try other things professionally but that it remained his biggest achievement and he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the golden goose even though it was fading without his hands-on vision. And then at some point last year he suddenly really needed a buyer.

Recently, on October 3rd, 2019, he bought EllisLab back from Beifuss then sold it a week later to development house Packet Tide, that is, Tom Jaeger. So it Rick Ellis has finally let go of ExpressionEngine, even if he held on too long; despite being free EE can barely be be given away now; the technology has moved on.

I’m relieved to have moved away from it onto the Node ecosystem. I really enjoyed meeting the EllisLab team at an EE conference in 2017 ⁠— such cool nice folks in person ⁠— but for me EllisLab is a cautionary tale.

Nice post by the always sensible Boyink re taking on a failed project.

Bashing the makers of ExpressionEngine: Kenny Meyers’ Plea To EllisLab and Veerle Pieters breaking ranks.

Cool ⁠— Jon Longnecker praises Engaging.net’s Nearby Entries in the first episode (at about 4:10) of their “Kick Awesome Show”!

MarsEdit 3.0 now has custom fields. Now to deploy for all clients running ExpressionEngine (er, that’s everyone).

Sikuli, ingenious GUI scripting. Definitely going to try it.

Andy Rutledge wisely instructs us that when calculating the hours required to do a job, the nature of the client is a real factor.

It’s about helping your users become awesome though she does use the word “awesome” awesomely often.

The talks at EECI2009 as captured by Matthew Pennell.

For those new to ExpressionEngine and wanting an actual book on it, see Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6 by Leonard Murphy.