Power To The People. pMachine’s Class Act On A Mac

Yes, we have a bias. For some odd reason, the staff at Mac360, as with many Mac users, like things that work well. So it is with the content management system we use to power the site. The developer, pMachine, uses Macs to make it work. Imagine that. Here’s why:

Rick Ellis, founder of pMachine, a content management system publisher in Oregon, knows about Macs. He used to work at Apple.

Today, pMachine is one of the premier developers of affordable and powerful content management systems (CMS) for web sites such as Mac360. What do the pMachine developers use to create such powerful and affordable software? Macs. OS X.

Mac360 was one of the first users of pMachine’s top product, ExpressionEngine; a powerful and user-friendly CMS that’s behind a number of Mac web sites, and many thousands of other web sites throughout the world.

In a lengthy exchange of email messages in an interview which spanned many months, we gathered some insight into Rick Ellis, his company, his staff, and their philosphy about creating products and doing business.

Mac360 - Rick, describe your business (location, type, time in business, customer base, your background, company objectives), and pMachine’s main product, Expression Engine.

Rick - We are a small software company that develops products that enable individuals, companies, and organizations to publish information online.  This information can be in the form of a web site, a web log, a corporate web site, an online magazine, or something entirely different. 

Our customers are a fairly mixed group, ranging from individuals, to corporate users, to non-profit organizations. The common thread all our customer share is their need to communicate with an online audience.  Our software enables them to do this.

Mac360 - When did you get started and what’s your background?

Rick - We’ve been open for business for almost four years, although our first generation software product was under development for about a year before that.  My background is in audio production for film and television, but when I discovered the web in 1995 I fell in love and began spending all my free time exploring it. 

I started making web sites for myself, then later for my audio clients, and before long my web development company was generating as much work as my audio endeavors.  In an attempt to provide a greater range of services for my clients I began learning server-side web programming, which lead to the development of pMachine Pro, our first generation content management system. 

Due to the demand for the program I took a leap of faith to focus full-time on it.  A year later we began development on our next generation system, ExpressionEngine.

Mac360 - What made you move from pMachine’s original architecture and design to Expression Engine?

Rick - pM Pro was originally designed as a basic news/blogging application.  However, after releasing it publicly and having thousands of people use the program my perspective changed considerably. 

I realized that in order to grow as a company and meet the growing expectations of our users we needed a more powerful and flexible architecture.

Mac360 - How many employees in the company? Where are they located?

Rick - We are a true virtual company.  Our staff is scattered across the United States.  I’m in Bend, Oregon.  Paul Burdick is in Portland.  Chris Curtis is in Austin, Texas.  Nevin Linn and Julie Lau are in Rochester, Minnesota, Laurie Ruggles in Huntington Beach, CA, and Les Camacho in Lincoln, Nebraska.  If we grow much larger we will need to move into a central office since it’s hard to manage a large staff virtually.

“We develop software that runs on web servers so OS X is a perfect development platform.  You get all the advantages of Linux, along with a gorgeous user-interface…”Mac360 - pMachine utilizes a Forum for customer support. I’ve used it many times and help out from time to time, too. How has that method of customer service affected your growth? What do customers like about the “forum” approach?

Rick - The biggest benefit of a forum is that it creates a sense of community.  It enables a dialog between many people.

Mac360 - How long have you (others) used Macs? How many Macs in the company (others?)?

Rick - When I was a teenager I worked for Apple Computer one summer.  I couldn’t afford an Apple at the time, but I fell in love with them.  It wasn’t until the early 90’s that I was able to buy my first Mac, an SE-30. 

At the time I was working in the audio industry as a recording engineer.  Digital audio was just emerging and Apple was the dominant platform, so from that point on I’ve been a die-hard Mac user.  All of us at pMachine are Mac users.  Nevin and Paul are long-time users, with Chris and Les more recently making the transition.

Mac360 - For those who’ve made the “transition” to Mac OS X, what problems have they run into? How do they view using OS X?

Rick - When Chris got his powerbook it took him a while to change his Windows mindset and habits.  In fact, for a while it appeared that he wasn’t seeing much value in OS X, barely even using his new computer.  Over time, though, it grew on him.  Les made the switch and immediately loved it.

Mac360 - Why Macs? What about Mac OS X aids your development process?

Rick - We develop software that runs on web servers so OS X is a perfect development platform.  You get all the advantages of Linux, along with a gorgeous user-interface and the ability to run standard desktop applications.  OS X enables us to be significantly more productive, since our desktop computers are literally our development servers.

Mac360 - What’s your view of the desktop application market for Mac OS X vs. Windows vs. Linux?

Rick - I don’t have much of a viewpoint since I don’t develop desktop applications.

Mac360 - Describe benefits of PHP and MySQL as open source tools for Mac users (we’ve had articles on these tools previously in Mac360):

Rick - It’s ironic that we use open source applications since we are not an open source company, but these products are simply the best at what they do. 

Both PHP and MySQL are the de-facto standards in database and scripting environments.  The fact that they are free is icing on the cake.

Mac360 - Does using Open Source elements (PHP, MySQL) cause any customer support issues?

Rick - No, not really.

Continued on Page 2...