The first is for Code Mechanic, a new development team position:

The Code Mechanic will be responsible for escalated support issues and bug investigation, and will be actively engaged with the community of third party developers.  The Code Mechanic will become responsible for maintaining the current code base for ExpressionEngine and all of its First Party Add-Ons. The Code Mechanic will also be required to help keep the User Guide and Add-on documentation up to date.

Code Mechanic is a full time salaried position with benefits.

The second opening is for the Senior Technical Support Specialist position:

The Senior Technical Support Specialist (STSS) is the link between the support staff, the development team, and customer service. The STSS is responsible for ensuring that all support requests are resolved in a timely and expedient manner, and that no issues are missed or left unresolved. This includes properly categorizing issues, following up on open issues, and escalating issues to the development team or customer service as necessary. The STSS will also help manage support related materials (such as the Knowledge Base and wiki), and help identify and create ways to improve our support and customer interactions.

The STSS is a part-time position.

Full job descriptions and qualifications are available on the EllisLab Jobs page.

To apply email . Your email will include a formal resume, examples of previous work, and be a showcase of your use of email as a primary communication tool.

ExpressionEngine 2 is built on CodeIgniter.

CodeIgniter (http://www.codeigniter.com) is our Open Source PHP based framework.  You can learn more at CodeIgniter.com, but in a nutshell it’s the toolkit that many powerful applications are built on, and now we can add ExpressionEngine to that list.

This is great news if you’re an ExpressionEngine user, a CodeIgniter user, or both.  As an ExpressionEngine developer you will have a greatly expanded community of talented developers working with you, and for you.  I said during my talk, “The nerds are excited, and you should be excited that the nerds are excited”.  As a dyed in the wool nerd, I stand by this!

If you’re a CodeIgniter developer, this means you can drop a full-fledged content-management system right on top of your existing code base, and have it work.  You want a forum installed?  One click.  You want need member management, a wiki, end-user tools, mailing lists, mobile blogging capabilities, permissions… all there.  One click.  Proven, simple, powerful.

And not only are the code bases merging, but I see the communities merging.  CodeIgniter authors are nearly instantly qualified to write ExpressionEngine modules, extensions and plugins.  The EE community will benefit from the energy and ideas of CodeIgniter-ers, and as a CodeIgniter author you’ve suddenly added thousands of new “potential customers” to your list.

Technically, there are tremendous advantages as well.  For example, running an application as flexible and powerful as ExpressionEngine meant that we needed more flexibility.  And since the base of ExpresisonEngine is now CodeIgniter, if EE needs it, CI gets it.  We’re going to share when we can abstract ExpressionEngine code into CodeIgniter, and we’re going to share Open Source.  So CodeIgniter is benefiting from more developer attention, and growing functionalities.

It’s a good time to be a nerd!

If you’re a CodeIgniter user and you’re worried that adding capability based on the needs of ExpressionEngine will create code-bloat and degrade performance, don’t be.  We’re obsessive about real-world performance and code elegance, and our software depends on it.

Let me give you a few specific examples of how CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine are sharing with each other.  In order to get ExpressionEngine running, we’ve expanded current libraries, and created new libraries.  Immediate examples of this include the greatly expanded Active Record class for CodeIgniter, which is used to talk to your database.  A series of added functions where put in there, including aggregate functions, expanded use of like(), a handy count_all_results() function, and many others.  Additionally, an entire database manipulation tool was created (DBForge) which lets you create, manipulate and drop tables, fields, and other aspects of your database.  In ExpressionEngine these get used in the installer, but being abstracted in CodeIgniter means you’re only limited by your imagination.

And many other libraries will be expanded.  Already there have been expansions to sessions, table generation, html generation libraries, form generation, image processing, email and many others.  As well, there’s been significant behavioural changes to sessions (introduction of flash vars), helpers (ability to over-ride on an application level basis) and models (introduction of auto-loading). In fact, there’s been over 140 additional changes, additions and bugfixes that have already worked their way into CodeIgniter.

There are also exciting things in the works for CodeIgniter that aren’t yet in the public repository (because they aren’t done yet, not because we won’t share).  The most exciting of which is probably the brand new javascript and jQuery libraries, which will provide simple, programatic ways to write complex javascript code.  It means you’ll have a simple, CodeIgniter way of creating rich javascript functions.  You don’t need to be a javascript guru, but you can be.

Here’s a preview (please keep in mind that this may slightly change as it gets developed)

You can already see the both the libraries in full-force on the new Control Panel.

Oh, and we understand that some people may have their own preferred javascript libraries.  The new JavaScript library in CodeIgniter allows you to extend it to use your own. Its all abstracted.  You like Scriptaculous, there’s room for a scriptaculous driver.  You like Mootools?  You can build a driver.  Think of it like the database library.  You say “hey CodeIgniter, do this… here’s what I’m using - you figure it out”, and CodeIgniter does.  It’s smart like that.

This is an exciting time for ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter, as we begin to really push what is possible with our technology, and explore ways to make your life as easy as possible.

CodeIgniter expands ExpressionEngine’s capabilities; and ExpressionEngine expands CodeIgniter’s reach… and we all get to reap the rewards.

Like I said, its a great time to be a nerd.

Discuss!

Among a host of new capabilities, this release features:

• A Database Forge class: database agnostic table and field manipulation
• An enhanced Active Record library
• A revised Session Class with “flash variables” and additional security
• An extendable Model Class with auto-loadable Models
• Extendable Helpers, and additions and enhancements to existing Helpers
• A revised view architecture that allows for simple inclusion of multiple views
• And over 120 different enhancements, improvements and bug fixes

We’d like to take a moment to sincerely thank the incredible community, who tirelessly offered support, suggestions, fixes, enhancements and encouragement.  Our new model of development is built around you all - thanks.

CodeIgniter is continuing to grow and evolve, and work has already begun for the next release.

For a list of all changes please see the Change Log.  If you are currently running CodeIgniter please read the update instructions.

We’d be honoured if you’d join us, and on behalf of Rick, Derek, and the whole team, I’d like to take a moment to formally extend an invitation to the entire CodeIgniter community.  If you’re attending SxSW, then we’d love to see you!

Make a note of the EllisLab events, and make a point of tracking us down!  We want to meet you!

See you in Austin!

We’ve known about Ian through his blog (powered by ExpressionEngine), where he writes intelligent things about doing business on the web, and through his use of CodeIgniter. When Nevin (CTO of EngineHosting) pointed out that Ian needed a new hosting solution for HelpSpot, we contacted him right away. Ian turns out to be as cool as we hoped and we quickly worked out a solution for his HelpSpot customers.

We think that working with Ian will lead to good things for the UserScape and EllisLab communities and hope that offering hosting is just a first step in this relationship. You can read Ian’s thoughts about it on his blog.

The interview below details Ian’s adventure from accountancy to web application development.

EllisLab: Hi Ian, thanks for doing an interview. What’s your background and how did you get started in application development?

Ian Landsman: I actually have a pretty varied background from Office Depot store manager to Academic Technology Director for a small NY college. My college degree is in Accounting, which has actually served me really well. Accounting is surprisingly like programming in terms of mindset. It’s also been very handy to have that background when starting UserScape. When you’re bootstrapping a company you need to wear every hat so I think having a background that’s exposed you to many different types of businesses is a huge help.

In terms of application development I really got started with that in earnest during my time with Pearson Education, a large textbook publisher. There I worked on many large scale systems serving hundreds of thousands of customers. From there I ended up doing a lot of consulting and freelance application development while working my day jobs until taking the plunge with UserScape two years ago.

EllisLab: Why did you start UserScape? What makes HelpSpot different?

Ian Landsman: I’ve always wanted to start a business. I’ve probably started developing 5-6 products over the years, but I would abandon them part way through development for one reason or another. I think it was mostly because I started developing without really understanding the industries I was developing for. Since I didn’t have a full understanding I would get scared part way through and abandon ship. With UserScape I really researched the help desk software industry thoroughly before I wrote one line of code. That deep understanding really allowed me to push through knowing I was going in the right direction. There was a real market need for a help desk software package priced between $99 unlimited user scripts and $100,000 enterprise software.

HelpSpot has a lot of unique features, the ones I’m most proud of though are it’s simplicity and it’s filtering power. I really wanted HelpSpot to be very easy to start using without any formal training. Most help desk packages really need training to use right and often training is a required part of the purchase by the vendor. I wanted most help desk users to be able to jump in and at least be able to create and manage requests without a big learning curve and I think we’ve been successful in that. There’s a lot of power in there, but it’s below the surface and unfolds as you delve deeper into it.

The filtering is a unique feature that is really key in most HelpSpot installations. Request filters allow staff to create filters or queues on the fly that enable them to see the requests in the system in nearly unlimited ways. There’s literally millions of possible combinations which you can use to pull out just the requests you need to see and you can save those filters for quick access in the future.

EllisLab: What HelpSpot feature makes you most happy?

Ian Landsman: Possible the most innovative feature in HelpSpot is the Live Lookup API, I really love this feature. Almost all help desk packages require you to upload your customer data into them if you want to be able to access that data while working on a request. This creates a lot of headaches trying to keep this data up to date and you inevitably can’t get all the data you need into the software. Live Lookup is a very simple XML API that allows HelpSpot to query your customer data system (any customer data system) in real time. So HelpSpot can display customer details on any data your staff needs without any data syncing or any worries about data being outdated.

EllisLab: Is there a HelpSpot feature that nobody seems to use but really should?

Ian Landsman: One that I think doesn’t get enough use is reminders. HelpSpot can send reminders to you for things you need to follow up on with a request or check on, perhaps a note on when to contact someone back, things like that. I really blame myself for this though as the interface isn’t that great for reminders. Version 2 of HelpSpot addresses this issue and makes reminders much easier to use.

EllisLab: What’s been the biggest surprise since getting into the Help desk business?

Ian Landsman: The biggest surprise to me has really been that the research I did initially was actually correct! There really was a need for a solid middle tier product. Sales have progressed much faster than I expected, especially considering HelpSpot doesn’t do any real advertising. It’s all been people discussing it on their blogs or traditional word of mouth.

EllisLab: We are certainly familiar with that advertising model! What’s next for HelpSpot?

Ian Landsman: Right now production is full speed ahead on version 2. I don’t like to give a lot of details on specific features, I’d rather under promise and over deliver. A few key features though are support for displaying and sending HTML emails and a full API for accessing HelpSpot programatically.

EllisLab: Thanks for the interview Ian. You can find more information on HelpSpot at UserScape and keep track of Ian on his blog.

We’ve also added a projects page that lists sites that are built using CodeIgniter.  If you’d like to add your project to the list please submit it using the provided form.