Textpattern Support Forum

lol yeah well that sure was funny !

But not an accurate description of what we’re trying to do here… at least I believe (if someone thinks so please come here and shoot me in the head !)

Thanks Jeremie, my head is safe for now :P

<em>Following up on skubidu’s post…

Might seem off topic but I think it helps clarifying were txp stands against what I deem to be its competition (tada : not WordPress I am talking about ! You’ll see why…). Of course this is my take on things, nothing more : as such, it’s highly subjective…</em>

Skubidu wrote : I think it’s important, because Textpattern has to keep up to date and because other comparable systems have made big improvements in this area.

That’s something I had meant to emphasize and it’s nicely said… we don’t exist in a vacuum. I think some systems are catching up (EE, CMSMS and MODx are the 3 systems I would set in the same flexible/modular category, though each has weak and strong points, and to me CMSMS is still pretty young…).

How I see comparative advantage :

CMS Made Simple

BETTER THAN TXP

• illimited hierachical levels (though can be achieved with txp, so I hear, and will be feature of txp 4.1)
• permission and user management

AS GOOD AS TXP

• blobs akin to forms
• templating and tag system akin to textpattern’s, though much less tags available (for now)
• user tags are in fact plugins called via tags : e.g can be placed in template and you can pass parameters in a way very similar to txp

NOT AS GOOD AS TXP

• missing Textile ;p (as far as I know…) or Markdown
• no concept of section : templates are assigned to pages individually, conditionnal testing is more limited
• admin is clear but not as elegant as txp, and most certainly dull
• less features overall (not necessarily bad, but certainly more limited than txp)
• fewer – less stable plugins (but growing fast)
• younger than txp (wouldn’t use it in production yet)

EE

BETTER THAN TXP

• multiple weblogs is very easy to set up (as good if not better than b2evolution or WordPress Mu in this respect)
• conditionnal global variables (detail here)
• custom variables is more powerful than txp (can choose type, and associate custom field group individually to weblogs)
• integrated gallery is nice (but only available in paid version)
• revisionning (utility of this might be discussed though)
• rights management and user management (both backend and frontend, pretty granular control over permissions)
• Built-in Private Messenging (can be useful for collaborative writing, as Jeremie often pointed out => Jeremie correct me if I am wrong) and mailing list

AS GOOD AS TXP

• template groups are akin to sections (but same “problem”, categories cannot be hierachically placed under template groups)
• sub-templates akin to forms
• tags are easy and readable, templating is as good as textpattern, so is standard compliance.
• plugins are called via tags : e.g can be placed in template and you can pass parameters in a very similar way

NOT AS GOOD AS TXP

• not opensource (but now, free core)
• urls are not as flexible and search engine friendly as txp (based on path info. To EE users : yeah I know, can be tweaked with rewrite rules, but more complicated)
• admin is ugly and way too heavy (though better laid out than before)
• fewer plugins (under 90, most of them adding limited features…)
• modules are very late and scarce (forum and galery were long overdue… and feeling lonely !)

MODx

BETTER THAN TXP

• custom fields (aka Template Variables) : you can choose any type and any number of custom fields, which are linked to templates
• frontend editing : QuickEdit module is way more advanced than anything I have seen so far
• illimited hierarchical levels (tree based structure, documents can be made into “folders” => some are against this, but useful)
• permission and user management (backend and frontend access, though a bit complicated system => will change soon)
• content-type for web documents can be of any mime-type
• CSS are parsed by MODx : kind of “native” server side CSS => you can have global variables and snippets (=plugins in txp) usable in CSS
• chunks usable in CSS (very useful to have re-usable bits of CSS code => just like for HTML pages)
• dbAPI and API for developpers, helps building custom solutions fast

AS GOOD AS TXP

• chunks are akin to forms (re-usable bits of content)
• tags can be used the same way txp does (though less intuitive syntax ugly & and `)
• snippets are called through tags, but with an additionnal built-in capability to call it cached/uncached
• can use Textile or Markdown

NOT AS GOOD AS TXP

• Admin is bloated and ugly (inherited of Etomite => will change soon), with javacript
• if you don’t disable it, script.aculo.us library is bulking page weight (and it’s necessary to use QuickEdit. This said, AJAX library is not freezed : moofx is a candidate for example)
• Fewer plugins/modules/snippets (though growing fast and high quality stuff => not buggy and great features added)
• still young, less mature than txp though more potential (but it’s a framework… )

Last edited by davidm (2006-02-24 17:51:49)

davidm wrote:
Built-in Private Messenging (can be useful for collaborative writing, as Jeremie often pointed out => Jeremie correct me if I am wrong) and mailing list

I don’t think private messaging is that useful. Nice for some people, but far below the needed feature list in my opinion.

For collaborative work, even very basic, it’s more like a per article & per usergroup thread (forum thread, or parallel backend comment thread if we want to re-use existing TXP features) is imo the top thing needed.

Email is 99% of the time more effective than private messaging.

Thanks Jeremie, corrected.

[btw i did forget: TXP Blogmap will come within hours and a Biz Map will come too, hopefully. At least Bastian is working on the Biz Map to support TXP related services. And: TXP Mag got revamped. Hey i did do my share of work, didn´t i ;)]

Last edited by alexandra (2006-02-24 18:14:48)

@davidm: great comparision!

davidm wrote:

MODx
BETTER THAN TXP
<ul><li>custom fields (aka Template Variables) : you can choose any type and any number of custom fields, which are linked to templates</li></ul>

Arent this exactly the same as our simple, well-known and beloved forms?
A TXP form is like a custom field, and you can re-use it in templates. You can create any number. Don know about the “type” attribute. Type attribute in TXP forms is just for categorizing (article, misc, link, etc).

Last edited by maniqui (2006-02-24 18:25:22)