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Why We Like EllisLab’s ExpressionEngine

As you may have noticed, we at Hop Studios tend to create the bulk of the projects we work on with EllisLab’s ExpressionEngine. It’s a system Travis and Susie have been working with for many years, long enough to become a pair of EE experts of sorts. Because I am new to the team and not as familiar with ExpressionEngine as they are I asked the pair why EE has become their favorite blogging and general website management tool. Here is a list of reasons why they like ExpressionEngine:

1) It’s a really good tool for publishers because the versioning of entries and templates keeps track of changes to content. Any edits made are kept on record, and can easily be referred back to. This in turn encourages experimentation and quick edits, because you know you can roll back easily.

2) EE has the ability to create different user groups and administration levels, so you can place control of how various people can access and use features of each site.

3) There is a discussion forum module available for EE and it integrates with the existing membership of the site, which means only one login for users.

4) It’s like a Swiss Army knife.  In addition to being a CMS, it’s a mailing list tool, a photo gallery, a wiki, a multiple site manager, and a commerce module.  Well, the beginnings of a commerce module.

5) The mark-up language is well thought out and logical. EE tags are very consistent.

6)  Websites built in ExpressionEngine don’t have a common look, the way many Wordpress sites and Drupal sites do.  It’s not that you can’t customize those other tools, but EE really gets out of the way when it comes to design.

7) EllisLab, the developers of EE, is a small company with personal service. It’s the kind of place where you can know many of the support people by (screen) name.

8) There is a high quality of support in the ExpressionEngine forums, and it’s not just the staff who are responsive about providing assistance when a problem comes up.

9) The support documentation available on ExpressionEngine is thorough and up-to-date, especially compared with other CMSes.

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