New Websites and a New Name!

As you might have noticed, we’ve launched four new websites:  EllisLab, ExpressionEngine, Engine Hosting, and CodeIgniter.

We set a goal to launch the sites before the South by Southwest internet conference on March 9th.  Of course web development is an inexact science so it was a mad scramble to the finish line.  Thanks to many late nights by our team we made it!  Without a doubt we likely missed a few things, so if you stumble onto something gone awry (broken links, typos, dead bodies) please let us know.

In addition to our new sites, we re-branded pMachine as EllisLab, and our hosting company is now Engine Hosting, previously known as pMachine Hosting.  pMachine is no more.  She’s dead Cap’n!

Why the name change?  pMachine was an outgrowth of our first, and at that time (six years ago), only product.  Both our company and software were pMachine.  A couple years later we released ExpressionEngine, which addressed some serious limitations of pMachine.  EE essentially made pM (the software) obsolete.  Our users agreed, switching to EE in droves and eventually compelling us to discontinue pM due to low sales.  Still, our company continued on as pMachine.

Over the past three years, ExpressionEngine has grown by leaps and bounds in popularity.  In fact, as a brand it had eclipsed pMachine.  So when we set out to define our 2007 goals we decided it was time to move ExpressionEngine to its own site.  And since I always felt the name pMachine was confusing given our discontinued app, we decided to re-brand the company (and our hosting company).

Initially I wasn’t crazy about the name EllisLab, which was suggested by Les; the name seemed a bit egotistical and I was using it already as my personal blog.  But after unsuccessfully scouring the ends of the earth for a suitable name that was free of trademark and domain issues, and after Derek and Paul expressed that they liked EllisLab the name stuck.

What made this redesign particularly challenging is that we decided to run all of our sites—each of which is located at its own domain—under one ExpressionEngine installation.  Normally this would be difficult to accomplish, but thanks to an interesting new ExpressionEngine feature that Paul wrote we were able to.  We’re not exactly sure yet how or when that feature will be released publicly, but it should at some point.

So why would we run all our sites using one EE install?  Well, it allows us to run one membership database across multiple sites and share ExpressionEngine resources across domains.  And as we bring other new sites online (yes, we have some interesting things in the works) we will be able to continue utilizing that single installation.

This approach will allow a member of one of our sites to take advantage of products and services at another site in the network without having to sign up again.  Once you are a member of one site, you’re a member at all sites.  And thanks to Paul’s brilliance we can even run separate, discreet discussion forums at each site, even though it’s really only one forum module in one EE installation.  Heck, we can run separate shopping carts or nearly anything else at each site from one master EE install.

Ah, the power of ExpressionEngine!  Try accomplishing that with another publishing system.

Lastly, I want to publicly acknowledge the great work of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, who created our new site designs.  I consider Jesse to be among the premiere designers in the world; he’s an incredible talent.  We are very pleased with his work.

So that’s the scoop on our redesign.  We hope you enjoy our sites and our new direction!

Posted by Rick Ellis on March 09, 2007