Web Site Project and pMachine

Last week pMachine.com announced that they are retiring pMachine Pro and focusing entirely on their new flagship application, ExpressionEngine. For anyone who might be interested, the latest version of pMachine Pro (v2.4) is now available as a free download.

While deciding the setup and design of the next version of this web site, I evaluated Geeklog, ExpressionEngine, and pMachine.

Geeklog is a very powerful web site management tool. Almost too powerful. It has more features than you could shake a burrito at. The Geeklog developers hold the writers of plugins for their system up to a certain standard. Plugin's are a breeze to install (as long as they follow the developer API), and there are a ton of 'em out there. Geeklog's Plugin Manager also comes with a handy dandy uninstaller, making for easy removal of plugins you no longer want or need. Geeklog uses a user/group permission system, and you can limit any portion of the content right down to the user level. To me, Geeklog seems much more at home in an Enterprise environment, rather than a personal web site environment. Might be a little over-kill for the occasional blogger who posts only a few times per month. That said though, Geeklog works great, and best of all, it's free!

ExpressionEngine is an entirely different beast compared to pMachine. ExpressionEngine is built for the power-blogger and the once-in-a-blue-moon blogger alike. The nicest thing about it is that once you have it properly uploaded to your web server and all permission set correctly, you'll never have to FTP again (except for updates and new plugins, of course). All data is stored in the MySQL database. This includes all templates, layouts, and any new pages you create. Templates now allow PHP (that's not allowed in pMachine.) You can manage all aspects of your web site, even database backups, all from within the Control Panel. It has some of the best spam deterrent programming built right in as well. It is definitely the next generation blogging system. ExpressionEngine is a commercial product and costs $149 per license. This may sound a little steep, but if you look at all the features it offers, it isn't such a bad deal after all. Documentation is superb and new plugins are coming out everyday. Support is awesome, too. A lot of Mac users use ExpressionEngine, and we know quality when we see it (hence, our platform of choice!). I highly recommend checking this one out if you are shopping for a new Content Management System for your web site needs.

Ultimately though, after all testing was done, I decided to stick with pMachine Pro for Version 7. I made that decision long before it was announced that pMachine was at the end of it's life cycle. I still plan to go forth with it even now. pMachine is very well programmed, and allows for a lot of your own hacking. I've been getting jiggy with PHP as of late, so I like to program a lot of my own stuff anyways. pMachine allows me this freedom. It also integrates very well into the non-pMachine portions of the web site. I just need the stable core of the program. For my needs, pMachine Pro will do just fine.

I guess that this is sort of a project update for the web site. I have settled upon pMachine Pro and am moving forward with the recently released 2.4 version upgrade. I've toyed around with some new template designs, but nothing concrete as of yet. Will all of this be a moot point once Tiger Server is released, with it's built in blog server? Who knows.

Long live pMachine!

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ExpressionEngine

pMachine has released a new product called ExpressionEngine. It's not a direct replacement for pMachine, but it definitely looks like a worthwhile upgrade. I am downloading the trial version right now. I guess I know what I'm doing for the rest of the day (besides drinking lots of Mocha Espresso).

More information on ExpressionEngine can be found at the pMachine web site.