Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

hcgtv · 2006-05-22 19:23:31

When I began down the dynamic site creation road, I looked at systems with all the bells and whistles.

6 years later, I’ve settled on a minimalist attitude. What I’ve found is that the more lines of code a project has, the harder it is to secure and to tweak to you liking.

Textpattern, by far, gives you the most bang per lines of code. PunBB travels along similar lines, tight code base and super fast rendering.

On to the thread topic: Textpattern just became stable in November of 2005, that may account for it not being talked about that much.

NyteOwl · 2006-05-22 19:26:11

Indeed, Textpattern is a CMS. What most people that go looking for blogging engines don’t realize is that a blogging apps is just a specialized CMS. This also seems to extend to those that write about them as well, so they tend to see it as an “either or” thing where as it’s much more fluid than that.

maniqui · 2006-05-22 20:50:05

Textpattern isn’t the rock-star’s best kept secret.

Textpattern lives in a valley inside a mountain in Nepal or Tibet or maybe Japan. It’s hard to reach there.
Textpattern is a bullseye. But you have to point the arrow to the center of your heart.
Textpattern is music. You can hear it or you can listen to it.
Textpattern is zen. You have to find it out yourself.

Sorry for this non-sence-and-desvirtuating-divaguing non-thought.

First time I read about TXP was in 2004, in a comment by Justin French in this article about CMS by Jeffrey Veen.

Mary · 2006-05-22 21:04:43

Will I be able to use the same one for both programs?

Yes.

What I really want is when I create a new article it creates a thread in vBulletin so that all comments etc are managed by vBulletin. An add on for this already exists for WordPress that does this. If it existed for TextPattern this would be a no brainer decision.

A plugin. One doesn’t already exist, though.

florida_guy · 2006-05-22 22:36:56

Thanks very much for your response. Your views will help me make the right decision for me.

I consider Text Pattern to be a CMS but the writer of the article I was referred to called it a Content Publishing system.

I have to be careful talking about punBB vs vBulletin. I would like to be convinced to go with punBB because I really am a purist about clean markup and in that regard punBB has it all over vBulletin. However, I have been an active member on a vBulletin forum and occasionaly member on several others and I have to say for the user experience my brief experience with pubBB on this forum has made it clear that vBulletin offers much more. I want my users to see my forum where they will come and stay for the fun of it. I have run into frustration here trying to research information on TextPattern but I come back becuase there is a monopoly on the information.

Quoting is difficult to break up into smaller chunks. No WYSIWYG editor. No private messages. Other minor annoyances (once you are used to vBulletin).

I really am ready to listen to anyone who thinks that punBB will be competitive for my users.

I am willing to go with a less feature rich CMS like TextPattern to get standards compliant code because I am the one who will do without. However, my site visitors are not likely to care about how clean the code is when they can’t send a private message or easily bold a word in their message.

I suspect that it would be easier to my sites look and feel with punBB than vBulletin. But once again, that is my pain, not my visitors.

When I was talking about easy I meant getting vBulletin to become the comments forum for my site.

jstubbs wrote:

TXP is a CMS. Unless you think a CMS is something else. Content management system. TXP is that, and much more. Its not a blogging engine at all, I have no idea why people think it is. For a blog, use WordPress.

I use TXP and PunBB on a few sites, and they work great together. Whats the big deal about vBulletin anyway. if you want a forum punBB does all that, and there is only two templates to edit to make your TXP site match with your overall design. Is that not easy enough? I think so.

florida_guy · 2006-05-22 22:40:30

I prefer less to more on my side. punBB seems like a little too little for my visitors though.

Thanks for the info about TextPattern first being stable last November. I had no idea it was that new. That would explain a lot.

hcgtv wrote:

…6 years later, I’ve settled on a minimalist attitude. What I’ve found is that the more lines of code a project has, the harder it is to secure and to tweak to you liking.
…
On to the thread topic: Textpattern just became stable in November of 2005, that may account for it not being talked about that much.

florida_guy · 2006-05-22 22:44:11

You remind me of a friend of mine that I made on another forum that I play cards with when I go home for the holidays. :-)

maniqui wrote:

Textpattern isn’t the rock-star’s best kept secret.

Textpattern lives in a valley inside a mountain in Nepal or Tibet or maybe Japan. It’s hard to reach there.
Textpattern is a bullseye. But you have to point the arrow to the center of your heart.
Textpattern is music. You can hear it or you can listen to it.
Textpattern is zen. You have to find it out yourself.

Sorry for this non-sence-and-desvirtuating-divaguing non-thought.

First time I read about TXP was in 2004, in a comment by Justin French in this article about CMS by Jeffrey Veen.

florida_guy · 2006-05-22 22:45:12

Thanks for the info Mary.

Mary wrote:

bq. Will I be able to use the same one for both programs?

Yes.

…

A plugin. One doesn’t already exist, though.

NyteOwl · 2006-05-22 23:04:15

Another svelte forum that is afaik standards compliant is SMF and it offers more of the functions you are looking for.

florida_guy · 2006-05-22 23:23:46

Thanks for the info. I just took a quick look and the code is full of tables within tables.

NyteOwl wrote:

Another svelte forum that is afaik standards compliant is SMF and it offers more of the functions you are looking for.

hcgtv · 2006-05-22 23:47:45

florida_guy wrote:

Quoting is difficult to break up into smaller chunks. No WYSIWYG editor. No private messages. Other minor annoyances (once you are used to vBulletin).

Quoting on this forum takes some getting used to since it’s Textile based. But even using bbcode, a user would need to practice a bit to get the hang of things, I know I did at first.

WYSIWYG has and is still being debated, the chances of it being a core function are slim. Now that’s not to say that someone might not write an extension one day.

Check out this Private messages plugin.

Click hcgtv in my sig to see Pun used for commenting, so we’re heading in the same direction ;)

Destry · 2006-05-23 00:44:37

Just so people understand me. My viewpoint of where TxP sits in the content management gene pool isn’t so black and white as either being a CMS or a blog engine. (For those who actually read the article and understood that, I thank you.)

TxP is certainly NOT a real CMS, as measured in industry. When one enlightens themself with books like…

The Content Management Bible (816 pp.)
Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery (352 pp.)
Managing Enterprise Content (592 p.)

…to name a few, and understand that real CMS models are more than just a few php files and an open-source database, then you will know where I’m coming from.

I’ve read all those books, front to back, had to in my graduate work. Bob Boiko, the author of the “bible,” is a professor at the University I attended.

See, the word “system” is the confusing part to most people who shoot from the hip (or the lip). To the casual observer who thinks “yeah, Txp moves content around, therefore it’s a content management system. Duh!” In actuality it’s not that simplistic. The word system doesn’t mean the machine, per se, but the whole paradigm…the whole IT portfolio: data sources, people, protocols, authoring, XML schemas and conversions, databases (many, not one), servers (many, not one), and multiple kinds of output (print, Web, multimedia, etc.).

Hence why I prefer to call TxP just a content publishing system, and a very good one.

In any case, believe what you like (as I do), I have no interest in arguing your points. Hardly. But again, just so you know where I’m coming from.

EDIT: lower-case “s” on publishing system which is my go-the-middle-road way.

Last edited by Destry (2006-05-23 00:48:17)

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#13 2006-05-22 19:23:31

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#14 2006-05-22 19:26:11

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#15 2006-05-22 20:50:05

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#16 2006-05-22 21:04:43

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#17 2006-05-22 22:36:56

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#18 2006-05-22 22:40:30

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#19 2006-05-22 22:44:11

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#20 2006-05-22 22:45:12

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#21 2006-05-22 23:04:15

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#22 2006-05-22 23:23:46

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#23 2006-05-22 23:47:45

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

#24 2006-05-23 00:44:37

Re: Why haven't I heard of TextPattern?

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