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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
I agree with Stef idea. It should not be difficult to create it from the ground up, and to open the live preview only to finalists could be a solution to get people submit screenshots themselves so that one don’t have to administrate submissions all day long. As I told, I can provide both the domain that hosting with my company for free (actually to thanks you all for all your help you gave me on this forum) and, of course, I can help with the graphic and the html/css coding.
Do we start? :-D
Last edited by caruso_g (2009-05-27 21:38:26)
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
Well the admin theme section already exists at Textgarden and as it only contains “A Bit Blue” at the moment I can’t see a need to set up a special competition section. I would enter my own theme anyway as I think it is the most radical that currently exists and might give others a few ideas on what can be done with the PHP in addition to all the nice new UI stuff we have now.
Anyway, I’m thinking that Textgarden could be used in the same manner it currently is, using pop-up images to show full-screen renderings of the themes along with descriptions. I’m quite happy to handle all that manually.
If a second site can be set up to allow people to login to admin and switch themes around that would be great and I can link to it from Textgarden. Would we be able to use a common login for all?
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
thebombsite wrote:
Textgarden could be used in the same manner it currently is, using pop-up images to show full-screen renderings of the themes along with descriptions. I’m quite happy to handle all that manually.
Brilliant! You da man.
If a second site can be set up to allow people to login to admin and switch themes around that would be great and I can link to it from Textgarden.
That works for me. So how about it caruso_g? Fancy setting up a site for us to allow people to play with the themes? I can help ease the theme administration (e.g. import/management) via my plugin, which is coming along nicely. It’s nearly ready for a beta drop: I’ll send you the plugin when it’s done.
Would we be able to use a common login for all?
From a purists point of view, probably not because more than one person logging in at once would kick others out. BUT it might be possible to just make a pool of logins: user_a, user_b, user_c, user_d, and so on, all with the same password. What I’d propose is that we use igner’s plugin to handle logins. If we put ign_usr_online on a single public facing page — or, rather, the inverse of ign_usr_online, i.e. which accounts are not being used at the moment — then people can see which accounts are available.
Thus, in order to log in, people visit the public page and see a list of currently not-in-use logins. Clicking one puts it in the ‘login’ box on that screen, you enter the password and the ‘success’ form forwards you to a page on the admin side. How’s that? Pretty simple to do with a bit of js and ign_password_protect; it saves creating logins for everyone, which could be an administrative headache.
Then all we need are beaucoup de themes. Where’s nemoorange when we need him?! :-)
Last edited by Bloke (2009-05-29 23:59:50)
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
Bloke wrote:
Then all we need are beaucoup de themes. Where’s nemoorange when we need him?! :-)
Has he converted any yet?
I’m thinking if we can’t have a common login then we may as well stick to the normal registration method employed by the plug-in. I don’t think the extra work of creating a “pool” is worth the effort. This may require that whoever administrates the site would need to go in on maybe a weekly basis to “clear out” the existing user base so that it doesn’t grow to monstrous proportions but other than that I can’t see any major problems with just sticking to what the plug-ins do naturally.
Now then, I’ve had an email from Jonathan (jstubbs) relating to the TXPTips site. He was asking about producing a tutorial so that people can get a handle on how to produce an admin theme. I’m not sure I’m totally qualified to do this myself as I really haven’t looked into all the new UI additions we now have. In any case there are various ways that it can be done, for example, it could simply be a new CSS, or it could be a new CSS with new images, or it could contain changes to the header via the PHP file or, as far as I can tell, it could be all of the above PLUS a plug-in.
Obviously Jonathan is looking at this from the point-of-view of adding it to TXPTips but I’m thinking that it should be here, in the forum, probably in the “How-tos and Examples” forum, which is still closed to the vast majority of us at least for creating a new topic.
I would suggest that one of the moderators create a new topic in there with just a general opening post so that those of us who have some experience with this stuff can post to it and others can ask specific questions if necessary. I think that until enough users know how to do this we are not likely to get a lot of competition entries or else they are all likely to come from the same small group of users which doesn’t lend itself to getting “variation” of form, for example a dozen or so entries from Nemoorange (not that I’m complaining about Nemoorange you understand, but you can see my overall point).
From there, Jonathan could take all the instruction bits and create a single article for TXPTips taking all aspects of admin theme production into consideration. The same could be said for TextBook.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
thebombsite wrote:
I’m thinking that it should be here, in the forum, probably in the “How-tos and Examples” forum,
I think, a wiki is a better place for this documentation. Forum threads tend to blur.
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
I agree Robert. I said so in my previous post but I’m thinking that there isn’t a single person with all the knowledge so maybe a thread here first to discuss all the possibilities then collate that information into a single article for TextBook and TXPTips.
Last edited by thebombsite (2009-05-30 15:05:57)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
Well, after I red all of your posts, I am guessing if it would not be so much easier to implement a simple form in a brand new website made just for admin themes to let user to register themselves to access the admin backend.
I am not a php developer, I am just a designer, but I didn’t thought it could be so difficult to do it, am I wrong?
Than, another website for Txp resources, even if so specific, could be another “marketing” tool for Txp. :)
I know we all are REALLY busy, but as I told you before, I am ready to help you both in the design then in the host/domain side of the work.
I think a nice theme gallery ala http://welovetxp.com/ but with a rating system could be really great.
But, of course, just my two cents. :)
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
caruso_g wrote:
a simple form in a brand new website made just for admin themes to let user to register themselves to access the admin backend.
D’oh! Much easier. Why didn’t I think of that, I do it often enough :-) I didn’t have much sleep yesterday, that’s my excuse.
I think a nice theme gallery ala http://welovetxp.com/ but with a rating system could be really great.
Well the gallery part is all ready to go on Stuart’s Textgarden. It makes a lot of sense to host it there because it’s already set up for both client and admin themes, and Stuart’s put a lot of work into the project. Rating system: not sure. They are patchy at best and I’d rather discuss the themes on a forum, but as a general indicator of usefuless it could be implemented if Stuart thinks it’s worthwhile.
As far as testing out the themes themselves, I really don’t mind where that part is hosted. With the admin theme plugin installed on that site we can just import themes (it’s a three-click process) and then simply add them to the list of ‘allowed’ themes that users can switch between. After that, mem_self_register does the rest to create accounts at a low priv level (staff writer?)
And with regards the docs, once I know more about the themeing process I’ll add some techie stuff to the wiki page that wet started (excellent, thanks). I’m sure some designers can add to it as well, as we all learn more about how to do it.
If people choose to install the admin theme plugin, the actual management process is simplified because you can choose an existing theme, clone it, edit it, export it and upload it to Textgarden, as well as importing / managing other themes without having to go near FTP. And if I can find a way of doing it I’d like to offer the ability to notify when a theme has been updated.
Last edited by Bloke (2009-05-30 18:12:14)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
Just remember that it’s not Stuart’s Textgarden, it’s Textpattern’s Textgarden. Hate to keep pointing it out but it is an “official” site in all ways though people like to ignore it.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
I also agree for Stuart’s Textgarden (Just kidding Stuart :P ).
C’mon, let’s choose the domain name. We should choose one that could be always used, not just for this competition but as a sister website for Textgarden admin themes section.
I am not English mother language so, it is up to you. :)
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
textpatterncms.com expires on 4 June. If you like I’ll renew it for a year and change the dns to one of your choosing so you can use it. I don’t have much bandwidth on my host but if you do, Giuseppe, then the domain is yours if you want it.
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Re: [contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme
This doesn’t have a voting mechanism, but David DeSandro has implemented a beautiful interface for previewing and downloading admin themes.
EDIT: You best believe that David has Two Capital Letters in his last name.
Last edited by johnstephens (2009-06-01 19:07:33)
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