Bill MacKenty

Expression Engine and Drupal

I recently had a wonderful meeting with a fellow ed tech geek here in NYC. He was helping me with some issues relating to blackbaud. The conversation was wonderful, he was insanely helpful, and we discussed all sorts of interesting things. He is a Drupal guy. I'm an Expression engine guy. After his enthusiastic recommendation, I started to review Drupal (it's been a while since I've used it). I did a fairly standard google search and was pleasantly surprised to find a thoughtful, well-considered discussion about the relative merits and shortcomings of both systems - very few flame-fests.

I personally find EE's templating much more intuitive and powerful. I also like the way I have very fine control over my individual pages than Drupal. Contrary to some comments, I find EE's support amazing (you are paying for it, after all). I've had to avail myself of their help many times! I'm going to stick with EE. This may be due to the fact that I know EE really well.

I like EE more - with one big reservation. I think I would more participative in the EE community if it wasn't a for-profit company. I know Ellis lab through emails and over 4 years of community interactions. I love what they've done with Code Igniter (open-source). But at the end of the day, if I am investing my free-time into a community, I'd like it to be about something more than helping (a really nice) group of people make money. Is EE a best-of-class product? Yes. Are Ellis labs intentions top-notch? I think so. But the one thing Drupal has over EE is it is open source in the truest form of the idea. I have recently begun digging back into Hspace - a text-based space simulator. As my three faithful readers know, I'm a text-based game aficionado - this is an open source project I would love to commit my (increasingly limited) free time to.

I know (not personally) several people who made careers of supporting the Ellis lab ecosystem. I plan on using EE / CI to be the system that drives my school web-based communication company. I will continue to encourage people to use expression engine, and I will encourage people to take a long look at EE as an excellent choice for web publishing.

I hope this post has added something to the discussion about EE and Drupal. I look forward to your comments.