Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

sarah · 2009-09-26 18:54:13

Are their detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern and integrate already created web pages?

The tutorial on textpattern’s site is not very detailed and understandable.

Thanks!

jsoo · 2009-09-26 20:30:25

Your question is also not very detailed, which makes it hard to answer. In particular, without knowing something about your knowledge of basic web languages (HTML and CSS, and optionally JavaScript), the kind of website you have, how you currently manage it, and the benefits you hope to gain by moving to a CMS (I am assuming it is currently a traditional file-based website), one invariably assumes too much or too little. As we know, when you assume…

Which tutorial do you mean? Have you read this, and the various pages linked from it? Have you looked at the book Textpattern Solutions?

sarah · 2009-09-26 21:23:42

Sorry for the lack of details.

I have good knowledge of HTMl and CSS, however, the texpattern mode of creating pages is confusing to me.

Is there not a step by step tutorial on how to create a simple one page website with images, that I can be directed to? The videos on youtube are not clear enough for me to understand what’s going on.

And yes, my site also includes javascript and I wish to use a CMS as it is a ecommerce site and needs to be updated regularly.

Thanks for the link, I have read it, but I’m looking for a clear tutorial type thing that may be floating around on the net…

els · 2009-09-26 21:27:54

Are you looking for something like this: Textpattern First Steps?

jsoo · 2009-09-26 21:51:17

sarah wrote:

Is there not a step by step tutorial on how to create a simple one page website with images, that I can be directed to? The videos on youtube are not clear enough for me to understand what’s going on.

Do you mean that your end goal is a one-page site, or is that what you see as the best first step for learning how to create a complex site?

I haven’t seen the videos. I don’t know of a tutorial such as you describe, nor do I expect there to be one, because a CMS is not the right platform for a very simple site.

sarah · 2009-09-27 12:49:52

Jsoo and Els, thank you so much for your links. I’ve taken a closer look at them, and I think I can work with them!

The reason why I asked for a tutorial on how to create a one page website is because this is how standard tutorials for web design software are set out- and yets, it is the best and easiest step on how to creat a complex site. My website will have much more than one page though and so a CMSis very much needed for what I’m doing.

jsoo · 2009-09-27 13:44:05

sarah wrote:

The reason why I asked for a tutorial on how to create a one page website is because this is how standard tutorials for web design software are set out- and yets, it is the best and easiest step on how to creat a complex site. My website will have much more than one page though and so a CMSis very much needed for what I’m doing.

OK. To my mind the drawback of this approach is that a CMS is not really based on pages (most aren’t, anyway, and Txp certainly isn’t). Creating a one-page site in Txp could be as simple as:

Install Txp.
Go to ~~Admin~~ Presentation->Pages. You will be on the “You are editing page template default” page.
Replace the entire contents of the textarea with the complete HTML for your page (including opening and closing <html> tags).
Click “Save”.

You now have a one-page static website that happens to use Txp as a backend, but you have not made any real progress to building a Txp site.

Compared to some other CMSs, the Txp content model is not very abstract. The “article” content type is supreme in Txp, and if that doesn’t fit your needs you are probably better off looking for a different CMS. But given that most websites are indeed collections of articles, Txp’s model is very practical for many purposes. We love Txp not because of some ideal of theoretical purity, but because it just works.

Txp “pages”, in the traditional website sense of HTML views that correspond to URLs, are of two main types: individual articles and article lists. There’s some blurring, because an individual article page can and usually does include certain kinds of article lists, while an article list page can easily be designed to resemble an individual article. Indeed, the default Txp installation is an example of this.

The main types of article lists group articles by:

section
category
search results
author
publication month

You can generate lists based on other factors, but these are the ones that correspond to standard Txp URLs (with plugins you can generate other kinds of URL-driven lists).

Every article is tied to one section, and every section is tied to one page template. This is kind of a strange mixing of presentation and content: there’s a sort of pretense that sections are purely presentational, but they are a de facto content grouping, and on most Txp sites they are the most important one.

Some questions to answer when designing a Txp site:

what kinds of individual articles will the site have?
on an individual article page, what kinds of related content should automatically appear?
what kinds of article list should the site offer?

Answer those questions and you will find no shortage of helpful advice on this forum.

Last edited by jsoo (2009-09-28 02:52:45)

sarah · 2009-09-27 20:38:10

Guys, thanks for your help, but I think I’ll stick with my current website editor until I find another CMS (probably CMS made simple).

CMS Made Simple have their instructions very simply laid out. For example: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/How_to

That is all I’m looking for, but it sees everything about this CMS is made more difficult than it ought to be, along with the responses on the forum.

Thanks anyway.

jsoo · 2009-09-27 20:56:23

sarah wrote:

everything about this CMS is made more difficult than it ought to be, along with the responses on the forum.

This is why I’m not in sales. Oh well. Best of luck with CMS Made Simple.

keith · 2009-09-27 21:14:56

sarah wrote:

but it seems everything about this CMS is made more difficult than it ought to be, along with the responses on the forum.

Well yes, it expects its users to be able to think for themselves a bit…

hcgtv · 2009-09-27 21:36:47

Sarah,

Don’t give up, here’s a nice article from Destry Wion.

Textpattern at first may seem difficult, but once you get the hang of it, it’s as close to editing raw html in your editor of choice and ftping up the results, and it’s just as fast to boot.

iblastoff · 2009-09-27 21:54:11

sarah wrote:

Guys, thanks for your help, but I think I’ll stick with my current website editor until I find another CMS (probably CMS made simple).

CMS Made Simple have their instructions very simply laid out. For example: http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/How_to

That is all I’m looking for, but it sees everything about this CMS is made more difficult than it ought to be, along with the responses on the forum.

Thanks anyway.

i don’t get it. i went through those cms made simple instructions and the majority of them just tell you how to install the cms. the one tutorial that supposedly moves you from a static page to a cms-powered page basically just told you exactly what jsoo did (in regards to just copying and pasting your old site into a template page). if that is all you actually need, that you probably need to look at why you even need a cms in the first place and what a cms actually does for you.

Last edited by iblastoff (2009-09-27 21:54:23)

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Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2009-09-26 18:54:13

Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#2 2009-09-26 20:30:25

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#3 2009-09-26 21:23:42

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#4 2009-09-26 21:27:54

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#5 2009-09-26 21:51:17

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#6 2009-09-27 12:49:52

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#7 2009-09-27 13:44:05

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#8 2009-09-27 20:38:10

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#9 2009-09-27 20:56:23

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#10 2009-09-27 21:14:56

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#11 2009-09-27 21:36:47

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

#12 2009-09-27 21:54:11

Re: Detailed instructions on how to create a site with textpattern?

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