[feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

gour · 2013-01-19 11:06:27

While exploring docs/posts about Textpattern I stumbled on the following one

which addresses some points I’m interested to hear what is their current status:

Theme support or how does one change the theme today ? I installed classic theme and now would like to switch to Hive (or how is called) and wonder how to do it?
<textarea/> != text editor – is it possible to use some external editor to edit things and then send them to the database?

There are several helpful comments discussing several issues, but I’m curious about the ‘answer’ for the latest comment stating:

You can’t have static pages, you can’t have sections and/or sub-sections with pages. Yes, there is a way but it’s a work-around…even the official Textpattern site called it that…Esentially Text pattern is a multi-blogging platform and you can create unlimited sections (blogs) and all posts get assigned to a section. In other words, it is nothing but a blogging platform that can also be used as a CMS.

What can be said about the above-one, I mean this part: “you can’t have sections and/or sub-sections with pages”?

colak · 2013-01-19 11:14:04

Theme support or how does one change the theme today ? I installed classic theme and now would like to switch to Hive (or how is called) and wonder how to do it?

All you need is to go to Admin>Preferences>Advanced and change the admin theme there.

What can be said about the above-one, I mean this part: “you can’t have sections and/or sub-sections with pages”?

Sections are used for presentational purposes. If you wish to have a multi-level navigation, the best way is to use categories/sub-categories

gour · 2013-01-19 11:26:20

colak wrote:

All you need is to go to Admin>Preferences>Advanced and change the admin theme there.

Ohh, that’s great. I did, somehow, miss that Admin —> Preferences has ‘Advanced’ tab.

Sections are used for presentational purposes. If you wish to have a multi-level navigation, the best way is to use categories/sub-categories

Thank you. I’ll investigate about categories, but in the issue #2 of TXP magazine, found the same point mentioned by Claire Brione:

The other shortcoming that Claire points out is a lack of a parent–child structure in the Sections panel, akin to what exists for categories. She thinks being able to create section trees would be a significant improvement, instead of just having the mono-level like it is now.

So, it looks it’s something recognized as possibly missing feature and I wonder if there is some info if such feature is planned for the future?

etc · 2013-01-19 13:15:55

colak wrote:

Sections are used for presentational purposes. If you wish to have a multi-level navigation, the best way is to use categories/sub-categories

I’m definitely with Yiannis on this, but Textpattern treatment of sections/categories does not quite adhere to this principles. For example, http://my.txp.site/index.php?c=some_cat will output only the articles of the ~~default~~ frontpage sections. So you have to append &s=some_sec, but this makes inter-sectional categories useless. On the other hand, you don’t always want all articles to ~~belong to the default section (because of frontpage)~~ be on frontpage.

Last edited by etc (2013-01-19 13:40:36)

uli · 2013-01-19 13:33:28

gour wrote:

2 <textarea/> != text editor – is it possible to use some external editor to edit things and then send them to the database?

There are several approaches that fall into that category:

Some plugins implement “abbreviation engines”, I think the most current one is _spf__ prefixed, for running zencoding inside TXP’s admin. Other plugins let you resize the textareas or offer full screen editing (sorry, no names come to mind, hope someone can chime in). Maybe you can combine both of these, I’ve not tried to do so …

… Personally I use It’s all text, a Firefox extension that opens the textarea to be edited in the text editor of your choice and – on saving – transfers the edited text back into the textarea, where it needs the final saving, of course.

The pro solution is cnk_versioning, a plugin that’s a little dodgy to get to work (detailed instructions here), but after that’s done these efforts seem to be absolutely rewarding, regarding all the positive feedback I read everywhere.

gour · 2013-01-19 13:54:14

etc wrote:

For example, http://my.txp.site/index.php?c=some_cat will output only the articles of the ~~default~~ frontpage sections. So you have to append &s=some_sec, but this makes inter-sectional categories useless.

How to “append &s=some_sec” in practice and when one uses cleanURLs?

etc · 2013-01-19 14:11:50

afaik, http://my.txp.site/some_sec/?s=other_sec will output articles from other_sec, even with clean urls.

gour · 2013-01-19 20:38:17

etc wrote:

afaik, http://my.txp.site/some_sec/?s=other_sec will output articles from other_sec, even with clean urls.

But I wonder how will the visitor know to append “?s=other_sec@” to get them, iow. how one achieves this programatically using txp tags?

Otoh, the question still remains if there is a plan to change the core in the future to allow section-trees?

gour · 2013-01-19 20:44:02

uli wrote:

… Personally I use It’s all text, a Firefox extension that opens the textarea to be edited in the text editor of your choice and – on saving – transfers the edited text back into the textarea, where it needs the final saving, of course.

I believe I’m going to try with this one as well in order to launch my Emacs.

The pro solution is cnk_versioning, a plugin that’s a little dodgy to get to work (detailed instructions here), but after that’s done these efforts seem to be absolutely rewarding, regarding all the positive feedback I read everywhere.

I’ll check the whole thread, but I’m worried seeing it’s labelled as ORPHAN?

philwareham · 2013-01-19 21:20:40

Subsections are something that is being considered, but I’ve yet to see a satisfactory or workable solution. I’m also a strong advocate for having at least the option of flat files for form and pages natively built into the system, so hopefully one day it might happen.

gour · 2013-01-19 21:26:31

philwareham wrote:

Subsections are something that is being considered, but I’ve yet to see a satisfactory or workable solution.

Thank you. I cannot ask for more at the moment. ;)

I’m also a strong advocate for having at least the option of flat files for form and pages natively built into the system, so hopefully one day it might happen.

I’m not sure I understand 100% implications of it, but wonder if you consider having something like cnk_versioning plugin as option in future versions of Textpattern so that developer can use his/her own preferred editor, keep files under (D)VCS etc.?

els · 2013-01-19 21:47:28

gour wrote:

How to “append &s=some_sec” in practice and when one uses cleanURLs?

Using the various category tags (like <txp:category />, <txp:category_list />, <txp:category1 /> and <txp:category2 />) you can use the attribute section="yoursection" (and link="1"). This will produce links according your permanent link mode, either /index.php?s=yoursection&c=yourcategory or /yoursection/?c=yourcategory.

etc wrote:

afaik, http://my.txp.site/some_sec/?s=other_sec will output articles from other_sec, even with clean urls.

gour wrote:

But I wonder how will the visitor know to append “?s=other_sec@” to get them, iow. how one achieves this programatically using txp tags?

Something like <txp:section name="yoursection" url="1" />/?s=<txp:section name="yourothersection" />. (Though I have never tested this use of linking to articles from different sections.)

You can also have a look at the plugin gbp_permanent_links. It lets you create all sorts of custom URL schemes (and so ‘fake’ subsections). It will require some effort to figure it out because there is no plugin documentation. But there is a lot of info in the plugin thread, and there are many users who can answer your questions.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2013-01-19 11:06:27

[feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#2 2013-01-19 11:14:04

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#3 2013-01-19 11:26:20

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#4 2013-01-19 13:15:55

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#5 2013-01-19 13:33:28

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#6 2013-01-19 13:54:14

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#7 2013-01-19 14:11:50

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#8 2013-01-19 20:38:17

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#9 2013-01-19 20:44:02

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#10 2013-01-19 21:20:40

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#11 2013-01-19 21:26:31

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

#12 2013-01-19 21:47:28

Re: [feedback] What's wrong with Textpattern (~7 years later)

Board footer