Every now and then I like to showcase beautifully designed websites that run on different CMS platforms. One interesting system is known as ExpressionEngine from Ellislabs. It claims to be the “most flexible web publishing system you’ll ever meet”. It boasts a bevy of features that aims to meet the most serious of publishing needs. Though I’ve never tried it myself, I’ve taken a deep look at their showcase of sites and what it can do. Take a look at these 18 awesome websites that are running on the ExpressionEngine platform:
LittleBigPlanetoid
Awesome use of large backgrounds – especially in the header area; this website screams “I’m unique” in all angles.
Render Creative
Render creative specializes in high end websites. This is easy to tell from their superior placement of large images, use of muted colors as well as large fonts.
Sam Houston
The Sam Houston website displays good use of shades, silhouettes and matted elements. What I especially liked is the timeline that serves that historic purpose.
All K Pop
Talk about busy – All K Pop is a magazine styled website powered by EE.
GOP
Once again, excellent oversized header – with alternating backgrounds for the faces. Bright, bold color schema with wide open spacing between elements:
Think About It
The Think About It website features beautiful contrasting greens against whites, along with good use of transparencies.
Campaign Monitor
The popular email marketing software runs their home site in EE. Top notch design with superior web 2.0 elements.
Office of the Governor
Really? Office of the Governor is running EE: Another testimonial for the platform’s accountability.
Chapman University
Good utilization of transparencies and high contrasting colors.
Havilah Legal
Talk about blue, this law firm website is very sleek and professional. I like the conformity to the strict color schema.
Trevor Allen Photography
Impressive slideshow, fancy lifted page effect, creative backgrounds – this website is simply stunning.
I lounge
This is an example of how complex an ExpressionEngine website can become. Many facets such as blogs, reviews, polls, a store and plenty of ads fused into one.
Ruth Badger
The Ruth Badger website is a presentation of good web 2.0 elements including ribbons, diagonal backgrounds and clean typography.
Tweetsie Railroad
Fun and fantastic, Tweetsie’s design is anything but ordinary.
Paul Rand
Very simple, serene and personal, the Paul Rand website is proof of clean web marksmanship.
VK Magazine
Superior typography, good spacing and placement, beautiful icons – VK Magazine takes content organization in a whole new level.
Mock Elections
Beautiful vector graphics, combined with muted colors – Mock Elections is a good example of an artistic webpage. Be sure to check out their awesome navigation buttons.
Echo-Factory
A somewhat refreshing combination of dark orange shades and dirty backgrounds. Nice origami Twitter bird.
Conclusion
As you can see, with a little talent and ExpressionEngine – you can do a lot. The platform comes in three pricing categories (free, personal and commercial) which varies from included and excluded features amongst them. For more information – head over to ExpressionEngine’s website.
What about you? Do you have an ExpressionEngine website you want to showcase? Please leave a comment below!
you may want to include veerle’s blog:
http://veerle.duoh.com/
Isn’t it that the template each of these sites is created from could be sliced and diced to be used on any CMS out there or am I missing something about EE?
Yes, page templates and CSS could be sliced and used with other CMSs. We’ve done this in the past with WordPress and Drupal, yet we prefer EE cause it’s way more flexible than WP and not as complex as Drupal.
With EE you can build anything from a simple blog to a social networking site (with the aid of a few extensions).
Hey – this is Andrew from Echo-Factory, and thanks for the compliment!
We’re quite fond of our bird as well.
@WEB SITE DESIGNER AND SEOER – yeah – for the most part it could. In our case – our portfolio section would have required some pretty extensive hacking in more common CMS’s (eg – WordPress, Joomla or Drupal) – and was fairly straightforward to implement in EE.
Our only complaint with EE is the backend – it’s not too pretty. But – with the release of EE 2.0 – it looks like they’ve made some significant strides there, so we’ll look at how complex it would be to upgrade.
Are these easy to use like WordPress or you need customization skills for these to work?
i’m sure you need “some” skill. as far as ease of use – i can’t say for sure.
Hi,
I’m Matteo from Milo, the agency behind the design and development of Mock Elections.
We’re really happy for ME to be described as an “artistic webpage”, thanks!
ME is an online community that helps teachers engage young students with issues surrounding democracy and justice, and supports them running a mock election in their classes. Results are aggregated on a national level and offer interesting insights of what young people think about politics: for example, if it were down to under-18s the UK would have a Lib-Dem government! Check out the results of the 2010 General (Mock) Election here: http://mockelections.co.uk/elections