is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

sidekarsten · 2011-10-31 20:05:51

Hey Guys,

the answer to the following is probably no, but still:

Is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern. I like making pages in Textpattern, but I can imagine that it will be a bit more difficult for people who do not have experience with webprogramming. Editors like Weebly let you create websites very intuitively, you can drag/drop images, you can style text easily with buttons…

In Textpattern, you need to separately upload images, use tags in your articles to display them, use Textile to make words bold or italic… for some users this will be a bit difficult I can assume, compared with the ease of alternatives like Weebly.

I’m currently planning a new website project for which I would like to make websites that can be easily updated by people who do not have any experience in making websites. It would therefore be much easier for them if they could use a more user friendly editor. A very simple/basic front/editor that can be used by laymen to post updates in a Textpattern based website would be great for this, does anyone know if something like that exists or have any suggestions that would seem relevant in this respect?

I except the answer to be no, and to just make sure I properly train my users in using Textile, but still, if you have any other suggestions, I’d love to hear about them!

Last edited by sidekarsten (2011-10-31 20:06:47)

Bloke · 2011-10-31 21:37:00

sidekarsten wrote:

the answer to the following is probably no

Never underestimate the power of Textpattern :-)

Is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

No.

But you can make one. Two ways spring to mind if your users really are averse to typing anything other than content. Firstly is to go completely front-end on them; wiki-style. Set up a dedicated Section and on that Page template, you can put the tags and markup necessary to do the following:

Detect if the person is logged in or not, and if not offer a login form. cbe_frontauth, rvm_privileged or the old chestnut ign_password_protect will allow you to do this.
Inside your if-logged-in container you can put input boxes to allow users to enter content. Uploading images via drag n drop can be done via a number of jQuery plugins or things like Uploadify can upload multiple images with a bit of back-end programming. It does need stitching into the database fabric a bit, but I know a few people who have done it very successfully.
Sending the contents of input boxes to Txp for storage on submit is next. Plugins that help with this usually start with mem_ (mem_article_edit, mem_form, etc — check Manfre’s BitBucket site for the latest versions). You can also use smd_query here if you know SQL.
I’m sure there are jQuery plugins / tools that allow WYSIWYG editing of textareas but I can’t advise on those as I’ve never used any.

A second method is to do something similar but offer them dashboard(s) on the admin-side. It’s the same basic flow / idea as in steps 2 and 3 above, but Txp’s login mechanism takes care of logging in (the same way it does if you used rvm_privileged in step 1). You control who can see the dashboards by altering privs and/or creating roles for various types of user. smd_user_manager can do this easily. Another of my plugins, smd_tabber, can help you create new tabs to house your dashboards and give you a leg-up in setting up Page templates for them. Icing on the cake is if you then apply (or create) an admin-side theme to spruce up the yellow.

I’m sure others can chime in with their experiences (e.g. using bot_write_tab_customise to layout the Write tab differently and an image upload plugin to help with the image side of things) but those are the basic steps I’d go through if you want total control. The approach is up to you: whichever makes sense for your users.

If it sounds like hard work, it is. But the end result is Txp functionality with a custom workflow tuned to your userbase. Hope some of that helps.

Last edited by Bloke (2011-10-31 21:39:27)

Algaris · 2011-11-01 08:30:00

If you’re thinking of going down the WYSIWYG editor route I can recommend hak_tiny_mce. I’ve used it for projects in the past where I won’t be responsible for updating the website.

It is very friendly and allows for full customisation of the toolbars so you can add the features you think will be most needed. The insert image button also integrates with Textpattern allowing you to insert any image you’ve uploaded via the Images tab.

tiny_mce also allows you to paste content from Word into the editor which can be useful but it will keep all the styles of the document it came from. This can be changed when you configure the toolbars.

http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=13089

Last edited by Algaris (2011-11-01 08:32:42)

Algaris · 2011-11-01 08:41:29

Bloke wrote:

3. Sending the contents of input boxes to Txp for storage on submit is next. Plugins that help with this usually start with mem_ (mem_article_edit, mem_form, etc — check Manfre’s BitBucket site for the latest versions). You can also use smd_query here if you know SQL.

I asked something similar to this a while ago. Maybe you might find something in my thread useful?

http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?pid=226369#p226369

Last edited by Algaris (2011-11-01 08:41:58)

aslsw66 · 2011-11-01 09:28:00

I essentially have implemented (but still tweaking) something along the lines of Blokes first option:

users log in at the front-end using ign_password_protect,
users with high enough privileges get a link to a dashboard,
using smd_query, the dashboard shows them the latest status of articles etc,
lots of mem_simple_form and mem_public_article to create forms for these users to create and update articles. smd_query allows them to delete articles.

The advantages (for me) of this approach are:

you can start with a clean sheet and design the user interface exactly how you want, particularly for simple needs that are used the most,
you can completely lock down functionality. If you don’t create it, the user doesn’t see it and they therefore can’t stuff it up,

I’m sure you would still get these advantages if you used Bloke’s second option.

The disadvantages are:

you have to think of all of the functionality yourself, and then how to create it,
by using lots of plugins rather than the core admin functionality, there is always the risk that things will break as new versions of Textpattern are released. This risk is much less if you stick top core functionality.

In the end, I’ve gone too far down my own particular route to backtrack, but I’m happy with what I’ve achieved and I’ve also learnt a lot about Textpattern, PHP, database queries etc.

jakob · 2011-11-01 14:32:07

Anura, I’d be interested in seeing what you came up with. Can you show us any screenshots of your setup? As you know I did something similar to the first option too a while back but it is best tailored to a specific workflow and it was quite an involved job.

In most other cases, hak_tiny_mce to simplify text entry in combination with bot_wtc to remove unneeded write tab items and selectively show custom fields on a per-section basis and glz_custom_fields (with custom select drop-downs) makes a pretty usable interface for most people.

aslsw66 · 2011-11-01 16:34:23

Jakob, it was that thread you started that got me thinking about this.

In my case, I want to carefully restrict what the owners of the site can actually do mainly and at the same time build the interface that works best for them – because they are techno-phobes, with a high acceptance threshold. I have seen them reject really good technology in the past mainly because they just don’t know how to get the best from it.

I will try to post some screenshots tonight just to give enough of an idea of how it hangs together. I think I need to tidy up some CSS first.

aslsw66 · 2011-11-01 23:17:59

OK, here’s some shots of what I have managed so far. In case you’re wondering, this is for the members of a volunteer fire brigade – I’m trying to drag us onto the web instead of simply sending emails to distribute information.

Logging in

Everyone has to log in to the site. As people have to go through an ‘offline’ membership process first, I already know who each member is – there’s no need to allow self registration.

The login form uses ign_password_protect.

Logged in users

All members initially log into the same homepage. Officers with the right privileges have an additional item in the menu called “organiser”.

I have created a special user called “admin” which isn’t displayed in any of the lists of members. This is the same user for the back-end, so that someone (ie. me!) can always have super-rights to the site.

Organiser

The Organiser is my form of a dashboard, just showing people the current status of the site. As this is more a community site, it’s not important that users only see their own articles.

The Organiser is a single section to make it easier to completely separate from the front-end, with parameters passed in through the URL to call up specific forms.

Lots of smd_query going on here to produce this.

Adding a new member

New members can be added using mem_self_register.

List of members

The list of members is generated using smd_query. You can:

pass the member’s details to a zem_contact_reborn form to send them an email,
make them inactive using smd_query to change their privileges (I deliberately don’t allow members to be deleted), or
edit their details by passing the user id to a mem_simple_form form. Members can also edit their own details from the front-end.

Privileges are linked to positions (you can see the entry in the dashboard) so that we can specify different forms of access for different positions. The member’s own privileges are updated when you assign them to a position.

Alerts

An alert is a category of article. An alert is not like a normal article, as all I want is the title to appear in a red box on the homepage ie. there is nothing else to read.

This is handled through mem_public_article, with the start and end dates entered in a custom field. I took this approach because it seems to make more sense for the posted and expiry date to relate to the article itself rather than to the content of the article.

jQuery datepicker makes it easier to select the dates, and smd_query pulls the right articles to display on the homepage (if any) based on the dates.

Other stuff

I have article creation working so far for ‘news’ – with the ability to modify and delete articles. But it only uses textile formatting and now I’m thinking about adding in a WYSIWYG editor if possible.

The next issues are:

commenting. I have tested rah_comment_form which works with ign_users, but I need to modify it as member’s firstname and surnames are stored in separate fields and I would like comments to display both.
go back over all my uses of smd_query to make sure I have everything filtered (my ears ring with Bloke’s admonishments everytime I see that code),
allowing officers to post details of incidents, including lattitude and longitude. The front-end will then display a map of all the incidents,
modifying zem_contact_reborn to allow for distributing emails to lists of members using the ‘bcc’ header (this is to protect people’s email addresses). I’ve tested this but I really need to clean up my coding,
add file upload capabilities to build a library of training materials etc,
crewing rosters. It’s half done, but now I need to figure out I can pass a list of dates using JSON to the jQuery datepicker so that periods that already have a crew assigned are blocked out,
creating my own ‘registration’ plugin so that members can nominate for training and other events, and officers can process the nominations. That is a long way off for now,
building some sort of mobile interface so that I can post from my phone (mobile phone is essential piece of communications kit these days).

Feel free to point out any glaring mistakes with this approach. As I say, it works for me – the advantage and disadvantage is that everything is created by hand. The starting point was Jakob’s post about the conference site but I knew my skills weren’t in the same league so reduced the functionality down to what I need and can handle. And as you can see, Bloke’s fingerprints are everywhere with smd_query, smd_if, smd_multi_choice, smd_xml and even smd_wrap.

maruchan · 2011-11-01 23:40:58

Amazing work with Textpattern, Anura! Thank you for sharing. It’s stuff like this that makes this community so impressive. Wouldn’t this make a great series of articles at TXP Tips :-D

jstubbs · 2011-11-02 01:26:47

maruchan wrote:

Amazing work with Textpattern, Anura! Thank you for sharing. It’s stuff like this that makes this community so impressive. Wouldn’t this make a great series of articles at TXP Tips :-D

Yes indeed. Great job. TXP Tips please?!!

jakob · 2011-11-02 07:04:34

Yes, impressive work. Wonderful to see how txp is being turned into such different tools with their own specifics. Thanks for providing so much background detail too and how you plan to continue. They sound like great ideas. Some of what you say tallies with my experience: if you want to customize to this extent, you have to trap all the edge cases, user management and bad user input yourself.

One thing I hadn’t tried when I did the conference site was mem_public_article (it came out after I’d already got the smd_query/mem_simple_article combo working) – is that easier to use? I vaguely remember that there was an undocumented way of populating the form so you can use that to edit forms too.

———

With the help of smd_tabber and what you describe, there is potentially a way of creating custom edit panes for certain content via the normal txp back-end. I’ve used smd_tabber + smd_bio in combination to create an edit dashboard pane and smd_tabber + smd_query to create a list page for a custom database but I’ve not yet had the time or opportunity to create custom edit and list panes that could replace the article and write tabs. That could potentially be an interesting and instructive exercise for more tailored half-way house solutions, e.g. based on the txp admin area – obviating the need for custom user-management – but with much more customized list and ‘article’ entry panes than is currently possible with bot_wtc.

aslsw66 · 2011-11-02 09:39:04

I too started off with smd_query and mem_simple_form for creating articles, because I hit some snag (probably of my own making with mem_public_article. But with a bit of experience with reading plugin code, I figure it out and it’s a lot easier. mem_simple_form is great as well, as I use some custom tables to hold other information as well.

I ‘get’ the fact that smd_tabber, smd_bio, some of those admin plugins plus a custom theme can probably achieve the same things. In fact, about once a week I get tempted to pull everything apart and try that approach but then I worry about my ability to create the exact user experience I want – I figure I should leave the stuff that works and concentrate on the stuff that is needed.

For me, smd_query and mem_form are fantastic, as they have allowed me to extend beyond an article-based content system to creating any sort of content in new tables and add, modify, delete and delete as I need to.

Last edited by aslsw66 (2011-11-03 16:24:00)

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#1 2011-10-31 20:05:51

is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#2 2011-10-31 21:37:00

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#3 2011-11-01 08:30:00

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#4 2011-11-01 08:41:29

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#5 2011-11-01 09:28:00

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#6 2011-11-01 14:32:07

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#7 2011-11-01 16:34:23

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#8 2011-11-01 23:17:59

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#9 2011-11-01 23:40:58

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#10 2011-11-02 01:26:47

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#11 2011-11-02 07:04:34

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

#12 2011-11-02 09:39:04

Re: is there a more user friendly front for Textpattern

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