[contrib] Textpattern Planet

Walker · 2006-08-29 03:18:47

What the most recent finding means is that it is not your server, and it is not DNS, it is either: SimplePie or the RSS feeds you’re trying to grab. One of the two is at fault. We know this because Zeldman’s feed worked both by IP and by Domain (ruling out curl & DNS).

hcgtv · 2006-08-30 20:10:18

Solved the mystery, it was my DNS server settings.

It was taking my server about 12 to 15 seconds to resolve any sites hosted on Textdrive and SimplePie had a timeout of 10 seconds. I changed the order of the DNS servers in my /etc/resolv.conf and all is well now.

I’m still tweaking things but Textpattern Planet is working!

Some of the feeds are displaying in reverse order from Textpattern driven sites, they are the ones with no dates, but I think a new version of SimplePie will fix these as would the new rss coming in 4.0.4.

There is an rss.php file that is better suited for PunBB forum feeds, it’s been tweaked by a few of us and I use it on my forums. You can see the difference at the PHPXref forum: extern.php rss.php

The header links to the Dev blog and FAQ return you to Textpattern’s home page, I guess that’s the way it works when feeding a section?

The feeds update every hour, it takes about 10 seconds to refresh them so if you hit the site and have to wait, well you’re the lucky one ;)

alexandra · 2006-08-30 20:32:51

w00t, Bert you are the man :) way cool you brought this all together!
If you like, you can add the german TXP resource blog too. It´s in german though
http://textpattern.kbbu.de

Some nice styling and Textplanet will look beautiful. Well done!!

hcgtv · 2006-08-30 20:47:30

alexandra wrote:

If you like, you can add the german TXP resource blog too. It´s in german though
http://textpattern.kbbu.de

I think that would be a good candidate for the txplanet.org site, which I intend to model after Textdrive’s planet site. I’m playing with SimplePie’s way of combining feeds, still learning the ropes and testing the speed of it.

Some nice styling and Textplanet will look beautiful. Well done!!

Styling, well I’m open to suggestions, I just kept it simple and used colors from the admin area.

PS. Has anyone made a Textpattern favicon.ico?

Last edited by hcgtv (2006-08-30 20:52:06)

Mary · 2006-08-31 00:42:26

Do you want me to link to it (Textpattern Planet) from the main/forum site yet?

Last edited by Mary (2006-08-31 00:42:45)

hcgtv · 2006-08-31 02:39:36

Mary, I need another day to test it and work out the kinks I’ve found.

Destry · 2006-08-31 10:50:03

Bert, txplanet.net is awesome. Well done. I hope you eventually find the time to do a write-up/case-study of it at your site. We should see (need) more of these feed portals on the web where there are families of sites under a common umbrella. We in STC are playing around with something like this too.

A little while back there was the TxP Subway Map initiative, which was a portal having similar objectives of getting to Txp-related sites. I think there was some neat ideas there visually, but the project seems to have fizzled-out. In retrospect, txplanet is a more effective mental map as it nearly eliminates the need to explore (learn) the map (as would be inherent of the Subway Map); instead, user decision making is immediately (and solely) about what piece of information (from which site) a person wants to read. Just like it should be, effecient and clear.

As for styling, I think it looks fine; nice and clean with good font attributes and spacing. Perfect for what it is, a links portal. If anything, maybe:

the banner could use a little touch of magic, and
perhaps the font representing excerpts of each feed (under each title) could be one measure smaller than the title, and a bit less black…maybe something like #4e4e4e, or there abouts.

Otherwise I would say don’t mess with things too much.

Again, bravo!

Oh, with respect to the favicon. I normally don’t prefer to see animated versions, but this could be a worthy exception…You know the old news theme where there’s a globe with a banner circling it or a plane flying around it, kind of giving the whole “worldly perspective” impression? How about something like that: a globe with orange/yellow/black shades with a capital “T” rotating around it. (“T” representing all things Textpattern, and the globe representing the international community).

Last edited by Destry (2006-08-31 11:10:17)

hcgtv · 2006-08-31 12:26:04

Destry, glad you like it. When I get it all working just right I’ll write something up. Since I hit bumps along the way, it was an excellent learning experience.

I’ll play with the styling, I’m using the Textpattern admin area as a guide, familiarity and all that. I like the favicon.ico idea, I’ll see if I find a planet like icon for now.

net-carver · 2006-08-31 13:02:03

Hello Bert,

many thanks for pulling this together,it’s great to have a one-stop “headlines” page like this. Very useful.

els · 2006-08-31 16:34:05

Thanks for this, Bert. I bookmarked it right away!

hcgtv · 2006-08-31 16:47:44

net-carver & Els, your welcome :)

Mary, it’s ready to go.

Running SimplePie Build 20060829 – this sorts all posts correctly and improves caching.
The site is using SimplePie’s Textpattern plugin with some tweaks.
Set the feeds to refresh every 30 minutes.
Created a cron job that runs every 15 minutes to fetch the page – it takes about 15 seconds to grab the feeds and paint the screen, the cron job should eliminate this wait. <pre>0,15,30,45 * * * * www-data wget -q —spider http://txplanet.net</pre>
The plumbing is done, I’ll continue playing with the styling.

Last edited by hcgtv (2006-08-31 16:50:33)

colak · 2006-08-31 17:38:09

hcgtv, Just saw the page, congrats. That was much harder work than initially anticipated.
Cool results

hcgtv · 2006-08-31 17:52:32

colak, thanks. Yes it was more work than I anticipated but I ended up learning more about curl and SimplePie cause of it.

The combination of Textpattern and SimplePie make for a powerful combination to create simple feed sites that are very easy to maintain.

jakob · 2006-08-31 18:05:15

kudos: looks like a wonderful and useful overview, have bookmarked it too!

Mary · 2006-09-01 01:21:35

Mary, it’s ready to go.

Cool. Thanks Bert.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#46 2006-08-29 03:18:47

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#47 2006-08-30 20:10:18

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#48 2006-08-30 20:32:51

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#49 2006-08-30 20:47:30

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#50 2006-08-31 00:42:26

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#51 2006-08-31 02:39:36

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#52 2006-08-31 10:50:03

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#53 2006-08-31 12:26:04

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#54 2006-08-31 13:02:03

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#55 2006-08-31 16:34:05

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#56 2006-08-31 16:47:44

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#57 2006-08-31 17:38:09

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#58 2006-08-31 17:52:32

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#59 2006-08-31 18:05:15

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

#60 2006-09-01 01:21:35

Re: [contrib] Textpattern Planet

Board footer