TYPOLight vs. ExpressionEngine

**Medianomaly** · 02/24/2010, 20:47

Hi everyone,

Does anyone here have any experience using ExpressionEngine? I was hoping get some feedback on how it compares to using TYPOlight in terms of power, feature set, ease of use, etc.

Long story short I'm firmly in the TL camp, but someone has suggested ExpressionEngine instead, because it relatively speaking it is somewhat more popular (and easy to find people that know it). The question is does it compare to TL at all? Especially when you factor in extensions like Catalog?

If you have any insight, please take a moment and help me sell TL, please! But I want to be as unbiased, objective and fair as possible about the reasons.

I've been messing with it for a half-hour, and so far I can't make heads or tails of it... It appears to be node-based, and user permissions don't seem to be as robust.

EDIT: I fired this off real quick because I was in between meetings, and it may be in the wrong section (maybe it's off-topic instead). My apologies.

I have a couple of hours now with EE under my belt, and I REALLY don't like it very much, aside from a few nifty features. But I'd love to hear someone else's perspective as well.

**Ben** · 02/25/2010, 08:36

Brian,

I moved this to the the Off-topic section as you suggested. I have not worked with EE in quite a while, but I don't remember liking it very much. As I recall it was like Wordpress or Joomla, in that it's a node-based system (as you mentioned). I think a lot of people use it because it has a pretty admin interface, but I don't think it's near as robust, extensible or easy to manage content as TYPOlight. Additionally, it does not seem to have as many (or as good) extensions as TL.

Disclaimer: I haven't spent much time with it, so this is essentially an outsider opinion.

**Medianomaly** · 03/01/2010, 19:33

A belated thanks from me to you, Ben, for your feedback. (I'm a bit surprised no one else has any experience with it).

After spending a few hours with it, we both don't like it very much, and have dropped the idea of using it.

I can see the appeal for certain people, but definitely not for us.

**Ben** · 03/01/2010, 20:13

Brian,

If you have a second, it might be good to jot down some of the reasons why you prefer TYPOlight to ExpressionEngine. Would be helpful for others checking out the system.

After looking at your website, it looks like we could co-author an article about why Fireworks is the best tool for web design, and why Photoshop is for tools that design websites. :lol:

**Medianomaly** · 03/01/2010, 23:11

Originally Posted by Ben

After looking at your website, it looks like we could co-author an article about why Fireworks is the best tool for web design, and why Photoshop is for tools that design websites. :lol:

That needs to be on a T-Shirt...

It's such a love/hate relationship for me. Fireworks has become so ingrained in me that I think I would quit the industry before going back to Photoshop to design. And yet there are about 5 huge bugs/annoyances that those lazy-ass Adobe developers refuse to fix that keep it from completely taking over.

Another post coming with the EE feedback...

**Medianomaly** · 03/01/2010, 23:37

Originally Posted by Ben

If you have a second, it might be good to jot down some of the reasons why you prefer TYPOlight to ExpressionEngine. Would be helpful for others checking out the system.

As Ben said, ExpressionEngine is node based. So your content sort of floats out there, not tied to any specific page. I think that model makes more sense for something like a blog that is made up of mostly posts, but for a CMS, we think that model seems awfully counter-intuitive. In TL if you want to change your "About Us" content, for instance, you just go to the "About Us" page and click your article -- very easy and straightforward. In EE you have to "pluck" this piece of content from a huge list of categorized content items that span your entire site.

One thing that's kind of cool is that it has this "clean slate" approach. Instead of predefined content types (like articles, news, events), you build all of your content types from scratch and define all of your fields. Imagine if TL only had the Catalog and nothing else, and you had to build your news/events/FAQ modules using it -- that's sort of what it's like.

Of course at the same time that is a huge disadvantage, mainly because you have to build everything yourself. Aside from the aforementioned CMS parts, every template has to be written by hand using CodeIgnitor's tag-based tools. You want a navigation menu? There's not built-in module you can drop in -- you have to code a navigation menu from scratch. Want to create an event calendar? It seems as though you have to code that as well through CodeIgnitor's calendar framework. Whereas TL has a huge selling point in its rapid development capabilities, EE sort of leaves you on your own (although I'm sure that's by design).

This more than anything else makes it a non-starter for us. The point with using a CMS like TL is that we can do so much more in so much less time, and pass those savings on to our customers. EE sort of negates that advantage.

The user interface is not client-centered. Most clients won't be messing with templates, or creating channels, or doing administrative stuff, so all they care about (their content) seems to be buried two levels deep under the first navigation menu. Once in there their content isn't really organized but rather all lumped together, and the client needs to sort/filter to make sense of it.

As far as features go -- it appears that the extensions are not as numerous and powerful as TLs. But again I think this CMS is geared toward custom coding.

I can see EE appealing to two types of people --

1. Those who want complete control and to code everything by hand (and I know there are some who fit in this category).
2. Those who are familiar with Wordpress. In this sense, EE is like the next logical step up -- it's like WP but, in addition to posts and pages, you get to create your own content types and have more control.

However if you don't want to reinvent the wheel every time, or if you don't like WordPress all that much (like me), you won't like EE very much either.