Monday, January 14th, 2008...7:31 am
We moved from Expression Engine to CodeIgniter
Back in September and October we spent a lot of time looking for a CMS that would be the end all be all solution for LifeChurch.tv. We did not find the end all be all, because it does not exist, but we did land on Expression Engine. You can learn more about that here.
Well, we moved from EE to CodeIgniter. Don’t get me wrong, everything that I wrote about EE is still correct…I personally think EE rocks, and is a wonderful CMS! But, there were some challenges that came with it. Let me list out a few reasons why we moved to CodeIgniter. But before that, let me say that they are both built by the same guys at EllisLab.
First, CodeIgniter is NOT a CMS. CodeIgniter is a PHP Framework. Actually:
“CodeIgniter is an Open Source Web Application Framework that helps you write kick-ass PHP programs.” - CodeIgniter.com
So basically we are building our own CMS with CodeIgniter. And I know…I know, you are asking why, why are you building your own? I asked the SAME question…
Why did we move from EE to CodeIgniter?
1) More flexibility. EE is very flexible, but because EE is a CMS and has a lot of functions built in…we found that to be a little limiting and made it a little challenging to get exactly what we wanted quickly.
2) Faster development. At the end of the day, our developers felt like we could land the plane faster with CodeIgniter. Even though it is only a Framework, the team came together and agreed that we would be FASTER with CI.
3) A Framework! CodeIgniter has become our standard development Framework. We expect that 75% of the digerati web development projects will be built on CI. The 25% will be the very small, and very big and hairy projects (YouVersion, etc). Who knows, it might handle up great on the big hairy projects…
4) FREE. CodeIgniter is free. And you know we love that! We still plan on giving all our code and tools away. With how CI is structured, we think it still will be easy to give our stuff away.
We really liked EE as a CMS, but we really love CI as a Framework. We plan on launching version 1 of LifeChurch.tv Feb 1st, so you will see some of the new CI code then. Watch out world, here we come!
I lead the digerati team at
11 Comments
January 14th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Wow! The more I look at this the more I like it. The framework structure looks solid, controllers, views, etc. There appears to be an extensive set of tools from FTP to image manipulation to caching. Just the few minutes that I look at it looks great. But as we all know the proof is in the pudding. Please keep us posted on the actual implementation.
Do you know of any high volume sites that are running this framework?
January 14th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Great call, Terry! Honestly, I didn’t even think about how CI might be a great fit for you and your team, but it sure does make sense! I’ll continue to listen to your progress with the project.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
It is cool to see CI. I have been developing Rails applications for a while now. It seems very similar but written in PHP. I will have to explore further.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I have always enjoyed home grown for the same reasons - flexibility and faster development - faster to generate those custom ticket items. You guys rock.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Jeff told me you guys were switching. Good call. I’m about to start using this for some of my personal projects and I see us using this for some of our projects in the future.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Thanks guys, great feedback.
Ryan, I really think you will like it the more and more you dig into it!
David, I agree, the more and more we looked it just made sense.
Rick, I dont know anything about Ruby, but I just like the term Ruby on Rails. It sounds cool.
Thanks Chris!
Jonathan, if he ever whips to hard…give me a call!
January 14th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I have been using CI for a few months now and I definitely agree it’s a great framework. I’m using it to build our church web apps as well. Looking forward to see what you guys come up with.
Just wondering, which JS library have you guys chosen to use? I’ve been using JQuery lately and it has helped to speed up writing JS code.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Victor…that post will come out tomorrow! Good question.
January 15th, 2008 at 1:03 am
*Scratching my head…
January 16th, 2008 at 12:51 am
O Terry, this post is so out dated, we’ve already switched to Kohana PHP (a CodeIgniter fork). http://kohanaphp.com
January 19th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m with David … can’t believe I didn’t think about CodeIgnitor as a possible solution for you guys. Definitely keep us updated. I’m *very* interested in your experience.
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