Feature suggestions for EE
News and General
I’m currently evaluating between EE and Wordpress for an upcoming project of mine, and have a few suggestions for essential features that should be part of EE that will make it a lot more competitive. Granted I’m looking at this from my own project needs, but these are features I had always hoped- and frankly very surprised- EE doesn’t already have out of the box. The world of CMS is dominated by Wordpress, and the way to stand out for a commercial CMS product IMO is to include highly sought after features and plugins out of the box. My list are:
1) Tagging- Why doesn’t EE support tagging for organizing content even when we’re at version 3 already? I can only conclude the developers have been resting on their laurels. Sure there are paid plugins for this, but when the core product isn’t free, some of our budgets are strained that we cannot purchase every plugin under the sun is to make up for the core product’s lack of x.
2) Content rating- I’d love to see EE support ratings (likes/ star ratings) out of the box. This strengthens the social aspect of EE.
3) Login via social networks such as Twitter/Facebook/Google etc: For the same reason as 2).
I think EE is at a critical juncture at this point where in order for it to stay relevant, it needs to start incorporating features out of the box that Wordpress users have to install a third party plugin for. It’s easy to brainstorm what features to add by looking at the most requested/ popular plugins for Wordpress. When people see EE having included these features by default, it’s much easier to convince people the value of EE versus going with a free Wordpress in addition to a host of questionable, not-free plugins. Just my two cents.
1) Tagging- Why doesn’t EE support tagging for organizing content even when we’re at version 3 already?
Not every project needs tags, and for those who do excellent third-party add-ons exist, including a free one. It’s simple: if you need that functionality, use an add-on, no need to burden everybody with out-of-the-box functionality they might never need.
Content rating- I’d love to see EE support ratings (likes/ star ratings) out of the box.
I don’t. Pretty much what I said above; several good alternatives exist. I have used MX Stars Field on a single project once, no other site ever had the need.
I think EE is at a critical juncture at this point where in order for it to stay relevant, it needs to start incorporating features out of the box that Wordpress users have to install a third party plugin for.
I’m not sure the majority of EE users, myself included, would agree with you on this one.
Hi georgec
I pretty much agree with what Ingmar said.
For the three items you mentioned, tagging, ratings and social media logins, they are really specialised functions that “most” sites would never need, so I’m happy to keep them as 3rd party addons that I can call when I need them rather than add bloat to the core install.
I do agree with you that EE needs to stay in the game, but I’d rather see general enhancements to EE’s toolbox rather than specific stuff 😊
EE is great, don’t get me wrong, and I too favor focusing on improving EE’s core versus trying to incorporate every popular plugin out there. The question then becomes, at what point is a functionality in demand enough that it should be part of the core? For me, “tagging” for example at the very least is universal enough of a feature to warrant inclusion. Craft for example has it built in. Only focusing on the “core” is a slippery slope- at what point should a function be part of the core versus a separate plugin? My argument is EE should make the decision based on how universally applicable and popular the functionality is.
And on the issue of plugins, I’m currently considering upgrading to EE 3.x, but alarmingly a lot of the popular plugins I need apparently either haven’t- or according to some authors- will never be ported over to EE3.x This alone has forced me to give other CMSes a second look, including Wordpress, for that particular project, even though I agree Wordpress is a nightmare compared to EE.
p.s: Correct me if I’m wrong, but why is it EE even at this point doesn’t support a “numbers” fieldtype? Any type of sorting by numeric value demands this. In EE2, I know there’s a plugin to fill this need, but shouldn’t something like this be part of the core from the beginning?
The question then becomes, at what point is a functionality in demand enough that it should be part of the core? For me, “tagging” for example at the very least is universal enough of a feature to warrant inclusion. Craft for example has it built in.
I’ve worked on over 200 EE sites and can count the number of sites that used tagging on one hand, so for me that sort of functionality I don’t actually need in the core. Saying that an “edge case” field type like that could be useful as core for many people like yourselves.
Only focusing on the “core” is a slippery slope- at what point should a function be part of the core versus a separate plugin? My argument is EE should make the decision based on how universally applicable and popular the functionality is.
Indeed that’s a good question. The latest version of EE actually has some new fieldtypes added so hopefully Ellislab are considering what the core contains in future.
And on the issue of plugins, I’m currently considering upgrading to EE 3.x, but alarmingly a lot of the popular plugins I need apparently either haven’t- or according to some authors- will never be ported over to EE3.x This alone has forced me to give other CMSes a second look, including Wordpress, for that particular project, even though I agree Wordpress is a nightmare compared to EE.
It’s the same for any major release, it took a while for EE2 addons to catchup, EE3 is no different but Devo-tee shows more and more each week - https://devot-ee.com/add-ons/filter?&f=ee3.
It will take time for addons to be ported over, for some sites I can upgrade to EE3 right now but others I’m patient with until the ecosystem is right. EE2 will work find for some years to come and I’m still using it where necessary if addons aren’t ready.
p.s: Correct me if I’m wrong, but why is it EE even at this point doesn’t support a “numbers” fieldtype? Any type of sorting by numeric value demands this. In EE2, I know there’s a plugin to fill this need, but shouldn’t something like this be part of the core from the beginning?
You can change a field a fields “Field content” to number, integer or decimal which could help, otherwise use a standard text input and add number with prepended zeros; like 001, 002 etc?