An introduction

1st March, 2019

EE Add-on Recipes is a new site to explain and discuss the development of ExpressionEngine add-ons.

Starting from the basics of how to create common add-on types, we’ll look at a range of techniques to harness the power of EE’s built-in classes and functions to build add-ons that enhance your own EE sites and/or that can be published for the community.

We’ll focus on:

• how to build different types of add-on
• useful classes and functions available within EE
• the database structure and how to retrieve and modify data
• EE add-on design patterns — conventions that you should follow when confronted with common situations

If there are any other aspects of add-on development that you want to see let me know.

The site is aimed at PHP developers who use EE and want to start developing their own add-ons, but there should be enough to keep experienced add-on developers interested (in fact, I’d welcome any suggestions of improvements). This site won’t teach you how to build websites with ExpressionEngine — there are better resources available for that.

To keep the frequency of posts as high as possible, articles will initially be released in a blog format, as-and-when they are ready, and larger topics will be split into several articles to keep the subject matter more manageable. When there is a little more content I’ll organise the site into a more useful structure (and fill in any gaps).

Thanks for your interest. Any suggestions will be greatly received.

— Andrew Weaver brandnewbox.co.uk