That’s right, the repositioning has happened, take a look for yourself!

It’s finally happened!  Whew!  The amount of work that’s gone into this by the whole team has been tremendous, but it was so worth it.  The artist formerly known as pMachine, is now formally EllisLab.  There is also now a more clear-cut distinction and cross branding between ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter and EngineHosting.  And each of the sites has a sexy new look.  The stunning design cross-brands us, and is a sign of things to come!

Although all of areas (EE, CI and hosting) have seen tremendous growth, the update is especially welcome for CodeIgniter in my mind, who has grown from “new kid on the block”, into one of the “must-see” PHP frameworks that automatically gets consideration for most new PHP projects.  Yeah there’s still some growing to do, but heck, its not like [http://www.zend.com]Zend[/url] has released anything except beta-versions of their framework (which is excellent by the way, but has different goals then CI).

One of my favourite new features of the website is the small area near the bottom labeled “Built on CodeIgniter”.  Over the last little while I’ve been accruing a list of sites that are (um) built with CodeIgniter.  There is some really great work going on out there.  Now we show them off a little and feature the great work of the community.

Are you reading this page in Internet Explorer 6?  For shame…

I’ve never thought that my site attracted an “average” interweb visitor.  I mean, we talk about boring things like accessibility, frameworks, scripting… the kind of things that makes Joanne roll her eyes if I even think about getting started^*.  In short, my readers tend to be web-savvy, standards-aware and generally pretty technically “hip”, so it doesn’t surprise me in the least that most of you would choose to surf in something besides Internet Explorer.

Since BambooInvoice started its life as a “scratch my own itch” project, it seems to have picked up a life of its own.  Let me first of all say that I’m grateful for everyone who is using it, and especially those of you who have offered feedback and suggestions.  (But not those of you who have pointed out bugs :))

In the last little while, there have been several requests for languages other then English, so right here, right now, I hereby promise that the next release of BambooInvoice will be fully internationalized.  If you use Bamboo, and would like to contribute to the improvement of it, I’d be honoured if you’d help me out with translations.  So I’m hereby opening the first official BambooInvoice translation drive.  If you speak a second language (strongly) and would like to help out, please leave a note in the comments of this entry and I’ll contact you.  I’m hoping to start the move early next week (March 12-15) and hope to have a first beta version available by the end of March.

So, Parlez-vous francais? Hablas espasol? Parlate italiano?

Wasn’t it just 4 months ago that I rebuilt this site in a custom built Code Igniter platform?  Wow time flies, but I’m proud to announce yet another change.  Actually, not a change - an upgrade.  What you see in front of you now is DerekAllard.com completely rebuilt using ExpressionEngine.  It was actually a really painless migration, although moving the data sucked… Anyhow, there are still a series of “under the hood” improvements to be made, and some refining here and there.  If you find anything on teh site broken, please let me know!

I’ll start writing a few entries about using EE as a blogging platform, but I’ve been using it for some time as a content management system in other capacities. Actually, this move brings to mind one of its foremost strengths… flexibility.  I was able to re-create my (old) custom url structure, so no Google penalty.  I was able to implement all the features I had custom built, and easily at that.  And finally, I was able to build it entirely on a local system, and move it live in the time it took to FTP the files up.

If you’re reading this and run a blog, and still use Wordpress but are looking to ditch that horse and buggy, then take a look at the free ExpressionEngine core.  There are easy migration paths into EE, and I promise you that you won’t regret it.  The honest truth, is that there is a learning curve, but its pretty short, and once you are up to speed, you fly!

Incidentally you Wordpress users… make sure you aren’t affected by the latest in a long line of security concerns.

DerekAllard.com has completed the transformation into ExpressionEngine, but it’s not live yet (want to migrate the data first).  It took all of about 2 hours after I finally forced myself to sit down in front of my computer and turn off my email.  Funny how your own “personal” stuff always seems to take a back seat to “important” work, but I’ve just finally grown frustrated with the roll-my-own solution.

I’m really, really, happy with the codebase I built for this site in Code Igniter, but the problem is that every time I want a new feature I need to go fix it up.  And also, in honesty, it pains me to see all the kick ass features in EE that I haven’t built into my blog yet… and well, I want to be one of the cool kids.

So now the really painful part - data migration.  Anyone who’s ever worked with legacy system and/or code can tell you want a pain that can be.  The good news, moving the posts over is a pretty straight-forward process.  The bad news, moving the comments over won’t be.

Sigh… no rest for the wicked I suppose!

I posted earlier about an article that James Nicol had up on this blog.  The long awaited (well, long awaited for 6 days) article is now up, Real world apps with CodeIgniter: part II.  Clever title!

He delves deeper into the black art of Code Ingiter, and discussing integrating with third party systems, validation, and my favourite understatement of the week.

Before we even went live the clients came back asking for more features...

<sarcasm>What!?!  That hardly ever happens!</sarcasm>

At any rate, its a great read, and I hope James keeps writing!

There''s a new version of BambooInvoice up and live at http://www.bambooinvoice.org.  Its the humble 0.75.

I think its a big step forward in user friendliness.  Since I originally released Bamboo as a proof of concept code for Code Igniter, it has been gaining a lot of popularity even amoung non-coders.  For this I'm incredibly impressed, and eternally grateful.  Its so gratifying to know that other people find your work useful.  But due to its humble beginnings, Bamboo suffered from a few "bugs" mostly due to perception differences between how it "should" work, and how it did work.  So this release is a combination of bug fixes, user interface enhancements, and installation improvements.

Inspired by Matthew Inman's "How to Make Square Corners with CSS", I hereby set out on a journey to reveal the one true technique to create coloured, non-gradient backgrounds for divs, paragraphs and other XHTML elements.  After literally seconds of painful research, I'll show you how to do this technique yourself.  Here's a sample of what you can expect to see.

Code Igniter programmer, and good friend, James Nicol has written up a wonderful summary of his experience using Code Igniter in a production environment that he's called "Real world apps with CodeIgniter: part 1". His company developed a scheduling and logisitics management application for one of the candidates for the next US federal election (he isn't saying whom yet). His solution included building in table relationships, dynamic PDF generation, AJAX and javascript effects and CI used in a real-world app.

Pssst' wanna know a secret? Let me let you in on how tech support works at ExpressionEngine.

Most of you reading this from the Code Igniter community are probably familiar with John Fuller and my posting patterns on those forums (where let me remind myself - we are volunteers). If you aren't - well, we're pretty prolific. Now, imagine John and I, joined by 2 other support staff who are flipping unbelievable in their own right - Robin and Lisa.  Now imagine that we're all paid.  We're paid for the express job of sitting on the forums, waiting for questions and then answering them and improving the ExpressionEngine resources and community.  Getting good?

Now imagine we're also joined by 2 active developers (Paul Burdick and Derek Jones), then by the vice-president Leslie Camacho (who is also highly technical), and then the Grand Poo-Ba and original author, Rick Ellis.  Now imagine that a hosting company with their own team of support techs also has an active interest in participating in support.  You picturing it?

Now imagine all that, and a community of people, who are passionate and engaged and active.

And THAT my friends, is how ExpressionEngine support works, and it is a scary thing to behold!