Comments on: Considering Switching – ExpressionEngine versus WordPress

By: MKH

MKH — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:34:10 +0000

I agree with the above sentiment. I used EE for a couple of years but got frustrated a) by the 2.0 drama and b) by the increasing cost of extensions that in many cases should be basic functionality of the CMS.

The only thing that held me back was all the talk of “you have to know PHP to use WP”, and I’m very much a front-end kind of gal, whose experience with PHP was includes and date formatting.

Nudged by an IT coworker who loved WP, I made the switch and it’s been great! WP is always improving and a heck of a lot cheaper. It’s so much easier to find resources and if there isn’t a plugin for something, just wait a month, or learn to write on yourself.
What I also appreciate is how using WP has given me the need to learn some PHP, a lot of it copy-pasted, but not always. I have a far greater understanding of it after a year of using WP which seems valuable for the long-term, more so than knowing a bunch of EE tags.
EE was OK but I never really got all the hype. WP gets slagged more than it deserves by naysayers … it’s impressive and so nice to use.

By: Xavi

Xavi — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:15:35 +0000

ExpressionEngine not being Open Source was the main reason why I decided to go with WordPress.
I’ve now been several years working with WordPress and am proud of my decission: started just blogging with default themes and little by little I’ve been learning how WP worked (without any books, just reading blogs and the WordPress Codex is enough).
During these past years I’ve coded several themes, pluguins and extended WP converting it into a powerful CMS full of features (i.e. communicating with private company APIs, some features that appeared recently in version 3.0, AJAX functionality, etc.) and automatizations like thumbnail image creation, custom RSS feeds, intelligent 404 error handling, automatic resizing and labeling of images, SEO…
So WordPress may require some PHP expertise but it is very well documented in the WP Codex and there’s a very huge community around. Also, it has a great support and upgrades are available surprisingly fast.
My advice is to go for WordPress. Very easy installation and management while keeping everything SEO and clear plus the flexibility to build anything you can ever think of upon it.
Cheers,
Xavi

By: Coofindinia

Coofindinia — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:24:42 +0000

Great article, amazing looking weblog, added it to my favs.

By: Douglas

Douglas — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:11:06 +0000

Interesting, so what do you currently use? WP or EE?

Although I wrote this a month or two ago I am still very undecided concerning whether to stay with EE or go to WP. I guess we’ll all have to see what EE2.0 brings, right?

By: Brett Munro

Brett Munro — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:02:44 +0000

Personally, I find WordPress painful.

I’m a front-end only kind of guy and its templating system is a nightmare compared to EE/Textpatterns.

Widgets are fine, but they also seem limited – 15 post limit for the “Recent Posts” widget for example. I’m guessing you’ll have to mess with PHP to edit that. Also, it’ll automatically stick them in unordered lists whether you like it or not.

I always check out WP now and again because of all the great plugins/widgets I would like to use, but then I try to port my site design over and fail every time.