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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Some great thoughts in this thread. And thanks for the props on the dev work, Destry; a team effort all round. The fact that I’ve not seen a no-staging-server solution in any CMS that is as elegant as the one in Textpattern makes me proud to be part of this innovative community who keep the spirit of Dean’s creation alive.
The AcivityPub integration looks intriguing. Can’t get my head round how it might work in a Textpattern context specifically (mainly because I haven’t really used the fediverse) so if you would like to engage me via the power of email, please do so and I’ll see if there’s a way we can leverage it – core, plugin, etc.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
wet wrote #335956:
Perhaps this poll fulfils those requirements: dud-poll.inf.tu-dresden.de/txp-maturity/ ← Vote now, please!
Nice idea with the demographics poll :-) Given that the most frequent visitors to the forum (and readers of a thread like this) are long-time Textpattern users, I guess it’s no surprise that the age demographics will almost certainly be “more advanced” [notwithstanding the unsavoury spam I just deleted from the poll]. Still, I’ve no plans to retire any time soon and don’t wish to consider an exit strategy from Textpattern.
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Most of us “established txp users” probably have our particular use cases and client groups, and accordingly have our own preferences concerning important existing and desirable functionality. My own clients are mostly organisations, associations, educational or community-oriented establishments of some kind or other that over time have acquired a fair amount of content. They’re mostly interested in just posting new information in the right place of the site and are happy not to have to design each new page afresh. Every so often, they/we have an idea for some new functionality or something needs presenting in a particular way, and that’s where I come in and can tailor something specific to their needs thanks to Textpattern’s flexible tagging solution. And that is the primary reason I still use Textpattern after all these years: I can make a non-bloated site, made to fit the users’ needs and way of working without having to programme from scratch or bash an existing template into shape, or overloading users with unwanted functionality.
So I am eternally grateful for Textpattern’s continuing development to date, and to the successive devs (and backing teams and plugin authors) who have each shaped, and continue to shape its direction in some way or other.
Given my users patterns of usage, the 2-4 areas that I would most like to see improve in the core are:
- Unlimited custom fields
- Better admin-side customisability
- More freely adaptable custom content types
- Unrestricted categories and/or tagging
1 and 2 are no surprise – after all I do my best to maintain the existing plugins we have to address these. But I can’t wait for those to be handled more elegantly by the core. As far as I can tell Bloke is almost there in the custom fields branch and with the improved Admin UI elements, some of 2 is also addressed.
For 3 (which overlaps with 2 a bit), once sites start to get larger and maybe contain a range of different content types, it becomes harder to handle the sites when they are all mixed together as articles. Sections help of course, but sometimes I would like to free the front-facing website sections from other content such as event entries, tickers, sliders, book details, people profiles or other content that is provided in some kind of directory (building profiles, projects, books, faq entries, knowledgebase or glossary items …). Some of these may have several fields, but many have just a few fields, and most of the write tab remains empty. Some content types are also better listed in a different way on the admin side, e.g. events or ticker entries by date + expiry, sliders or building profiles with their article image, etc.
Both Oleg and Bloke have hinted that unlimited custom fields have the potential to free up content type modelling from our current articles, links, images, files, and that is something I would love to see. Some of the front-end tags – if_first_, if_last_, next/prev, if_different, etc. – would need freeing from their current type restrictions. But the other great thing would to be able to create different custom admin-handling list views and masks for those content types.
4) is mostly about liberating organisational schemes from the restrictions of an arbitrary decision made in the early days of Textpattern. We have workarounds and good plugins for this, but it is something that begins to feature more as soon as sites get a little larger.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Every so often, I come across a task that I think might be too complex for Textpattern and cast around for other options. Mostly I’ve either managed to achieve it using Textpattern or to hook up another system to work together with Textpattern. I’ve not researched other CMS solutions extensively, but if were to be forced to have to find another solution I would probably look at something like Craft CMS or Laravel with Twill as the CMS and Blade for templating. The first has an entry price tag for client use but tailorable admin panels and content types; templating uses Twig. The second can be tailored quite specifically on the admin side to the end users structure and has neat admin-panel handling and in-built multilingual facilities, but front end page routing has to be handled through Laravel and templating using Blade, which for me is a steep learning curve.
Other options might be Kirby as flat file cms or Expression Engine or ProcessWire, but I know too little about them to make informed statements.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
In related thoughts, I just came across Baldur Bjarnason’s post about Gall’s Law.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.
You have to start over with a working simple system.
In my contemplation, Textpattern has started as a “working simple system” per the definition above. OTOH, e.g. from my experience TYPO3 is a complex system that never worked – for it’s users. WP enters the stage of being a complex system at least with the introduction of the Gutenberg editor methinks.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
WP enters the stage of being a complex system at least with the introduction of the Gutenberg editor methinks.
…which is ironic given the relatively easy on-ramp for getting Wordpress up-and-running. Actually making stuff is sometimes a head-scratcher.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
When I needed a CMS 15 years ago (yep, I’m at least 20 y.o.), WP, Joomla, Drupal et al were already there. I have chosen Textpattern because it was small (~500kb), fast and cute. Even if it’s a small niche, I think there will always be people who care. Actually, Greta should sue WP, since an average (non-cached) WP page takes 5 times more resources than txp.
This said, txp is getting fatter with each release. Fortunately, mainly the admin side is concerned, the public one is about as fast as 15 years ago.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
etc wrote #335976:
When I needed a CMS … I have chosen Textpattern because it was small (~500kb), fast and cute. Even if it’s a small niche, I think there will always be people who care.
As Increasingly the web has become a cesspool of bloat, click-bait, and flotsam, I occsionaly revist this website and marvel at the simple beauty of clean design and brilliant writing. An exemplar of Less is More.
I hope there will always be room for the little CMS that is crafted for writers and writing, which Textpattern was born to serve.
…. texted postive
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Hi
Even when i arrived at the 5.1 version of me, i still love Txp and use it in my website project, i only use WP when the client is insisting on usung it.
I can do quite anything with TXP : from simple company website to a marketplace, what i love is looking at activity tab and seeing all that script snnefing to find my wp security holes ;)
I have websites that s been untouched for more than 8 years, i only need to update them when the php version is upgraded by force and the txp version dont support it.
I think there always the need for a CMS like Textpattern, a lot of time there is a big hypes about new stuf but some month later you find it s not that good and feel the old script is better.
Like some said i dont see a need of a lot of improvment UCF is a good thing so, i am not using the theming things i havent take the time the get my head around that thing yet.
Big thanks to the devs for all the good work.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Bloke, regarding ActivityPub and the fediverse, I’ll stew on it and see if I can offer anything more clear, but I doubt it. I’m not trying to create more work for anyone. It’s just an idea in case anyone gets bored in retirement.
In any case, if this is the WP integration I’ve been hearing about, then I’d say it’s a long way from being worth bothering with. That’s not even close to what I was thinking was possible.
Let’s wait out the decade and see what has changed or not.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
wet wrote #335956:
Perhaps this poll fulfils those requirements: dud-poll.inf.tu-dresden.de/txp-maturity/ ← Vote now, please!
The results are in:
Younger community members apparently didn’t get the call to vote.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Destry wrote #335996:
In any case, if this is the WP integration I’ve been hearing about, then I’d say it’s a long way from being worth bothering with.
I think this is the ActivityPub integration that has been in the news lately. According to the WordPress plugin page, it is now running on about 4000 sites.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
wet wrote #336147:
The results are in:
Younger community members apparently didn’t get the call to vote.
I am grateful that there is a large cohort of young turks ….
…. texted postive
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