Mike Boyink from Train-ee is hosting the first ever classroom led instruction of ExpressionEngine (EE) in Holland, Michigan.  I stumbled across EE about two years ago, after thinking I was going to become a bad #!*$ developer overnight, and reading every book I could on web development.  After comparing content management systems, I chose EE.  What I found two years ago, was there were not many tutorials, or trainings on EE.  Yea there was the documentation and four start up videos, but it seemed like something was missing, I was still was very unsure of how to really develop an ExpressionEngine site. I put EE on the shelf and went in a different direction of building systems from scratch(or attempting anyway).  I still new that EE was the tool to be using, especially for clients websites, although may not be the most popular, I re-visited ExpressionEngine again.  This time while trying to find tutorials, I found Mike Boyink, and his books on ExpressionEngine.  This is exactly what I had been looking for.  After reading and watching the screencasts, I finally have a better understanding of EE, but like always I had some more questions. Continuing to research, I saw Mike Boyink was offering a workshop on ExpressionEngine in September.

With so many popular content management systems (cms) and blogging tools on the market, it is difficult to choose which one is right for you as a developer, but also right for your clients.  After much research (and some seriously late nights) on which cms or blogging tool I thought would meet my expectations, I chose ExpressionEngine (EE).  I first learned of ExpressionEngine in a book called Blog Design Solutions written by a group of highly respected individuals in the industry.  The book didn’t compare the products, but had a chapter on the each of the more popular tools; WordPress, Movable Type, TextPattern, ExpressionEngine, and of course the option to build your own.  The first thing I did was build my own.  I thought it was great but very time-consuming.  I wrote a few different basic content management systems featuring blogs with the help of the internet and many other books.  I thought it was great fun and still do.  However, I’m not sure if that is the best option for every website and especially if time is a factor.