Q: Are there plans to extend Simple Commerce or add a more complex e-commerce system?

A: Yes. Internally, it’s Paul’s project. Though he set it aside briefly to help with EE 2.0. The EllisLab team needs it as much as anyone else.

Q: [Andrew] Will there be any future modules or upgrades to the 1.x branch?

A: [Rick] At this point, there isn’t a firm decision. 2.0 has taken a lot of resources and they’d like to keep things focused.

[Leslie] We really don’t make those decisions until after the product is completely developed. With MSM, similar approach. Even pricing and support decisions.

Q: Will the code stay open? Will it ever be encrypted/obfuscated?

A: [Rick] Always open. Never obfuscated.

[Leslie] That goes against the grain of our company values. We want it to be easy for you and we benefit from having such an honest community.

Q: Since you are implementing Ajax functionality, specifically pagination, within the Control Panel, will you release that as a module for use by developers in front-end development?

A: After-note from the editor: This answer came in fast and I had to move quickly past it. From what I remember, the general answer was that it would not be difficult for developers to adapt those things.

Q: [James Curry - UT] Rich-text editors? He has used TinyMCE in the past, but never found it stable enough.

A: [Derek J] We like the idea, but the issues with browser differences and instability we haven’t put much focus on it. Browser manufacturers seem to be adding RTE functionality in the browsers. We’d like to see what happens with that, but if that does not develop, we could look at an option.

[Leslie] It’s just not stable and we need such a high degree of control over the user experience. But we are “similarly optimistic” about this.

[Rick] This is really a philosophical issue. Should it happen when a page is rendered or when it is delivered into the database? I’ve always considered it a bad idea to have formatting inserted into the database. If you need to re-purpose content for some other platform, say RSS, then you need to have clean content to deal with. Sometimes folks in the forum/community seem to think that we are just against one idea or another. But often we genuinely analyze whether or not something is good for the product and then make decisions based on that.

Q: [James Curry - UT] Needs a hook for a custom logout.

A: [Paul] Added in 1.6.1.

Q: [A.J. - 'ajp'] For those of you that don’t have “chief” in your title, how do you feel about that? (Laughter.) Will there be a developer preview for 2.0 for those who create modules for EE?

A: [Derek A - Answering the second question] Yes, we will have a pre-release with very specific instructions to aid developers in updating their projects. There have been definite architectural changes and when

Q: [Paul H] I’m a designer who uses different solutions for client, but I really want to put all my eggs in one basket. Followed Boyink’s tutorial. Can you explain some benefits of EE/CI? How do you deal internally with the different products, EE and CI? Are there any additional products that might be coming up?

A: [Kurt - Answering the benefits] I’m a personal testament to the benefits of EE. (At a former company) we crafted web presences for clients and we used EE to quickly craft new features and custom functionality. We used other tools and never had any luck using them. With EE, it just worked. It’s a great tool to build a business on!

[Leslie] EllisLab is very committed to web professionals. It’s our history and where we are going. There really aren’t any other companies who offer what we offer. Most companies people compare us to are blog-centric or open source companies whose focus is quite different than our focus on web developers. We have no intention of deviating from our approach. We’re committed to that.

[Lisa] In addition to all the benefits Kurt and Les mentioned, with EE you’ll get great support from us and from the community. We are here to answer your questions and we won’t leave you stranded in a problem for weeks at a time.

[Rick] Proponents of open source tend to downplay the problems of open source.

1. There is no real support with many open source products.
2. There is no catalyst for open source developers to take care of bug fixes or other problems in a timely manner.

We are paid to take care of you and so that’s what we do. We are committed to grow and deliver exceptional products and continue to grow the community.

Q: [Dane Peterson] Never built anything in EE and just learned CI just last week. (bixbyheart.com) Champions the clear documentation of CI and the MVC model for his success and quick acclimation to CI.

A: [Derek A] My story is much the same. If CI has changed the way you develop apps, EE will change the way you manage sites.

[Leslie] We moved to CI out of concern for scalability, and while we have sites like iLounge that have TB amounts of transfer and enterprise-class environment [EngineHosting] we feel that the move to run EE with CI.

[Derek J] We don’t have document writers. Rick asks us to document as we develop so that the documentation is informative and comprehensive.

[Rick] I’ve always believed that it is very important for developers to document as they go. The two go hand-in-hand and it helps reduce confusion and poor docs.

Q: [Tom Myer - 'myerman'] The first application I wrote in CI was in four days and most of that was for Ajax stuff. Tells other stories. Is impressed with CI. 1.6 of CI had plugin and helpers, is it now extensible?

A: After-note from editor: Didn’t catch the exact answer, and probably not the exact question. Derek A. added a couple of remarks, mainly covering the extensibility of helpers in CI.

Q: [Ben Croker - 'BenC'] Rick, how did you start out and how did EllisLab/CI come about?

[Rick] I was in “audio” when I found the Internet and fell in love with it. I starting building websites, at first for fun, then for musicians, then for real clients. Nancy Sinatra was one such client. She constantly demanded updates to her website, so I learned PHP on a trip overseas and later built a CMS, “Power Trip” for her. I began to consider the market for this, though I thought at the time it would be just a side thing. Within six months, after appearing in MacWorld and some other big news, I knew I had to take a leap of faith and start this business.

Once pMachine was created, I noticed how clients were using the software and had the idea for this niche thing called ExpressionEngine. CodeIgniter was developed later as a result of browsing frameworks like Ruby on Rails and others. I was amazed at how awful the documentation for these frameworks was. So I decided to wade into building a framework of our own based on our code base and development practices.

Q: ['rockthenroll'] With 2.0, are there any new modules? Would you ever consider having an advisory board of select community members?

[Rick] Funny you asked about an advisory board as that sidebar was deleted from the EllisLab site last week and I have yet to contact those folks about the changes we are making internally. Thanks for the reminder. (Rick jots note. Audience giggles.)

[Leslie] What we realized is that we really aren’t great communicating with another group as a group, but we are great working with people one-on-one. We envisioned having a board of advisors that we could elicit feedback from, but we ended with a panel of people that we just wanted to work with.

[Rick] I’ve found that when you engage groups like this (advisory boards) with questions, it tends to be an energy sucker, yet we value the brainpower of the collective and it’s stupid not to tap that brainpower.

[Paul] Each day we get hundred of emails from folks who have ideas and send feedback about our products. And that is in addition to the Feature Request forum, so there is a large volume of information about the products that we manage.

[Leslie - Also commented about the volume of requests, advice and information.] The 1.x branch of the EE product is four years old. We are really focused on having really incremental build releases. Now, with CI, those developers can convert CI apps into EE modules really easily.

Q: [Eline] Historically, clients have had problems with the file upload function. Will you be improving this feature, specifically with images?

[Derek J] The short answer is yes. We are taking special measures to make file handling simpler for your client.

Q: [Jason - 'jloft'] I noticed a question mark on the CodeIgniter page. Now it’s gone. What’s up?

A: [Rick] We were developing a question mark. (Laughter.)

[Leslie] We are announcing the release of… QuestionEngine. (Laughter)

[Rick] But seriously, we wanted to convey that they had future plans to release new products, but took it down since they really have no imminent plans for such.

(end of session)

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