Codeigniter expressionEngine

Apples and Oranges,

Codeigniter is a framework that allows you to create a Web Application like an admin system. The customer does not add any content or touch anything. You can add CMS functionality to your codeigniter Web Application however in this sense you are actually building your own CMS on top of your Web Application.

ExpressionEngine, built with codeigniter, is a CMS that allows clients to add content without actually giving them access to your HTML - That is not to say that you can't give them access but this would defeat the purpose of a CMS.

Because expressionEngine is built on top of codeigniter it is possible to access it's functionality (I've seen posts on this but haven't tried it yet myself).

I think you would use the two together if you had a Web Application with a Website around it. In this way the client would be able to add content to the website and even some of the Application information areas but you would use Codeigniter to build the Web Application's functionality.

I don't think it would be a waste of a week to get into expressionEngine. LevelUpTuts has some great video tutes on expressionEngine 2 and try Nettuts+ CodeIgniter from Scratch for, suprisingly, codeigniter.

(For those who are new to CMS) The general process of development is: - Translate your website design to HTML/CMS/jQuery - Translate your HTML to expresionEngine Templates - Define your Channels which your clients will add content to - Embed those Channels into your templates to display that content dynamically - In administration, assign permissions to who can add content to which channels for your clients

It will start to make sense once you try it.

You can't layer ExpressionEngine on top of CodeIgniter since CodeIgniter is extracted from ExpressionEngine. It's EE all the way, or use CodeIgniter to build your own thing.

ExpressionEngine supports PHP code inside it's templates if that's what your asking.

EE(2.0) is a CMS built on the CI2.0 framework.

If you are familiar with CI you will be able to hack, modify and extend EE with ease, as well as develop your own plugins etc.

You can of course, have an EE installation and a CI installation on the same server, but the two do not interact directly - CI is a framework, EE is a CMS.