Lots of activity from ExpressionEngine developers this week. I’d just like to remind everyone who submits an add-on that as our library grows, accurate and plentiful tags are critical to your add-on being found in devot:ee searches. Here are this week’s listings:
Iain wins Add-on Title of the Week for “The Selectatron”, which sounds like something I’d want to install just because.
Client: “How is the site coming?” Me: “Keep your pants on, hoss. I installed The Selectatron.”
My friend Matt Weinberg finally joins the ranks of ExpressionEngine developers who have an add-on listed on devot:ee with the submission of his new Antenna plugin (EE1). Antenna generates:
...the exact, most up-to-date YouTube embed code available. It also gives you access to the video’s title, its author, the author’s YouTube URL, and a thumbnail. All you have to do is pass it a single URL.”
Nice work, Matt. I know Matt has some really good PHP chops so I’m sure the whole community would benefit from seeing more of his work.
In this two part tutorial we’re going to walk you through building an accessory. The first part will cover creating a very simple HTML-based accessory with your contact information. The second part will build on the first using ExpressionEngine’s native code to create a fully functional contact form. Part I assumes you understand HTML, while part II will assume you know some PHP.
First, we’re coming up on the second anniversary of the free, weekly EE Help Chat. Aside from a couple of short breaks each year, the chat has been been running every week since September 2008.
Usually the EE Help Chat takes a short hiatus in July or August and then again around the Christmas holiday. This year the Summer break didn’t happen, so we’ll be taking a couple of weeks off this month and return on 9/21. This is for both the original and European version of the chat.
Don’t forget that the 24/7 chatroom is always open and there are occasionally people popping in and out looking for help or able to help someone.
Starting later this Fall I’ll need to bring in some people to help out with the US chat. If you’re interested in moderating the weekly chat, please get in touch. Ideally, we would have a few people that could rotate week-to-week but the one right person with the dedication to be there every week would also work.
I’ll be laboring on some training preparations through the long Labor Day weekend in the US but I want to take a moment to thank the people and companies that help make EE Insider possible.
Nevin and his team have graciously offered to host this site and keep it running smoothly so I don’t have to deal with server stuff anymore. Being part of EngineHosting, EE Insider is now hosted alongside other EE community sites like Devot:ee, Train-ee and the entire ExpressionEngine family of sites. I’m happy to be among the group and looking forward to smooth sailing on a solid host.
Second, I want to thank the sponsors that help pay the bills to keep EE Insider running. A considerable amount of time and effort go into the site on a monthly basis and the sponsors make it all possible. Soon I’ll have more help keeping the site updated with tips, how-tos and news. It’s the ads you see that make that possible.
On September 21, 2010 a group of EE users in the Washington, DC area (known as the “DCeers”) is having an event to show a screening of some of the videos from EECI 2010 in San Francisco.
If you didn’t make it to the last EE conference in San Francisco, come out for an evening of socializing and learning at one of the regions leading agencies using EE.
Learn more about it at the DCeers meetup page and you can vote for the videos you’d like to see.
The team at Barrett Newton is at it again. First they made working on commerce sites almost fun in ExpressionEngine with CartThrob. Now you might just pass out with joy the next time you have to work with a SAEF when using SafeCracker, which is a replacement and enhancement of ExpressionEngine’s Stand-Alone Entry Form/Stand Alone Edit Form (aka SAEF, which leads me to think they should have named it SAEFCracker and just laughed at anyone who thought it was a typo).
We use a couple huge SAEFs on devot:ee and I’m sure this would have helped shave off a ton of time when developing them. There is a version available for EE 1.6.5+ as well, but you will need to contact BN directly about that version. Get cracking!
I’m sure a lot of us use quick launchers on our computers. Apps like Launchbar, Quicksilver, Alfred or Launchy. Mac or Windows, you can get set up with one of these quickly and for little to no cost. Now, thanks to the fine chaps at devot:ee you can also search for ExpressionEngine add-ons right from your computer.
This won’t work with the standard EE search because it uses POST and doesn’t accept search parameters in the URL. It looks to me like devot:ee is using Super Search from Solspace to power this. Well done, guys.
Today on the EE blog Pascal Kriete posted that the first party Twitter Timeline plugin now supports OAuth. This is great news because tomorrow numerous EE sites around the web using basic authentication Twitter EE add-ons are going break.
If you don’t but need to fix a site that uses another add-on, consider pulling in the RSS feed of the user’s Twitter stream and displaying using the Magpie plugin. It’s not the same and it’s not perfect, but it’s a decent stop gap measure. In fact, with a little PHP you can make it do stuff like link URLs, remove the username the prefixes every tweet and more.
Pop over to the site and check it out. And while you’re there, drop Jesse a note and thank him for the new resource. Keeping sites like that (and this site) running and regularly updated is no small task.
On Twitter, Barrett Newton (the team behind Cartthrob) announced that their new EE add-on SafeCracker will be available Monday. Oh, and the first 20 people to use a special coupon will get $20 off.
SafeCracker is an EE 2 add-on for creating SAEFs:
SafeCracker is a replacement and enhancement of the ExpressionEngine’s Stand-Alone Entry Form. SafeCracker makes it possible to add & edit data to your site without accessing the backend. This will allow you to push the boundaries of ExpressionEngine design and development, create rich web applications, and simplify your development process.
On September 2nd three of the EllisLab team will be in Seattle and they want to hang out! From 7-9pm at the Rock Bottom Brewery, you can join the crew and get all nerdy about EE or ask them when EE 2 is coming out they’re going to buy WordPress and sudo rm -R it.
Or you can just have a beer and enjoy yourself. Either way, if you’re in the Seattle area please consider joining them!
The handy ol’ CSVee plugin for EE1 (used to export data from a query on a template into CSV format) looks like it’s been updated for EE2 in the form of the new AJW Export add-on. Looks dead simple to use and can be very useful for getting information out of your EE database.
When I released my new ExpressionEngine training videos last week, I also included a free installation video that walks through getting up and running with ExpressionEngine 2, including requirements, setting permissions and other considerations.
The video runs about 15 minutes and is just shy of a 40 MB download. New to ExpressionEngine and want a quick primer on installing EE? Download the video now.
Now if you’re already using EE 1.6 and want to upgrade to EE 2, I shared some information in my EECI 2010 (in San Francisco) talk about the upgrade process. The slides are available to everyone to read and learn from.
But if you’re interested in watching me give the talk, last week the talk was posted to the conference website but it’s limited to those who attended or purchased the DVD.
I have 2 invites to complete access to the EECI videos (of nearly every session) and I am going to give them away to two random commenters on this blog entry. In order to win you have to list something you love about EE 2 and something you wish it had. I’ll pick the two winners on Friday morning Eastern Time USA.
Biber Ltd. released a new fieldtype for EE 2: Currency Field. This field enables you to easily have a currency fieldtype in your publish form. It supports dozens of currencies (pretty much everything except Monopoly money) and you can choose whether the currency is user selectable or not.
Using the template tags, you can leverage the Google Calculator to do currency conversions while also showing the original price (see the fieldtype docs for more explanation).
Long-time EE development shop Solspace is looking to expand their team with a new EE developer contract position:
We seek a skilled ExpressionEngine add-on / CI / LAMP stack developer to help with both client jobs and our extensive add-on library. You will be employed on an hourly remote contractor basis with flexible hours, but we expect you to be generally available during regular business hours. Our need is immediate.
What’s the best way to allow a client to position images in the EE backend? Can one dynamically apply a CSS class to the image?
I’ve done everything from creating custom formatting buttons to just using Wygwam. What’s your technique for allowing images to be easily positioned inside of content areas? Let us know in the comments.
This initial list will be shortened, so if you dig the EE Podcast, please vote for us! After you vote they will create a short list and from there the judges will decide the winners.
OK, so there was only one new addition this week. There are still almost 900 more for you to peruse at devot:ee, any time you wish. A random favorite of mine is Publish Tweeks, which removes the “Quick Save” and “Preview” buttons when publishing. The key part for me is that it also cancels the redirect to the preview after saving, keeping the user on the edit screen. This is very handy when you’re making small changes and updates and saving frequently, and it works well if you’re using Live Look.
There has been a lot of activity in the MojoMotor world since the software was released last month. Add-ons, community websites and websites built with MojoMotor have all surfaced.
Here’s a roundup of some of what has been going on.
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There has been a lot of activity in the 
