EllisLab

EllisLab, Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Software & Programming
Founded	Los Angeles, CA (2001)
Headquarters	Bend, Oregon
Key people	Rick Ellis, Founder Leslie Camacho, CEO Derek Jones, President/CTO James Mathias, CCO Lisa Wess, Senior Director of Operations
Products	ExpressionEngine CodeIgniter pMachinePro
Services	EngineHosting
Revenue	Unknown
Website	http://ellislab.com

EllisLab is a software development company based in Bend, Oregon, which develops applications written in PHP.^[1]

The company is privately owned and has to date accepted no venture capital funding of any kind.

History

Since the company's founding in January 2002, it has released four different applications to the public.

The first, pMachine Pro, is no longer developed, but was weblog software that had both a free and licensed version. pMachine's feature list was similar to other weblog software of the time, such as Movable Type, Geeklog, and LiveJournal.^[2] Although pMachine is quite out of date at this point, the last version of pMachine Pro continues to be available free.

The company's flagship software product is ExpressionEngine, which is a more general purpose content management system written in object-oriented PHP and using MySQL for storing data. Licenses are available in three variations: a "Non-Commercial" version for personal and non-profit use, a "Commercial" version, and the cheapest option, a "Freelancer" license intended for small Web firms to be able to run their own sites. The underlying code is identical in all cases, although there are several modules held back from the "Freelancer" version. The company offers a 30-day money back guarantee, but no longer offers a free trial or an online demo for prospective customers. None of the licenses are free at this point.

The third product, CodeIgniter, is an open source rapid application development framework with particular emphasis on a very small footprint.

The company launched a fourth product, MojoMotor, a lightweight alternative to ExpressionEngine in July 2010^[3].

ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine is a Content Management System developed by EllisLab. The current version is 2.3.1. ExpressionEngine is intended to be simpler to use than other content management systems; for instance, it requires no knowledge of PHP, and has extensive online documentation.

CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter

Developer(s)	EllisLab, Inc.
Initial release	February 28, 2006; 5 years ago (2006-02-28)
Stable release	2.0.3 / August 20, 2011; 2 months ago (2011-08-20)
Preview release	3.0-dev / October 20, 2011; 31 days ago (2011-10-20)
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Web application framework
License	Open Software License ("OSL") v. 3.0
Website	http://codeigniter.com

CodeIgniter is an open source web application framework for use in building dynamic web sites with PHP. "Its goal is to enable [developers] to develop projects much faster than...writing code from scratch, by providing a rich set of libraries for commonly needed tasks, as well as a simple interface and logical structure to access these libraries."^[4] The first public version of CodeIgniter was released on February 28, 2006, and the latest stable version 2.0.3 was released August 20, 2011^[5].

CodeIgniter is loosely based on the popular Model-View-Controller development pattern. While view and controller classes are a necessary part of development under CodeIgniter, models are optional^[6].

CodeIgniter is most often noted for its speed when compared to other PHP frameworks.^[7][8][9] In a critical take on PHP frameworks in general, PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf spoke at frOSCon in August 2008, noting that he liked CodeIgniter "because it is faster, lighter and the least like a framework."^[10]

CodeIgniter's source code is maintained at GitHub^[11], and as of the preview version 3.0-dev, is certified open source software licensed with the Open Software License ("OSL") v. 3.0. Versions of CodeIgniter prior to 3.0 are licensed under a proprietary Apache/BSD-style open source license^[12].

The decision to switch to an OSL license sparked some community controversy^[13], especially about the GPL incompatibility of the new license, to which EllisLab has responded with a series of articles entitled Software License Awareness Week^[14].

MojoMotor

MojoMotor is a Content Management System developed by EllisLab. The current version is 1.1.1. MojoMotor was made to create easy-to-edit, brochure-like sites that use almost entirely static pages. Like ExpressionEngine, it requires no knowledge of PHP and has extensive online documentation.

See also

• List of content management systems
• Comparison of web application frameworks

Notes

1. ^ Ellis, Rick. "EllisLab History". EllisLab, Inc. http://ellislab.com/company/history/. Retrieved 2007-05-21. 
2. ^ Hacker, Scot (2003), "Put Weblogs to Work", Macworld: the Macintosh magazine 9 
3. ^ "Introducing MojoMotor". MojoMotor.com. 2010-07-29. http://mojomotor.com/blog/entry/introducing_mojomotor. Retrieved 2011-11-02. 
4. ^ "CodeIgniter User Guide : CodeIgniter At A Glance". Codeigniter.com. http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/overview/at_a_glance.html. Retrieved 2009-07-24. 
5. ^ "CodeIgniter User Guide Version 2.0.3 : Change Log". Codeigniter.com. http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/changelog.html. Retrieved 2011-11-02. 
6. ^ "CodeIgniter User Guide Version 2.0.3 : Models". CodeIgniter.com. http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/models.html. Retrieved 2011-11-02. 
7. ^ "CakePHP and CodeIgniter Benchmark". Sellersrank.com. 2006-12-08. http://www.sellersrank.com/php/cakephp-codeigniter-benchmark/. Retrieved 2009-07-24. ^{[dead link]}
8. ^ "PHP Frameworks Benchmarks". Sellersrank.com. http://www.sellersrank.com/web-frameworks-benchmarking-results/. Retrieved 2009-07-24. ^{[dead link]}
9. ^ "Benchmark update: Cake vs. CodeIgniter vs. Kohana". Pr0digy.com. 2008-09-03. http://pr0digy.com/codeigniter/benchmark-update-static-cake-codeigniter-kohana/. Retrieved 2009-07-24. 
10. ^ "Rasmus Lerdorf: PHP Frameworks? Think Again". Sitepoint.com. 2008-08-29. http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/08/29/rasmus-lerdorf-php-frameworks-think-again/. Retrieved 2009-07-24. 
11. ^ https://github.com/EllisLab/CodeIgniter
12. ^ "CodeIgniter User Guide Version 2.0.3 : CodeIgniter License Agreement". CodeIgniter.com. http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/license.html. Retrieved 2011-11-02. 
13. ^ "CodeIgniter changes license to OSL 3.0?". CodeIgniter.com Forum. 2011-10-21. http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/202562/. Retrieved 2011-11-02. 
14. ^ "Software Awareness Week". EllisLab.com. 2011-10-31. http://ellislab.com/blog/comments/software_license_awareness_week. Retrieved 2011-11-02. 

References

• David Upton, CodeIgniter for Rapid PHP Application Development, Packt, 2007, ISBN 1847191746
• Leonard Murphy, Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6, Packt, 2008, ISBN 978-1-847193-7-97
• Thomas Myer, Professional CodeIgniter, Wrox, 2008, ISBN 978-0470282458

External links

• EllisLab, Inc.