Is the development of Textpattern at the end?

GugUser · 2014-09-04 22:37:17

I like Textpattern, it is the system that I was looking for. Thanks for all that work!

But, is it currently responsible to install Textpattern for new sites? I’m asking and doubting because for a long time I saw little presence and rare activity of the developers.

On May 15, I read in the blog of a previously enthusiastic Textpattern user the article in German Die CMS-Landschaft im Jahr 2014 (The CMS landscape in 2014) at the end his opinion about Textpattern:

Everything has its time. Textpattern is still a okayes blog system for lovers, and for one or the other smaller site it does its job. But the ravages of time does not stop, and Textpattern has not evolved since years. Rest in peace!

Is this conclusion, “rest in peace”, exaggerated or even false?

I don’t know. I would not agree. I hope that isn’t so.

But I remember what Bloke wrote on July 2 and nothing happened after that:

But yes, a new release is very necessary to address some of the compatibility issues and also to fix the glaring problems as detailed in r5682 and r5683. It just needs someone who knows what they’re doing (i.e. not me) to press the right buttons to generate a new release.

Who is this someone who could “press the right buttons”? Is this someone ever here yet? Or are we actually at the end with Textpattern?

What says us the The Textpattern Weblog? The last entry dating from Octobre 4, 2013 is “Textpattern CMS 4.5.5 released”.

And the “Most Popular Entries” are: 28 Nov 08 (Textpattern 4.0.7), 04 Nov 10 (Textpattern 4.3.0 released), 01 Jul 07 (Textpattern 4.0.5 released), 10 Jan 06 (Ask-A-Dev), 05 Jul 10 (The road to Textpattern 5).

I hope that the developers let us know if they are still working on the project and what we can expect.

What do you mean?

Last edited by GugUser (2014-09-05 01:25:54)

michaelkpate · 2014-09-04 23:33:40

It is just a little over a decade that I decided that Movable Type wasn’t going to be the answer for me.

In the past few weeks, I’ve looked at 3 “modern” CMS alternatives: Bolt, Grav, and Pagekit. In each case, I was thoroughly unimpressed with each

I still use WordPress for some things – if I just want a blog, I can go find a snazzy template, and get it up and running quickly. The problem is, that when it comes to getting something just like I want it – sometimes I can but usually I have to settle for close enough.

Textpattern, on the other hand, you have complete control of but you also have to put in a bit more effort at the beginning to get what you want. At this point, I think you can largely do anything you like but it is the Administrative Interface that has lagged. (That said, I always choose Classic because I have never found an alternative that I like better).

Personally, I would welcome more communication from the developers but I think things are infinitely better than they were 8 years ago or 7 years ago or 6 years ago.

GugUser · 2014-09-05 01:32:55

michaelkpate wrote #283484:

Textpattern, on the other hand, you have complete control of (…)

That’s was I like, I like the txp-tags, Textile etc.

(…) but it is the Administrative Interface that has lagged.

This is not so important for me.

(That said, I always choose Classic because I have never found an alternative that I like better).

I prefer Remora, but that’s not so important to me to decide for or against a CMS.

Personally, I would welcome more communication from the developers (…)

That’s the reason for my post.

Last edited by GugUser (2014-09-05 01:34:33)

bici · 2014-09-05 02:11:35

an update on the state of Textpattern 5.0 generally would be nice

wet · 2014-09-05 05:37:19

GugUser wrote #283483:

Who is this someone who could “press the right buttons”? Is this someone ever here yet?

For several of the past releases I was the one who pushed the buttons, and I am still here.

Admittedly, my presence has been reduced for several month due to client work which did not involve anything Textpatternish.

I hope that the developers let us know if they are still working on the project and what we can expect.

Speaking for myself: I have no intentions to drop Textpattern as my CMS of choice.

I assume that everyone with commit rights to the code will happily add useful contributions, be it either own work or patches from the community. Alas, third-party pull requests or other community contributions are rare besides those submitted by the language file translators.

Bloke · 2014-09-05 08:02:14

GugUser wrote #283483:

I hope that the developers let us know if they are still working on the project and what we can expect.

Despite my apparent lack of public commits to the project, I am beavering away in the background (just not as fast as I hoped: damn life/health getting in the way) on unlimited custom fields, a.k.a. the meta store. I thought I had it in a releasable state a few months ago, but hit a minor hump which I’ve now all but solved. I have a few stray ends to tie up (mainly to do with the language files) before I can actually show it to someone.

Instead of initially releasing it as a patch to the dev branch, I’m considering forking the codebase on Github and posting my endevaours there. In fact I might do that before it’s in a state I’d call “ready” so any other PHP developers can chip in. There may be a few things I’ve missed. I’d love Txp to move there lock stock in the very near future as it’ll make my life sooooo much easier.

While my work is experimental, it works well and seems to scale. I’m quite excited because I don’t think any other CMS has this kind of feature built in with such a small data footprint. Many have had a stab and fallen short, imo. As soon as I have something usable I’ll post it up and seek help to fold in the next steps: a customisable Write panel, and the beefing up of the public tags to support the new database design.

The code will need refactoring yet as it’s not following the PSR-2 design pattern, mainly because the various panels don’t yet follow it. Hopefully someone else can do that bit as and when each panel is refactored.

I apologise for my lack of communication lately. My new day job has taken some getting used to, and since it’s PHP/MySQL-based it wipes me out by the evening and I’ve not been coding as much “for fun” as I used to. Plus client work and musical obligations have been sapping my time. Just need to rebalance things a little.

In summary, don’t give up. I’m not!

colak · 2014-09-05 08:28:08

Bloke wrote #283497:

In summary, don’t give up. I’m not!

Hear Hear!!

bici · 2014-09-05 18:50:02

Thanks for taking time out from a busy schedule to post the update. most appreciated! and … Hear! Hear! indeed!

mrdale · 2014-09-05 19:09:35

You’re awesome stef. Thanks for all your hard work.

I’m curious about Jukka, where you been you curmudgeon? I miss you smacking down my naive ideas.

GugUser · 2014-09-05 23:43:20

Thanks wet and Bloke for your answers.

And thanks Bloke for your detailed explanation and your tireless work. We can hope.

mrdale wrote #283513:

I’m curious about Jukka, where you been you curmudgeon? I miss you smacking down my naive ideas.

Yes, I also. ;-)

JimJoe · 2014-09-06 01:03:23

I have tried around 10-20 bogs, cms, html, etc.

Only textpattern lets me do what I want. The rest’s claims fall short.

philwareham · 2014-09-06 12:59:40

I’m also still alive. I’ve been away from web stuff in general for the last couple of months or so, not just Textpattern. It’s a long story that I won’t go into here.

I’ve committed a few updates to Textpattern’s projects recently and have just forked the GitHub main project to continue work on admin area UI/layout improvements, so please be patient and I’ll ease back into the open source contributions.

I’d really like to see the Google Code project snipped and restarted on GitHub with proper branches, but I can’t do that myself, which is annoying.

Also, I need to know where Jukka is too!

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#1 2014-09-04 22:37:17