/Interview/ Q&A : Simon Collison
28/05/2008 | Filed under Discover > Interview
Simon Collison is the founder of Erskine Design, a full-service web design agency that specialises in creative, responsible development and design.
net: What do you love about ExpressionEngine and how does it differ from other well known CMSs like Wordpress?
SC: I’ve used EE since it was first launched, and I still consider it to be the best of its kind. With EE I can say to a client, “Give me your wishlist”, and the chances are I can easily hit 90 per cent of what they ask for. By installing the commercial version, I have hundreds of tools that I can switch on and work with when required – a wealth of base functionality that ensures what I’m building can scale up with the needs of the client or their user base.
It’s also one big happy family, with a thriving and responsive community of users, and a development team that are approachable and constantly listening to their users. They are transparent, so we know where EE is headed, and can have a say in what will come with future releases. I analyse other CMS tools all the time, and still come back to EE.
net: What don’t you like about it?
SC: I’m long past this, but the learning curve is rather steep. EE is so powerful that it can take some time to gain a full understanding of how best to exploit it. I know plenty of really talented people who gave up on it as it wasn’t instant enough for them. Those who persevered are now in love with it, and going way beyond the manual to make it do exceptional things.
Most of the things I don’t like will be fixed or improved with the forthcoming major 2.0 release, which will be a major overhaul. Much of the underlying code will be completely rewritten, and the whole thing will be based on EllisLab’s incredible CodeIgniter framework. For now though, I do get a bit frustrated with the rather limited File Upload tools, and the problem of Membership, Forum and Wiki templates being outside of the usual template flexibility and conventions. Other than that, it’s nearly perfect.
net: If there were three pieces of advice you could give to someone looking to choose a CMS what would they be?
SC: Firstly, ensure it is being developed professionally, and not by a small agency who might go bust and stop developing it. This ensures it will be continually updated in line with the growth of the internet and the array of new methodologies and functions. If your CMS is the foundation of all the sites you build, you need to make sure it’s being evolved responsibly, and that the developers have a roadmap for how it will grow.
Secondly, look for an active community around the product. For me, the 50,000-strong EE community has been vital. Via the busy forums, almost any question will be answered quickly, or somebody will look at your problem and throw a plug-in or extension back at you that fits the bill. With a vibrant community, a product grows way beyond the developer’s roadmap. EE, for example, is so extensible that the community has created hundreds of wonderful plug-ins and modules, solving almost any issues.
Thirdly, and perhaps obviously, look for a CMS that compliments web standards. We see so many existing client sites powered by old systems that pepper everything with evil markup from WYSIWYG editors, etc. The CMS you use should not compromise the raw data. For example, a paragraph of text should be a paragraph of text whatever you do with that data later on.
net: We’re already seeing specialised CMS tools like Tumblr and Chyrp. What do you think the next evolution of CMS tools will provide?
SC: I like Tumblr and those tools, but I think they’re very personal – great for an individual to throw out short posts etc, but not too helpful for business. They’re also quite limited in features, such as Tumblr not allowing dialogue through comments. I think the established and comfortable tools such as Movable Type, EE, Wordpress and Textpattern will continue to dominate the small to medium business provision as they’re affordable or free, continually evolving, and very flexible. That said, I see a lot of development with Django and Rails, so small bespoke systems are gaining favour. For small design and development teams to be able to offer such functionality within small budgets has been incredible.
net: What’s the biggest mistake you see people making when choosing a CMS?
SC: I think it’s a mistake to go with a design agency’s own in-house CMS. I speak to so many potential clients or business owners who are stuck in a rut with an outdated in-house CMS that Bob The Designer built in his bedroom and hasn’t been updated for years. Whole teams are still struggling with pre-standards CMS tools that were not scalable, have not evolved, or only work in IE5. This clouds the business perception of what a great CMS can offer, and I find scepticism about CMS tools wherever I go as a result. Agencies need to take a more responsible route here. Install a common system or use a popular framework that (should the worst happen) another designer or team could work with. Always, always ensure that the raw content, the data at the core of any website, is unsullied by the CMS. Clients deserve value for money, and scalable implementations.
net: Hosted services are starting to grow in popularity, do you think there is still a benefit to setting up from scratch yourself?
SC: Personally – and this is only based on our approach – I can’t see the point in building a new CMS from scratch except in rare situations. To install all that base functionality at the start of a project and work with it as a foundation is great. Need a new function? Just enable it in your install. That’s how we work.
I’m not in favour of using any systems hosted by third parties, as I like to have complete control over management and migration of databases. Trusting large amounts of data to other people always worries me.
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Comments
John Faulds / 29/05/2008 / 00:29 / http://www.tyssendesign.com.au
"Those who persevered are now in love with it"
I'm one of those. It did take me a while to get my head around it and I'm still not sure that I'm necessarily doing things in the best way sometimes, but I love the flexibility it gives you and I think I'll love it even more when v2.0 comes out (just hope that it has improved ecomm features).
Geof Harries / 29/05/2008 / 16:29 / http://subvert.ca/
The recommendation that people should not choose an in-house CMS is very wise. If that agency should lose key developers who know the system inside and out, or worse yet, close their business down completely, the customer is stuck with the product and all of their data is trapped within. Transitioning to another CMS could be a real chore, if it's even possible. Buyer beware.
Mustafa / 30/05/2008 / 13:19 / http://www.socialspider.com
I always thought that companies using pre-made cms's were seen in quiet a bad light, im glad to know im not the only one who uses out of the box solutions. Ive only just started subscribing to .Net but was wondering if you guys have done an article based on the top CMS's like wordpress, joomla, drupal etc etc, pro's and con's.
Jamie Rumbelow / 01/06/2008 / 15:58 / http://jamierumbelow.net
Not nessecarially. If an In-House CMS is developed by a development team with prior experience in such things, and it outputs valid code, and it comes with updates and maintinance when/where required, I see no objection to using in-house CMSs.
Nice article, read it in .net but nice to see the full interview.
Adult Ühler / 05/06/2008 / 21:59 / http://www.theatons.com/
Great interview with one the web design's most important authorities. *stumbles*
Ali Whiteley / 26/06/2008 / 23:16 / http://www.alistairwhiteley.co.uk
Nice article, I'm currently looking for a CMS system to implement with my customers over the next few years. The problem as always is there seems to be no outstanding contender, just a number of options, many very similar in their offerings. All recommendations are welcome...
David Nicholas / 18/09/2008 / 11:23 / http://www.typicalenglish.nl
Depending on time and money available, I all in favor of a properly developed CMS system.
Thanks for the interesting article.
James Godwin / 28/05/2009 / 09:45 / http://www.creativresponse.com
I never used EE before but I am tempted to give it a whirl, I usally use Joomla for more complicated projects and Textpattern for more simple easy to use ones.
