i think the challenge is trying to back the best one, like, which of these will evolve into the best product, I like learning these system up to a point, but i dont want to have to learn them all. Seems they all have their advantages, and their draw backs. After the positive feedback it's got I must really read up on expression engine properly. Will get back to you with my progress!

Just been playing about with expression engine and it’s a really nice CMS
Just a couple of questions,
Have many of you used it.
Why are the personal version and the commercial version different prices yet both do the same thing.
If I pay for the personal version and use it on a commercial site will I be shipped of to prison to be someone prison girlfriend
If I am doing all the work like setting out the HTML pages and CSS sheets then why pay for more then once licence. Why not just use it on all sites after getting one licence

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Alan (Neweb Ireland)

I've not...

one is for non profit use .. and to encourage its use its given at that price ...
If you're a company you can afford more

You'll probably end up getting sued at some stage and depending on your setup .. (sole trader vrs private ltd. and depending on threads like this stating that you knowingly thought about using it illegally you'll have most of your personal assets taken away)

Why pay for more than one license ... cus they've done the work ... they may ping back to base and say .. hey .. look at me I'm a personal version.
You're not being made use it ... if you don't want to pay .. don't ... and use an OS solution ...

No I've not used it apart from an earlier install (but not doing a hell of a lot with it)

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Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )
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Some good points there
But here’s the thing!
Why charge more for exactly the same package just because it will have commercial content. If the commercial version had some extra features then I would understand the difference between the versions:
Free version: 20 items
Personal version: 35 items
Commercial version: 50 items.

It’s a bit of a rip off just because it’s assumed you have more money as a commercial site. There are hundreds if not thousands of one man start-ups out there.
Imagine going to a hairdresser and them charging you based on your income. You would tell them to get stuffed.

On top of that, who are they to decide what you put in your site.

Yes they are developing the software but there are hundreds of CMS developers out there doing exactly the same for free.

As I said, it’s a nice bit of software, clean interface and all that but I don’t think I could pay 250 dollars for exactly the same thing as 100 dollars.

I have developed a number of sites using Candy Press Ecommerce solution and I have paid for all the licences (or the client has). It’s a good product at a good price. It’s as simple as that.

going this route ... why do the major software manufacturers offer student versions ? ... (I'm thinking of adobe products specifically)

Get people hooked on using it... so they'll buy it for their commercial projects.

If you are going to make money from your site then you can afford to pay for it.

If not ... why not use their free version ? They are a business after all and out to make money. They are providing support ... and a lot of features ... timely bug fixes if any are required ... so I've no problem with their pricing model and their restrictions on use.

As you said there are a hell of a lot of CMS flavours out there .. they aren't forcing you to buy it ... (I've never bought EE) .. the price has put me off it. especially for smaller projects. Telling a small customer year thats going to be 250 dollars before I touch your site .. and hosting and domain name costs ... would freak a lot of smaller clients.

(of course this probably just means I'm dealing with the wrong type of clients)

Very true
I think I will stick to Joomla.

While still playing with EE of course.
I might even consider paying for the personal version to put on my site.

At least I get an idea of what the full version will do. I normally spend months playing with CMS packages before I will put it into a live site.

Been playing with Drupal, seems very powerful if a bit hard to get yer head around, initially at least. Seem to have to install a lot of modules to get fairly basic functionality working. Quite confusing to find all the setting for each module as well but maybe i'll get used to it.

Just after having a quick sconse at Joomla, seems nice and easy to use by comparison but i take it there's less flexability then Drupal, would imagine it's easier to setup a quick site using Joomla though.

no idea which one to look into further now ...

Someone said joomla has it's limitations, could you expand on that?

take a look at cmsmadesimple ... for your basic websites ...


page depth was / is my main concern ... it doesn't really handle it nicely unless you go hacking it completely.

Thanks Forbairt, will have a look at that now, if i can face another system, head is a bit frazzled after looking at these two so much the last couple of days!!!

Dont like the way the 'Blog' works in Drupal either, is there a good blog module does anyone know?

Joomla has serious limitations in my opinion. You cannot control how your data is presented. Say you have an archive list of article and you want to sort them by "top rated" or "most views" or "oldest first" or "newest first" its very difficult to do.

Also you cannot categorise something under 1 or more categories. Say you have a ford truck and you want to put it under "Ford" and "Truck" its not possible in Joomla.

Your front page is not very customisable. You can control which items appear on the front page and their order but that's about it. if you want different layouts you are quite restricted.

If you want to define your content to have certain attributes in Joomla its very difficult. Lets say you are writing an article and you want to have an Author BIO at the bottom its not easily done with Joomla.

If you want Joomla to do anything other than what its intended for out of the box you really need to provide serious work arounds.

Its a good CMS to get started with, but it has lots of security issues on a regular basis and I find it difficult to work with on a long term basis.


Drupal is very flexible, but also complex to understand. I just got around to using the Views and Content Construction Kit Modules, which are very powerful but require alot of patience. Now that I understand it though I'm thrilled with the possibilities.

I recently set up an Image Gallery Vintage JDM Image Gallery | Vintage JDM which I'm still working on. It uses CCK (Content Construction Kit) and the Views module. Images are automatically resized with the ImageCache module, if I decide to change the size of those thumbnails it is relatively easy to do as the original images are stored and then resized into 2 / 3 /4 or however many sizes you want.

You can see I also included the rating of each image. I can also provide a facility to sort the images by creation date, rating, user comments, category - the list goes on.

I read once that Joomla assumes everything about your site and Drupal assumes nothing, this is why Joomla is easier out of the box, because it provides some form of structure to your website. Drupal provides nothing its waiting for you to define its structure and therefore is harder to use first time around.

There are so many CMS solutions and I've tested loads of different ones, but for me I'm quite happy with Drupal now. I wish I used it when I built Datsun 240z 260z, 260z 2+2 and 280zx Club Australia as I would have only needed 1 piece of software, instead I need 3. 1 for front page (Joomla), 1 for Gallery (Coppermine), 1 for Forum (SMF).

It all depends on the needs of your website and how likely they are to change over time.

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