EE 6?

We really do need a mailto where it’s easy to find. [email protected] will always do the trick.

With ExpressionEngine open source now, you can check out progress on some of the big changes for v6. See: https://github.com/ExpressionEngine/ExpressionEngine

Check out feature/multi-group-members for one of the bigger additions- members in multiple groups. The feature/entry-manager is another one. I can’t say it will be in the initial release, but it’s well in progress. Plus a redesign of the control panel.

I’d highly recommend joining in the Slack channel (https://expressionengine.com/blog/join-us-in-slack) - in particular, the dev-preview room gets a lot of discussion of v6 and if you want to see the latest, that’s where it is.

And we are working on ways to be more transparent. Slack is where most of the activity is, though I personally prefer the forum for support type stuff. Things go by fast in slack.

I did see somewhere (Slack probably) that a v6 beta release “may” come in February 2020.

Why don’t you want to make a decision on the current version of EE? Seems like it is stable and feature-rich, and EE v6 is only going to add more features. And they promise it doesn’t have any internal changes that should mess up third-party plugins.

That’s because I’m looking for features to be included so I don’t have to buy overpriced plugins to accomplish a task (if the plugin even exists). For example, I would like BASIC features such as front-end member templates to be rolled into the core system. This functionality is built into Craft and adds no overhead. The User module has received no significant new features since version 4 in 2015 yet is still on a yearly subscription for $99 to simply receive maintenance updates! User module features are outdated and stale such as member photo upload as just one example; It allows for no image processing, no storage in a CDN no ajax features, just a 1998 style upload form with absolutely no advanced functionality either in the back-end processing or front-end templates.

I understand that EE is free and the new financial model is to make money through the sale of modules but many of those modules are now sold by the same company that developes EE and my impression is that virtually none of these modules (in eeharbor) have had any significant update since they were purchased from the original developers.

With this paradigm, there is little incentive to roll new features into EE if the functionally can be covered with a plugin that can be sold. This makes for messy and complex installations which are difficult to manage and makes upgrades iffy since you’re now dependent on ALL your addons being updated! That said, I have absolutely no problem supporting EE by buying modules but those modules need to add advanced and specialized functionality to a core system that already has feature parity to the competition. Forcing users to buy modules to make feature parity to a competitor is a recipe for failure, IMHO….especially when those modules are not getting new features and are expensive.

I agree that EE is stable and feature-rich (for 5-10 years ago) but there is no roadmap, no real communication from the developer on their commitment or vision of the future of EE. I’m one of the first people ever to use EE many years ago; before that I used pMachine. I’m no stranger to the EE world and the thought of leaving it is not pleasant but the problems I just laid out are increasingly a deal-breaker and simply being told to sit-tight and wait for version 6 isn’t enough to keep me around. I need communication, a roadmap and vision, updated addons that get new features and core feature parity with the competition.

thank you varen for that last post – these are also in my eyes the big problems with ExpressionEngine. I can now program the code in my sleep, but I’ve been testing Craft for a few weeks now and see that many, many things are being made more modern there. Of course, it’s easier to change a new system than one that has been around for so long, because users expect everything to continue working when they update to the latest EE5. But important basic functions have been missing for years - and this makes it difficult for us to sell this CMS to our clients, the end users. Why is there still no reasonable text editor, something like WYGWAM light in EE? Why does EE handle media so badly that you still have to go so many extra miles and use plugins when embedding movie files? Why can’t EE just support multiple languages in the frontend?

80-90% of our time in updating the various EE websites we have made and maintain is spent talking to developers about the bugs that a plugin or EE update creates in conjunction with EE or a plugin. And we really try to avoid plugins and prefer to program a lot of things ourselves using board tools.

I think if EE would bring more functionality, it would also take the plugins available at that time to a new, higher level, because the developers would start thinking about how to improve EE again.

The mentioned transparency has been bothering me for years, because it makes it impossible to plan for yourself. And that’s not even what worries me, because over the years you know ways to get news. But if new users or customers want to find out about the development of EE, all they’ll find is something about the current version and maybe the screenshot of the new interface - whereupon a customer, to whom we showed both Craft and EE as a possibility, asked me if they were the same because they had the same backend.

I processed a lot of my thoughts for a bit before I responded, but I share a lot of the same concerns with Varen and others. I have checked out things on Slack which doesn’t particularly help ease my concerns as the information there about EE6 is lacking (I personally don’t see a dev-preview channel however).

I intend to stick with ExpressionEngine (partly because I actually live in the 518 along with the new owners), but I know Statamic and Craft CMS are both tugging at me and may choose to use one of those on the side to round things out. Statamic’s transparency is quite frankly impressive in the technology community as a whole and both communities feel alive, while the community with EE feels like a hostage situation to put it bluntly. That’s not to say the development team isn’t working hard, it’s just that community relations is lacking (and I feel always has been lacking in a way) even though I’m empathetic the team that acquired EE is still trying to standardize and integrate work processes. It would be helpful I think to hire someone dedicated to solving this problem rather than plays multiple roles. That’s a problem I’ve noticed in general in the technology community: too many people (including myself) wearing too many hats when a lot of the stuff we do are really specialized disciplines and important things get lost in the noise as priorities change. The person can absolutely have a technical background, but their work week should be strictly community relations, support (within guidelines of the owners; I want to be clear it appears development support is generally excellent and the problem lies in operations more-or-less) and be brand-conscious. This should include reaching out to add-on developers to determine if add-ons are still being maintained and addressing any security concerns and similarly that means purging stale add-ons from the official market place. Quality over quantity in my eyes.

I also do like where the new design is going from the few pictures I’ve seen of the new control panel, but I’m also concerned about that in it’s own right. There appears to be emphasis on the light-dark theme, which is cool–but not when something entirely optional is taking precedent over very real needs. I think what would stand out to me more is if this meant there was better support for white labeling from the control panel. While the look and feel is being modernized–I think it’s important to ensure that the feature set is modernized and in relative parity to competitors. That may mean:

• Adding something novel like built-in SEO and sitemap support (see Statamic and Craft CMS addons, or potentially reuse functionality from SEEO).
• Modularize the dashboard (this could be streamlining through additional addon functions or an additional file) so it’s not typically dead space without specific addons.
• Provide first-class headless support and potentially integrate GraphQL.
• A better content editor that still supports Markdown.
• Convenience changes, like nested folders for templates and support for adding file extensions without using hooks.
• Stronger media management for first class support of videos.
• Tactical improvements, I would suggest buffing up the Simple Commerce plugin to support Stripe and add additional features for lighter ecommerce solutions–leave more complex things like taxes, additional payment gateways and shipping to add-ons (either 3rd party or in-house). Map to entries in a more sensible manner. Charge is a good starting point because it’s owned by Packet Tide.

In particular, I think Packet Tide is in a good position because they acquired a lot of addons from P&T (Wygwam) as well as Solspace (Tag). Structure is an also another great plugin that would serve well integrated into the core. I think that’s part of my concern is a lot of the add-ons on EEHarbor seem extremely steep in price, where as by comparison Reinos.nl prices things very affordably.

I did see that version 6 is likely entering alpha mid-to-late February, but I have to stress I think the community in general needs a very clear roadmap. It is really hard to sell a product to clients in an ethically sound way without being able to point to something sound. The blog is full of roadkill and leaves a lot to be desired, in that there are clear attempts to change that were never followed through persistently (ExpressionEngine University and Featured Clients, both great ideas) and died along the way. The two recent ownership changes is a major red flag to any potential clients, which makes it even more important for there to be a very visible change in philosophy and clear/consistent messaging.

I think ExpressionEngine is an excellent product and I’m happy with who acquired it but I think as others have touched on, that we really need to learn from the past so we can be grounded for the future. I hope nothing I said was out of line; I tried to think how I expressed my concerns while also trying to be supportive.

It’s a bit of a shame and sadness, because through our years of working with EE and the support team - especially Robin, who is self-sacrificing and very creative and inspiring much more than just doing her job - we have had very good experiences with both the development and maintenance of EE projects, as well as with bringing our customers (end users) to EE.

But with the developments of the last three or four years and new platforms like Craft or the Statamic you mentioned, the possibilities are changing much faster than the development team of EE seems to keep up. It starts slipping…

And by that I don’t mean features that are super modern and just born:

• A clearly arranged asset management with subfolders and thumbnails that show whether an image is in portrait or landscape format is mandatory!

• Easy handling of video files, whether embedded from YouTube or Vimeo or as a file on your own server, should be standard.

• A cleaner interface that moves away from the nerdy developer as a target group and focuses more on the end customer. Things like IDs should be optional (see Craft), list views should be much more configurable without having to buy a plugin (also see Craft).

• Managing multilingual websites… would open a GIANT market for EE outside the USA. We always have big problems to “sell” the system to our customers, because it can only manage multilingual websites comfortably via plugins. And although Publisher is a wonderful plugin and Brian provides very good, very fast and very conscientious support, we often have problems with the updates of EE and Publisher in the interaction of the two.

• Headless support is actually something that we are increasingly asked for and we also appreciate Craft.

To be honest, I felt sick when I saw the screenshots of EE6 with the light/dark theme – that’s pure marketing and “a talk about”, but not a feature that would have any meaning for our work or customer satisfaction in everyday life.

They want to get their work on a website done quickly and easily - and that’s why we are constantly tormented by customers with the desire for Wordpress.

Thanks for all the feedback on this to everyone who chimed in on this thread. We recognize that it’s because people care that their willing to say anything. We do want to hear it. Hopefully I can shed some light on a few of the fronts.

Many of the items raised here are things that we’ve internally flagged, realized and have either addressed, are working to address, or are planning to. Most specifically (from the items mentioned) the following are either going to be in version 6, 6 pro, or added as part of the 6.x release cycle.

• WYSIWYG
• Native Member template functionality
• New Control Panel Design
• Theming of the CP
• File/Asset storage options (cloud providers… this will be in the 6.x line)
• New asset management (this will be in the 6.x line…. aim here is to remove the need for Assets and Channel Images over time, there are already some updates on this in the 6.0 release as well)

There are also a lot of items we’ve added to the 6.0 release that aren’t listed here.

While many of these will remove the need for some of the add-ons we (eeharbor) own. We realize we have to do what’s best for the community and platform as a whole.

On the roadmap front. Totally agree, more transparency is needed here. We are planning to release a public roadmap either at the release of version 6 or shortly thereafter. We also recognize that this is needed.

On the communication end of things… unfortunately we do need to step it up on this front as a whole and are currently working to do so. I’m sorry I do realize this has left something to be desired.

Sorry for the greatly delayed response, however I figured better late then never.

I’d also be happy to jump on a call and chat anytime! Drop an email to [email protected] and we can get it setup.

The following blog posts might be of interest as well.

https://expressionengine.com/blog/expressionengine-6-update

https://expressionengine.com/blog/expressionengine-february-update

https://expressionengine.com/blog/community-feedback

+1 for better asset management and support for cloud based asset storage!

• +1 for GraphQL/REST API to build SPA apps (extend market!)
• +1 for multiple-language CPanel (extend market!)
• +1 for native member template functionality (looking forward in 6.x)

Thanks!

• +1 for Headless.
• +1 for GraphQL/REST which would make it Headless - I fear that EE won’t survive the modern ecosystem without it.
• +1 did I say, Headless?