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read_me.gif Southern Voice Washington Blade

Gathering No Moss

Except for maybe this weblog

by j. brotherlove

What a long-ass short week!

The day gig continues to be a flurry of activity (more on that later - maybe). And quitting time yields no peace for the brotherlove. Such is life. And you thought I was slacking? Despite my hectic schedule, I am very excited about 2006. I have already begun to shape up the year and can’t wait to share some good news for a change. It’s all about focusing on the positive in the Oh Sexy!

As for a redesign of this space, er… one day. I played with ExpressionEngine all summer and fell in love with it. Since it works well for a couple of my clients, I intended to transfer thebrotherlove.com to the same CMS [note: ExpressionEngine Core is now available for free for the curious].

Alas, Dreamhost and ExpressionEngine do not play well enough for me to make that transformation (I’mma need you to fix that DH). So, it’s back to the MT Manual. That’s right, the manual. After years of being MT’s pimp, I have to man-up on Version 3.2. Who knew that while I was on hiatus, MT would grow up and get fancy?

Considering the other projects on my plate, getting up to speed may take a minute. But I do have a bunch of posts in draft that need refabulizing, Favorite Music lists and such. I’ll try to knock that out this weekend.

Be good to yourself.

pub: 01/06/2006 | previous entry | next entry | feedback x 5 | subscribe

I hear wordpress is nice. As for MT, I’m not gonna’ bone up - I’m looking for Donald.

Wordpress 2.0 is very nice and definitely has a leg-up on MT (and probably any other blog system) when it comes to spam prevention. The EE Core is free, eh? Lemme traipse on over and download that.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like MovableType. The fact that it has been upgraded so significantly has given me even more confidence in its abilities.

The draw with ExpressionEngine is that it’s a fully customizable, complete CMS with countless options. I like options.

As for Wordpress, I played with it, but it didn’t blow me away. And at this point, I’m not in the mood to learn a third blogging software solution.

Give me some examples of ExpressionEngine magic that make you love it please. I tried EE during the Movable Type pricing fiasco exodus of ‘04 but didn’t love it.

The MovableType pricing fiasco is what go me started with ExpressionEngine. Pmachine essentially gave me their product for free to lure me away from MT (that fucking rocked). However, EE requires some sort of a commitment at first. You do have to learn the ins and outs before lightbulbs go off. Also, like I complained about before (sorry, can’t find that post), there aren’t as many showcase sites using EE (or Wordpress for that matter). Both MT and WP have matured since I started using EE. However, what attracted me at the time:

The ability to setup various levels of memberships
Editorial workflow (great for online mag needs)
Integrated forum
Advance categorization
Absolute template configuration/conditionals
True dynamic publishing (or mixed, if you want)
Ability to turn the entire site “on” or “off”
Data modeling/Customized fields (vs. bastardizing “keywords”, “excerpt”, etc)
Spam management
Easy pagination of entries

There are tons of solutions, however. You can check out (an outdated) Blog Software Breakdown at here.