Undocumented CodeIgniter

An undocumented feature of CodeIgniter might be causing your CI apps to use more memory than you really need. I recently needed to write an application that would parse the contents of a file containing over 335,000 lines into a database. I was confused when I started hitting my server’s memory limit (32MB), until I discovered that CodeIgniter was the culprit. $this->db->save_queries to the rescue!

Macworld Expo 2011

A major advantage to having an office in Downtown San Francisco is our proximity to all that the city has to offer… including the annual Macworld Expo. Lance pays a visit to the 2011 Exhibit Hall and reports back on what he saw, and what he didn’t.

Fun with Symbolic Links, Addons, and ExpressionEngine

Symbolic links are one of those things that you probably don’t come across unless you are trying to solve a problem that they are the solution to. We like to use symbolic links to keep a handle of a number of things in a local development environment - mainly, addons.

So I guess let’s learn about symbolic links and how they can be utilized for maximum maximumication*.

ExpressionEngine Deployment

Last night I had the pleasure of hanging out with some of the BostonEErs crew and talking about ExpressionEngine deployment for versions 1 and 2. Since Lance wrote the wiki post on the topic, I started off of that and expanded to some more time-saving and organizational stuff with config overrides and deployment with Git.

We’ve created a little page with links to different resources and tools mentioned. If you know of anything that is not mentioned, please let us know.

Always, there was a great discussion of addons and general ExpressionEngine methods and tricks. Once the new BostonEEr’s website is up after the December 4th site building Meetup, I have a feeling it is going to turn into a great vetted EE resource source soon!

7 Features It Would Be Nice If MojoMotor Had

In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter - two Ellislab products. Although starting a fire like those probably isn’t possible with MojoMotor - still a young product - we went ahead and titled this post to be as non-confrontational possible. Now, let’s get on with it.

MojoMotor, for those who don’t know, is a niftily little edit-in-place CMS from Ellislab. It was released 6 months ago, and since then has gone from 1.0 to 1.0.7 with some bug fixes and enhancements here and there.

But what about the future? Is MojoMotor fine the way it is, or does it need to innovate? Here’s our take.

Let’s think about MojoMotor’s main customer base. I’d venture to say that they are, like, ExpressionEngine’s customer base, smaller design companies. However, the emphasis is on design. They are companies that make small sites for smaller clients with limited functionality. These companies maybe didn’t start with web stuff - they maybe started with print design and moved into web. The sites MM should power are frequently described as “brochure sites”, and the companies that make these types of sites are the ones that should be the perfect fit for MojoMotor.

In short, they aren’t developers and developing isn’t high on their priority list. They need a CMS that is simple for clients and also simple to implement simple functionality. The simple part is key.

Introducing MojoBlocks

We here at Green Egg Media love MojoMotor. It has an interface that clients just click with, and when a complicated back end isn’t something you need, MojoMotor provides a paradigm shift into something more comfortable.

As great as MojoMotor is, it can be frustrating that its signature in-page editing feature only works for blocks of text. If you need your client to be able to update an H1 header, for instance, you are out of luck if you want to keep clients out of the layouts.

Today, we’re proud to be releasing Green Egg Media’s first foray into the paid addon community with MojoBlocks - a widget-like addon for MojoMotor that allows you to create and control editable blocks of different content - Twitter streams, RSS feeds, H tags, and more. It comes with 13 blocks and supports third party ones as well. Check out a full list of blocks here.

We’ve worked hard on making it something that is an essential to any MojoMotor install. You can find it at http://www.greeneggmedia.com/mojoblocks. It’s $15, and available for purchase today.

MojoMotor in Motion

The day before EECI2010, Lance asked me if I had any predictions what would happen at the conference. I had been thinking about this, so I said I thought Ellislab was going to announce a smaller and cheaper version of ExpressionEngine. Lance told me I was stupid and made me sleep outside with the Safeway gangs across the street from his apartment.

So I was naturally very excited the next day when Mr. Allard announced MojoMotor in a flurry of techno music and applause. Plus, I had totally called it! That’s right. I did, Lance. Deal with it.

I love EE, but for smaller projects I will use Wordpress, because EE would be overkill. In theory, that makes me target market #1 for MojoMotor, so I was eager to try it out and kick the tires. After some quality time with MojoMotor and me with some wine by the fire, here are some thoughts.

Moving from Development to Production on EE 2

There are several guides for server migration under ExpressionEngine 1.x, but so far nothing on migrating ExpressionEngine 2.1. This guide is based our our own experience of moving a site from a development environment to a production environment. We have tried to capture as many aspects of the move as possible, but every EE site is different. You may find that we include steps which you can omit, or you may discover that there are additional steps you need to take. It can’t be said enough - before you start making any significant changes to your database or file system, backup your data!

The Egg, Rehatched

“We’re almost ready to hatch.” So read the splash screen at greeneggmedia.com on March 1, 2008, the day we opened our proverbial doors for business. Since then, we’ve already had three different designs for our website, and today, we’re proud to introduce our fourth, and best, design. Powered by ExpressionEngine 2.1, this version of the site brings you not only an updated design, but also new features, including a blog, code for fellow developers, and information on our side projects.