Hi Ellis Labs and the Community at large,
Hope you’re well! I’ve been using WordPress as a basis for CMS like builds for a long while (really stretching it on occasion), but have been peering enviously at Expression Engine for some time.
We’ve got a rather large project coming up which will involve some social aspects, monetisation streams (on-site advertising plus virtual product sales and account up-selling), and it just seems like too much of a stretch for WordPress to handle securely and tidily.
I figured now would be a good time to make the leap to EE, but wondered whether you’d be able to advise me about the best path to take.
I appreciate that a good amount of the functionality mentioned above would not be achievable out-of-the-box for EE, and we expect to take on a lot of additional coding to develop the project. However I wondered whether Expression Engine would act as a good jumping off point for a project involving the above, or whether you think I’d be better off starting with the flexibility offered by the base CodeIgniter framework.
guess my question is related to just that - flexibility. Since there will be a lot of additional, non-native functionality added to this project – would the existing structure of EE be a constraint at all?
In my experience of WordPress, I’ve found it fairly straightforward to bolt entire areas of functionality onto the side - hooking into the existing administration and user management systems etc. Would I be able to approach development in a similar way here?
Anyhow, I’ll end my wall of text here. Thanks loads for your attention and help!
Cheers,
Fran

Hi Franbo,

Welcome to the Forums and thank you for your interest in ExpressionEngine!

We’ve got a rather large project coming up which will involve some social aspects, monetisation streams (on-site advertising plus virtual product sales and account up-selling), and it just seems like too much of a stretch for WordPress to handle securely and tidily.

I think you are going to be pleasantly surprised with what is available for ExpressionEngine. The key point is that ExpressionEngine is built on CodeIgniter, EllisLab’s world-class PHP Framework. On top of that, ExpressionEngine offers a robust add-on development API.

This adds together to allow developer to create add-ons that integrate seamlessly with EE. You can get a sense for all that is available over at Devot:ee.

To address your points directly, there some add-ons I would like to point out. For advertising, there is Ad Manager, a full featured advertising management module.

Product sales can be handled by your choice of eCommerce systems. ExpressionEngine includes the Simple Commerce Module for use with PayPal. Other options include BrilliantRetail, CartThrob and Exp:resso Store.

For Memberships, again the Simple Commerce Module can sell memberships to your site. However, robust subscription options are available with Membrr.

I look forward to any other questions you might have!

Cheers,

Hi Dan,
Thanks for the reply, really appreciate it. Like I say, I’ve been hoping to use EE for a while and from what you say it looks like it’d be a good fit for this job. Thanks for taking the time to get back to me!
See you around the forums!
All the best,
Fran

Hey Fran!

My pleasure!

If you have any other questions or needs, just let me know!

Cheers,