You host other peoples blogs without making backups? I’d say “uh… no comment”, but this is already a comment.

I started looking at some of the CMS options tonight. I must say that EE is amazing compared to MT3.0D. If EE keeps impressing me like it did tonight, I’ll be plunking down the $149 they are asking without any concerns at all. It really feels like my current phpBB back-end, but with tons more flexability. I’m looking forward to playing with it more…

Expression Engine is tempting me constantly, but it is also giving me headaches. Right now I am taking time off and slowly rebuilding my full site into it. I am up to my photoblog, however my weblog comments no longer seem to be loading. One thing that shines on their end, however, is wonderful tech support. They have definetly went above and beyond in answering my mundane questions

I moved to EE after playing a little with Drupal ... I really didn’t want to go with Wordpress, while it may be the most popular choice, I really don’t consider it up to MT, until it has multiple blogs / authors, especially if it has issues like this!

So far, blogroll.org living on EE is great. I love it!

Frac, it wasn’t the database that I lost. The blog still worked just fine and had the data I’d imported, it was the template changes I’d made that got hosed. If I were just using it to host one or two blogs I might be willing to overlook the fact that I’d have to transfer my templates from the old setup to the new one every time I upgrade, but I’m talking six blogs and that’d be one helluva pain.

Dave, they’re offering a special $99 pricing for folks making the switch from another blogging package right now so it may not even cost you the $149. In case you were interested.

Etan, don’t know how much help I’ll be but feel free to toss questions my way. I’ll offer up whatever I’ve learned.

Les,

Thanks for the offer. The problem is that whenever I try to load a comments page my site times out after a few minutes. It isn’t the template, nor is it the PHP being loaded, nor is it the caching. It used to work but just stopped working.

See for yourself, my regular pages load fine but click any comment link and you’re in for a 3 minute wait followed by a time-out:

http://www.toomuchsexy.org/ee/

That is interesting. I tried clicking on the Permalink and that loads the individual entry just fine. Then I tried the category and that worked fine too. Just the comments and trackback seems to be an issue.

I had a similar problem with the test blog I first setup with EE. I imported all of SEB into it and it was taking something like 30 seconds for the comments page to show up when you clicked a link. Have you checked with Rick Ellis about it? It’s gotta be something particular to that module. Have you changed any settings related to comments and trackbacks that you can think of?

Yea, I saw that. I wonder if they will accept using phpBB as a blogging tool. I did use MT before that, but it’s been almost 6 months since I switched.

Even if I have to pay full price, I won’t mind. So far, EE looks pretty good. Of course so far, it’s been less than a day of playing…

Les,

I have a feeling it is related to the immense number of times I have reimported my data. I deleted the SQL database and reimported everything and it all works fine now. Same settings, same templates, but everything is a lower number.

Now all I need to do is get the photo and linkblogs set up and I am making the switch, assuming no further problems crop up.

Man, my skin code is busted, again. As well, when I export entries from other internal blogs onto different pages (for recent photos, and linkblog) it only exports 1 entry if the page is a comment or individual archive page, due to the internal limit set by that comment page.

There is a ton of nice stuff in EE, but I am consistently presented with problems. Why couldn’t it just be simple?! >_

Sorry for the spam:

Here’s a tip, Les, don’t cache pages that need to be dynamic. That was busting my skincode.

Not a problem, Etan. I think most of your troubles are just in terms of getting used to a different way of accomplishing the same goals. I know my first challenge with EE was just coming to grips with the very different way in which it handles multiple blogs and templates. I want to limit how much of the control panel my mother will have access to in order to keep it simple for her and so I’ve had to set up a new member group and figure out how to associate it with various functions and specific blogs.

I think that as we grow more accustomed to the EE way of doing things a lot of this stuff will become second nature like it is for us with MT. And with new plugins coming out, such as an integrated photo album, I think even some of the stuff we might not be able to do easily now will be available before too much longer. Overall I’m excited by the possibilities and I’m seriously thinking about teaching myself PHP and mySQL so I can hack up a few plugins of my own.

I made the move from EE about hrm, a week ago now.  It is an incredibly powerful system although a few things did take awhile to click - it really does end up coming together very nicely in the end.

If you need any help with the conversions/questions( anyone) you can go to my site and choose an IM method; I’m here altogether too much and happy to chat/try to help. =)