I’m in the throes of working with yet another CMS. This time, it’s Expression Engine 2.0.1PB. My main website, davidseah.com, runs on Expression Engine, and I’m looking forward to having it move over to the new 2.0 codebase because it’s based on a general PHP framework I’ve had my eye on, CodeIgniter. I also like the improved control panel interface, at least at first glance.

The 1.x to 2.x jump requires quite a few little changes here and there. The internal layout of files has changed, definitely, as has the use of some of the tags. All plugins, as far as I can tell, need to be updated, and that is where I’ve been spending my time for the past several hours: working through the plugins I need converted now to get davidseah.com looking and working correctly. Right now, I’m stuck on the PHP Markdown Extra plugin, which has been further modified with the image thumbnail code I wrote way back in 2005 for my old WordPress blog. Thankfully, there’s an Expression Engine 2.0 conversion guide available to make the process relatively painless. And it’s important to note that the CodeIgniter documentation also applies now, so some functions that used to be in EE are now in CI.

This kind of stuff always gives me a headache, and I end up taking a lot of brief naps, but this is what the learning process is like for me when engaging with a foreign development environment. Still, that I even was able to get this far after a few hours is a nice reminder that I’ve grown more comfortable with programming (or at least modifying) web applications. I just realized I’m actually pretty close to having this transition completed, which will start to unlock an entire new web platform that will serve well for the next couple of years. Gotta remind myself that the dozen hours of slow progress now will pay off many times over.