Meta Q&A:
Stephen Lewis, Experience Internet

This week, Meta Q&A chats with Stephen Lewis, a Welsh expat "begrudgingly living in England." Lewis is a creative fellow who's been a furniture and product designer, website developer and now a full-time add-on developer. His job titles may have changed a few times, but there's one thing that's stayed "largely unchanged" -- Lewis is an ExpressionEngine devotee, stating simply that it's "the most flexible and extensible CMS I've ever used."Lewis can be found tweeting at @monooso and always has something in the pipeline at http://experienceinternet.co.uk/.

MQ: What do you love/hate about ExpressionEngine?

SL: The way I use ExpressionEngine has changed markedly over the past five years. In the early days, I was designing and building full sites based on EE, whereas now I’m a full-time add-on developer.

Despite this shifting perspective, the reasons that I enjoy working with ExpressionEngine have remained largely unchanged: it’s the most flexible and extensible CMS I’ve ever used.

There’s nothing I really hate about ExpressionEngine. That said, the transition to 2.0 has been a rough ride, with a lot of EllisLab missteps along the way. Frankly, if I wasn’t already heavily committed to the platform, I doubt I would have tolerated the ongoing saga of buggy releases and missed deadlines that has characterized EE 2.x thus far.

Thankfully, EllisLab have clearly been listening to the complaints. I don’t expect EE to become completely bug-free overnight, or for the UI to be magically improved; that’s an ongoing process. As somebody whose business is built around EllisLab software, a clear willingness to engage in that process is what matters most to me.

MQ:  Tell us about your work in 140 characters or less.

SL: I develop custom EE add-ons for private clients, and share my hard-earned knowledge on the blog, and at EE meet-ups and conferences.

MQ: What's your favorite thing about doing web development/design?

SL: My degree is in furniture and product design, and I do occasionally miss the experience of designing and building something tangible, of solving a physical problem. However, product and furniture design evolves at a very slow pace. New materials take a long time to become available, and the expense of manufacturing something can be a barrier to experimentation.

Web design and development is the polar opposite. There’s just so much going on; so many interesting ideas and new technologies, thanks largely to the low cost of just trying something out. It’s really exciting to be part of that.

I vacillate between delighting in all this creativity and innovation, and feeling completely overwhelmed by the prospect of staying abreast of everything. As you’ll have gathered, I’m currently in the middle of a nerd joy cycle.

MQ: What do you do when you can't solve a development/design problem?

SL: A break always helps. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve left the house for a walk, and thought of a solution to my problem before reaching the end of the road. It’s difficult to stay in shape.

Beyond that, if I’m struggling with a bit of code it’s almost always because I simply have stated the problem clearly enough. Taking the time to clearly articulate your objectives goes a long way towards solving most problems.

MQ: Why use EE? How do you sell clients on using EE?

SL: I started using EE to develop full web sites (as opposed to just add-ons, as I do now). My story is pretty typical, in that I’d tried out a bunch of different CMSs and EE was the one that really clicked for me. The ease of use and flexibility was unparalleled at that time, and probably still is today.

I’ve never really had to “sell” a client on using ExpressionEngine over another CMS. I would simply state my opinion that it was the best solution, and perhaps talk a bit about how specific “must have” project requirements could be achieved with EE.

As with any professional designer or developer, clients hire me for my expertise. As long as I’m confident in my chosen solution, and can clearly convey that, they’re happy to go with my recommendation. That’s been the case whether I’m working with a complete technophobe who wants me to design and build him a website, or a web developer who wants me to build a complex custom add-on.

MQ: My favorite EE add-on is: __________

SL: That's a tricky one.

For ExpressionEngine 1, it was definitely [Pixel and Tonic's] FieldFrame, because of how much easier it made my life as an add-on developer. Prior to FieldFrame, developing a custom fieldtype was a horrible experience.

As to ExpressionEngine 2, it depends whether I'm answering as an add-on developer, or a more generalist ExpressionEngine developer.

If it's the latter, my favorite EE2 add-on is Matrix. On the rare occasion that I get involved in a full website design and build project, I've found Matrix to be invaluable. It's a great idea, brilliantly executed.

In terms of add-on development, I have to pick Testee,even though it's one of mine. Test-driven development has had such a positive impact on the quality of my code, and my entire TDD add-on development process is built around Testee. I wrote it to meet my own requirements, and use it all day, every day. I can't imagine developing another add-on without it.

MQ: My favorite site I did in EE is: __________

SL: This is going back a good few years, but I think IconicInteriors.com still holds up pretty well. It's not often that I return to a site I built five years ago, and think, "Actually, I quite like that."

Of course, that’s not to say I don’t look at some of the code and exclaim, “Dear God man, what were you thinking?!”

MQ: My favorite site someone else did in EE is: __________

SL: A List Apart, by Happy Cog.

MQ: How/why did you get into web design/development?

SL: I did a lot of programming in my teens, and even started a computing degree, before deciding that furniture and product design was more interesting. I began waking up to the fact that furniture and product design really isn’t that interesting in 1998 / 1999, when all things Internet were beginning to take off in the UK.

I bought a couple of books, started messing about with HTML and PHP, and that was it; I was hooked. It was my perfect profession: design and programming, all rolled into one.

I stick with it because it still excites me. I get bored easily, but there’s always something new to learn in this industry.

MQ: What would you like to see happen with ExpressionEngine or EllisLab in the future?

SL: A more developer-friendly CP [control panel] in terms of the underlying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript would be good. It's also important that future releases of ExpressionEngine are stable, and free of significant bugs. No more of this "hot-fix" nonsense.

Things are still far from perfect, but since KennyGate, the people at EllisLab have demonstrated a real commitment to improving both CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine. As long as we continue heading in the right direction, we'll get there.