why I love textpattern

guiguibonbon · 2006-06-22 12:58:05

There used to be a time where I built custom cms for the websites I made. That was fun, because you saw how they evolved from cms to cms. But that was time-consuming, too. Then came a client with a brief I knew I couldn’t ever make a custom cms for. And I discovered textpattern. It sort of got me to appreciate opensource cms after all. So I made 4 txp and 1 WP websites since. Ha… what a time-saver. Amazing.

But then came a client with another brief, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to use txp for it. Then came panic. I’ve grown addicited to this stuff guys. So I went looking for other opensource cms, and all the sudden I remembered just why I didn’t like them in the first place. Let’s face it : there’s only one valuable cms around.

I guess It will be a cutom for those clients. But that feels very frustrating. And, well, you know, I don’t like frustrations.

What I would really like, is for textpattern to become the absolute reference. I want it either to grow and get the ability to do more, or to start seeing forks that specialise in certain tasks. Many small txp’s with all their specialities : the blog txp, the e-commerce txp, the photo-blog txp, the portfolio txp, the e-zine txp, the multi-lingual… fill the list, I’m pretty uninspired at the moment. But I firmly believe txp could end up suiting any kind of website.

What restricts me from using txp for those last clients, is the limit of two fields. I could use custom fields, but they’re not section-specific, which is a problem. “Yeah guys, I know it’s odd but just remember that date means date in sectionA but means partners in sectionB, that’s not a problem, right?” And they can only hold small chunks of plain text.

And the difficulty to use more than one language. I found a nice trick for one website, the content is separated by {{lang}}, the first part being english, second italian, etc. Works like a charm with a little plugin that parsers it all. Add a few language specific forms for all the text in the interface, a cookie system, done. Oh, now I think about it, that might do it if the plugin also parses custom fields… mmh.. nice sudden find.

Ok, that diserves refrasing : what I’d like, are section-specific fields (including custom fields). And what would be really nice, is the ability to seperate the txp admin in two bits : the administrator/designer bit, and the editor bit. And you should be able to customize the editor bit from within the admin bit : rearranging the input forms from the content pages, section-specificaly. That’s a bit hard to explain…

I guess the whole point of this rather point-less post, is to see if I’m the only one who would like to work with nothing else but textpattern any more, but sometimes just can’t, and feels very frustrated. If it might prove i’m not, perhaps that would soften the frustration, because I’d know that in a few years time, I will be able to use nothing but textpattern, for we will have made it the best-ever-made-by-human-kind-content-management-system.

jakob · 2006-06-22 14:44:15

Hi guiguibonbon,

no, you’re not alone. I sometimes come up against the ‘edges’ of textpattern. I think with the new idea of elements and bannister, of having separate areas of core-functionality go in the direction you say of more purpose-directed textpattern installations with and without certain modules. I’m also eagerly awaiting what is planned. For example, I for one hardly ever use a blog, so I could do without the entire commenting and import functionality.

In the meantime, maybe the kind of additions/changes you are thinking of are just the thing for team-textpattern? If investing money for programming, then why not invest in pushing forward txp…

As regards your questions, I’m not sure I follow exactly what you want to do – care to explain it in more detail? I’ll take some guesses, though:

admin/designer backend: Can you not do that already by setting different rights. The presentation and admin tabs dissappear then for normal contributors.
Customising the content tabs: yes, I’d too like to switch off areas which are not needed to make it easier for end users. Ideally I’d want to be able to present different custom fields according to section. I think there’s a fundamental difficulty there, as you do not always know which section the article has (i.e. when first writing an article without having applied a section, or if you change it when editing the fields would have to appear and disappear).
More than two fields (you mean categories?). What about using tags or rss_unlimited_categories. Would that work?
If you only have certain areas which need input from outside, how about using the self-moderation plug-in. I’ve not tried it myself but I’ve seen others who have used it to design their own ‘front-end’ data input window which inserts information into an article. I must try that out some time. There was a community site recently in “let’s see yours” that does that.

net-carver · 2006-06-22 14:58:40

Hello,

I believe Yura (aka Inspired) is working on the customising of content tabs but this might not address the per-section custom fields requirement.

hcgtv · 2006-06-22 18:33:26

guiguibonbon wrote:

What I would really like, is for textpattern to become the absolute reference. I want it either to grow and get the ability to do more, or to start seeing forks that specialise in certain tasks. Many small txp’s with all their specialities : the blog txp, the e-commerce txp, the photo-blog txp, the portfolio txp, the e-zine txp, the multi-lingual… fill the list, I’m pretty uninspired at the moment. But I firmly believe txp could end up suiting any kind of website.

That’s already starting to happen with the Team Textpattern initiative.

Since Textpattern is such a tight core, building atop of it is a no-brainer. I can see many vertical uses for it and I’ve already sent my requests in to the Team.

There’s also the task of marrying apps to Textpattern with similar developement traits, tight core code, does one task right, in other words adheres to the KISS principle. Projects get bogged down when they want to be the kitchen sink, adding modules for forums, galleries, calendars, you name it.

Let’s see what the future holds.

guiguibonbon · 2006-06-23 16:22:06

jakob: that moderation plugin is brilliant. Definitely going to use it some time around. Different rights still give way too many choices to the editors, and it also doens’t “feel” right. This might sound a bit far-fetched, but those rights do not describe what is happening correctly. As a devellopper/administrator, you’re not “taking away” things the editors should nor see nor touch, you should just be making something that allows them to change the content, I think that’s a much more professional way of doing things. Mod plugin seems to do that. I wonder if it wouldn’t be cool to make textpattern work that way from the start : in the write tab, you first choose a section, then get displayed a page that is actually rendered according to a form you’ve built in the presentation tab. Also, I don’t seem to be able to find much information concerning that bannister thing. With more than two fields, I meant body and excerpt.

net-carver : the basic idea would be to use javascript then. Though I find that a bit lame, it could definitely be a temporary solution, which I hadn’t thought of. For example, every time a section is selected, the text above the custom fields changes.

hcgtv : again, I’d love to know a bit more of what team textpattern is preparing. Seems I’m missing a source.

net-carver · 2006-06-24 01:50:20

guiguibonbon wrote:

jakob: that moderation plugin is brilliant.

Manfre recently released an updated version of his moderation family of plugins.

I’ve only used the basic mem_moderation for my own plugin and it does, indeed, work very well.

net-carver : the basic idea would be to use javascript then.

That is the impression I get. Using JS to modify the page dom after it has been rendered is probably the only way Inspired can go without resorting to hacks.

Though I find that a bit lame, it could definitely be a temporary solution, which I hadn’t thought of. For example, every time a section is selected, the text above the custom fields changes.

You are not the only one to have expressed an interest in having the custom field labels change on a per-section basis. There is a little discussion here that very briefly touches on this area (so you know that others are hitting this area too!)

I do not know if Inspired’s work on the show/hide admin interface options will include the custom field labels though.

jakob · 2006-06-24 19:54:39

And the difficulty to use more than one language. I found a nice trick for one website, the content is separated by {{lang}}, the first part being english, second italian, etc. Works like a charm with a little plugin that parsers it all. Add a few language specific forms for all the text in the interface, a cookie system, done.

ggbb, is that a plug-in which is generally available? If not, would you care to share your solution? It sounds like a good idea for sites with the same entries in two languages. I can imagine it for the body and excerpt, but how did you solve the title and url?

Last edited by jakob (2006-06-24 19:56:27)

hcgtv · 2006-06-24 20:56:58

guiguibonbon wrote:

hcgtv : again, I’d love to know a bit more of what team textpattern is preparing. Seems I’m missing a source.

Hopefully soon Team Textpattern will enlighten us a bit more :)

guiguibonbon · 2006-06-24 20:57:21

In the particular case, titles were the names of hotels, so no need for seperate titles. It’s all based on the pagination plugin. I thought of releasing a plugin, but I still have to get familiar with that. And as I said, it could probably be aplied to titles and custom fields. URL remains a problem..

net-carver · 2006-06-25 07:48:37

jakob, ggbb,

I am currently looking into this for marios.

Feel free to check out the plugin request thread for details.
I essentially have a plugin here that does the body (and should do the excerpt but I have to test that yet), it also handles URL re-writing so that you can setup language prefs for your browsing via the URL. If the URL element is missing it reverts to the Accept-language part of the browser request to determine which translation to serve.

jakob · 2006-06-26 19:40:17

steve, thanks for the heads-up … this is why I love this forum!! I also like the energy you bring to things – you’re so busy here at the moment :-)

ggbb, thanks for the infos. An interesting idea. I recently tried out the columnize plug-in and was wondering whether it could be repurposed to similar effect – it also parses the body for a particular string.

pieman · 2006-06-28 13:53:05

guiguibonbon wrote:

I guess the whole point of this rather point-less post, is to see if I’m the only one who would like to work with nothing else but textpattern any more, but sometimes just can’t, and feels very frustrated. If it might prove i’m not, perhaps that would soften the frustration, because I’d know that in a few years time, I will be able to use nothing but textpattern, for we will have made it the best-ever-made-by-human-kind-content-management-system.

I’m right with you there :)
Textpattern has been a real blessing to me. I’m no master, but I’m beginning to reach the limits of the type of sites I can make without making it bend a bit more than I’d like.
I can see the wisdom of hcgtv’s cautious words, but I’m also really hoping things like the jmc_events plugin, sub-sections & section-sensitive custom fields will open Txp up to a wider scope of sites some time soon.

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#1 2006-06-22 12:58:05

why I love textpattern

#2 2006-06-22 14:44:15

Re: why I love textpattern

#3 2006-06-22 14:58:40

Re: why I love textpattern

#4 2006-06-22 18:33:26

Re: why I love textpattern

#5 2006-06-23 16:22:06

Re: why I love textpattern

#6 2006-06-24 01:50:20

Re: why I love textpattern

#7 2006-06-24 19:54:39

Re: why I love textpattern

#8 2006-06-24 20:56:58

Re: why I love textpattern

#9 2006-06-24 20:57:21

Re: why I love textpattern

#10 2006-06-25 07:48:37

Re: why I love textpattern

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