TXP Status?

dla · 2007-12-24 12:08:39

Before I switch and/or waste my time, honestly, is textpattern still in active development? I heard that the lead developer has left to work for wordpress, significant releases are very, very far between, and the developers are more interested in paid projects and compensation.

I’m very interested in using TXP, but hearing all of this from current and former die heart user has made me a little hesitant. The fact that, compared to MT, EE, and WP, this forum seem all but dead has me nervous as well.

I would appreciate a honest, non-bias answer please.

Last edited by dla (2007-12-24 13:01:44)

mapu · 2007-12-24 12:14:42

First of all: it’s TXP not TXT :)

I think this is a good post why TXP is still worth a try!

I tried and seriously used other CMS like EE, MT and WP, but came back to TXP.

Dragondz · 2007-12-24 12:14:52

Hi dla last release (4.0.5) commes 6 month ago and the new one are near to release, those release are improvment of txp, but a major release (called crockery) is still on development.

Txp work fine like that, no major bugs or other security in this release, a hunderds of website work fine with it, and I use it regularly in business website in my job!

Then definitely: txp is up!

dla · 2007-12-24 12:33:08

Thanks for the replies. I’ve paid for and have been using EE, and I’m really not interested in WP or MT. I’ve always wanted to switch, but I’ve aways been hesitant because of the aforementioned reason.

Is there a feature list for the next major release?

net-carver · 2007-12-24 13:10:42

Hello dla,

welcome to the forums and thanks for posting a pretty candid question.

I would appreciate a honest, non-bias answer please.

Will try :-)

The fact that, compared to MT, EE, and WP, this forum seem all but dead has me nervous as well.

Regarding the activity on the forum, I can only say that it does seem a bit slow at times but it is very friendly and helpful. Virtually every post I track ends up in a positive outcome for the initial poster.

Before I switch and/or waste my time, honestly, is textpattern still in active development? I heard that the lead developer has left to work for wordpress, significant releases are very, very far between…

What are your requirements for an acceptable CMS? I mean, what are the must-have features and/or other attributes that would help you narrow down the field to a few candidate CMSs? Perhaps that would be a more useful way to approach this.

I also would like to ask what you mean by active development? How frequent a release is frequent enough — or is it more a matter of quality and usability? How do you trade the two against each other? This seems to be a really important issue to you so please give us some feedback so we can try to accurately answer you.

For the record, you can take a look at the SVN repository here to see if things are proceeding as you might like.

…and the developers are more interested in paid projects and compensation.

BTW, I am looking for someone to work for me for free on some programming projects, maybe 20 hours or so a week. Will you do it? Get in contact via my website if you can. If not, why not? Don’t let any lack of programming experience put you off — I can train you first!

The above is, of course, false; meant only to illustrate a point: that perhaps people like us have some interest in paid work too. Your time is obviously precious to you, so I’m guessing that you would charge others for it (but I may have that wrong.)

Everyone needs to provide for themselves and their families (well, almost everyone) and as the Txp development team are all volunteers and as there is no billionaire sponsor, I think it’s only right to respect their right to provide for themselves and family outside of the Txp field (even to its exclusion at times.)

Basicaly Textpattern seems to me to be a work of love — not the work of hired-hands.

This might result in some frustrating waits for certain features but it usually means that once a feature is adopted there is commitment to provide it in a lightweight and robust way — and to make ensure it works.

Is there a feature list for the next major release?

As far as I know, no.

I hope I have been honest in my questions and answers above.

Edit: corrected svn link.

Last edited by net-carver (2007-12-24 16:16:45)

Gocom · 2007-12-24 13:19:01

Textpattern is really good and what comes to the future is thing that only gods know (god = main developers). Yes, the old main developer left the building, but it’s ages ago and that have almost no efect what is up today.

And that the main developer left the and ran under the wings of WP, doesn’t tell anythin’ about Textpattern, because it involved cash, money, potatoes and lot of goods. Cat, dog, children etc. need food you know, and TXP is free software that doesn’t do miljons of dollars in a month as WordPress basically does. And when Alex get offer, it was time to go for it. Today we have good team that works with development; Mary, Ruud, Robert and Sencer. They do great job and I will definetly cheer for them in future.

And ofcorse we have a lot of really active plugin/patch developers that have volunteered to help the progress by publishing code, fixes, plugins, snippets and helping the desperate people in here at the forums.

this forum seem all but dead has me nervous as well.

Forum is lively and wonderful, because the community is strong and helpful. Most of these post are conserding about “how to build a site” and “how to use plugins”. And we all basic creatures down here try to help.

Is there a feature list for the next major release?

Do you mean crockery or 4.0.6? Because every version includes something new to play with. But some links as you asked:

But no real official really often updated list is out here at the world of wonderful web.

Cheers!

iblastoff · 2007-12-24 14:53:32

in comparison to EE and WP, yes TXP has a smaller community.

how did you come to the conclusion that this forum is ‘all but dead’? i also post on the EE free core support forums and that place is much more vacant. in the time i’ve been using EE (about 6+ months), the releases jumped from 1.6 to 1.61. of course, in the same time WP has probably jumped 10 new versions because they just like to pump out a new release every month.

as for developers interested in money, that seems to imply that you don’t think WP or EE developers have similar intentions. i mean you’re already paying for EE. WP also has ‘enterprise paid support’ along with several corporated businesses alongside (automattic et all) quite sure none of the WP developers even hang out on their forums.

on the other hand, you will see all of the current txp developers mary, ruud, wet and occasionally sencer pop in and out of the forums all of the time. alex shiels was at one time the lead developer of TXP but he understandably realised a need to feed his family and thus went for a paying job at automattic. none of the TXP developers make any money doing what they do here. the reality is they all have their ‘real’ jobs and volunteer a lot of their spare time towards this project for little to no monetary gain. there is no paid, ‘smiley-faced lisa’ support here ala the EE forums and MUCH less poo-flinging ala the WP forums.

though this is probably the closest you’re going to get to a wishlist/feature set/roadmap, TXP follows the same path as EE on this front. they both simply don’t use them. some people demand one and others just don’t mind. no way to please everyone.

anyway in hopes of not appearing too bias, here are some issues i find with TXP:

because its completely open source with no corporate backing whatsoever, its just the nature of OS projects to see developers, plugin writers, and volunteers come and go. with all the benefits of open source, it of course has its downsides. some great plugins written by volunteers may fall to the wayside. some may be picked up by others, some may not. there is no guaranteed support for anything. you will occasionally find a potentially useful plugin abandoned by its author that may not work anymore with newer versions of TXP.

any news/development/new happenings about TXP are VERY forum-centric. that is, unless you pay attention to these forums you will probably not know whats going on. the developers weblog is rarely updated (although to be fair, actual code development is being written ALL of the time). i know some of the developers like ruud have said themselves they just don’t enjoy writing blog entries.

XML-RPC support seems to be extremely lacking. i assume the reason for this is that the developer who wrote it is no longer active in the community and no one has had a chance to pick it up. i personally have no use for XML-RPC but if thats a concern for you then theres a heads up.

TXP documentation is a little wonky at best. although a lot of work has been done to have the wiki/textbook as we see it today, when i first came upon the textbook, it was extremely daunting. for the most part its functional but here and there you’d find outdated articles, links that may not work anymore, etc etc which could lead to some unhealthy hair pulling. i signed up to these forums over a year and a half ago but didn’t really start using TXP until much later. this was simply because i just had no idea how to use TXP and couldn’t find a clear and concise tutorial for a newcomer. i simply decided to stick with it and i’m glad i did. theres a fancy shmancy book available but of course you have to buy it.

although i may be shot for saying this, i personally don’t know whether crockery (which is going to be the next major release aka TXP 4.1, a separate branch from the current TXP 4.0.x series) is ever going to come into production-ready status. its been in experimental development for quite a while now. it would finally bring native subsections (ie. http://www.somesite.com/section/subsection/) to TXP. this seems to be a feature commonly requested around these parts. currently, in order for people to emulate subsections, they require a little trickery using sections+categories instead. that being said, some more ‘modern’ cms’s like typolight (who won the ‘most promising cms’ award from packt) don’t even have sections or subsections at all. depends on your needs i suppose. although with recent plugins like cnk_section_tree, with a little more development we may actually have them available soon.

not that i’ve been trying to escape TXP, but i’ve tried out tons of cms’es from blogcentrified WP to propietary EE to newcomers like Typolight to other open source projects ala CMS Made Simple, Symphony, and projects that have completely disappeared like immerse CMS. i have always come back to TXP. but of course, it may or may not suit your particular needs.

either way, whether you decide to come aboard or not, happy holidays :)

Last edited by iblastoff (2007-12-24 15:03:01)

dla · 2007-12-24 15:02:28

What are your requirements for an acceptable CMS? I mean, what are the must-have features and/or other attributes that would help you narrow down the field to a few candidate CMSs? Perhaps that would be a more useful way to approach this.

TXP is what I’m looking for in a CMS. I guess my concern was more about the future of the software, and whether it was slowly dying. I basically didn’t want to waste time learning and developing with TXP just to end up having to switch again down the line.

I also would like to ask what you mean by active development? How frequent a release is frequent enough — or is it more a matter of quality and usability? How do you trade the two against each other? This seems to be a really important issue to you so please give us some feedback so we can try to accurately answer you.

As far as active development goes, I would prefer that new releases/features are released frequently enough to stay up to date with the competition, current technologies, and user demand. More importantly though, I’d just like to now that the software is constantly being approved on.

as for developers interested in money, that seems to imply that you don’t think WP or EE developers have similar intentions. i mean you’re already paying for EE. WP also has ‘enterprise paid support’ along with several corporated businesses alongside (automattic et all) quite sure none of the WP developers even hang out on their forums.

I understand that they need to feed their families and such. My statement was geared more toward the implication that the free version of TXP’s was almost being completely ignored while the developers pursued more lucrative ventures. While I would understand (if that is the case), it would still be a turn off for me. In sort, I wouldn’t be opposed to them wanting to make money as long as it wasn’t at the total expense of the software that I’m using. Get what I’m saying?

I guess the forum isn’t as dormant as I thought. In fact, you all have been very helpful. Plus if this was on the WP forum, my post may have gone unanswered and/or would have been buried 5 pages deep in a matter of minutes. Anyway, thanks mapa, Dragondz, net-carver, Gocom, and iblastoff for answering my questions; You all have talked me into it.

Off topic but sense the question of fund were talked about, how do you think WP and MT went from small low/no paying open source projects to the big cash cows that they are now? At one point or another, the software developers at both companies were in the same boat that Alex was and the others are in now. Matthew Mullenweg, for example, provided free software and still figured out a way to make a very good living off of it. What, in your opinion, is keeping TXP and the developers from reaching the same stature?

Last edited by dla (2007-12-24 15:09:09)

jstubbs · 2007-12-24 15:30:55

The forum is FAR from dead. What made you think so? The developers are constantly here helping answer questions, posting code snippets etc. That’s incredibly helpful not just for new users, but those like me who have been around for over three years and still learning about this incredible software.

Likely one of the reasons that TXP did not take off as much as WordPress is related to the differences between Dean and Matt. Dean started TextDrive off the back of TXP, and Matt started his thing. Both have been very successful as far as one can see.

I have seen plugin developers and other contributors come and go over the years, but there is always someone else who can help out. These forums are filled with friendly, mature and polite people.

If you need to get started with TXP, me and many others would be very happy to help.

Happy holidays!

hcgtv · 2007-12-24 15:40:18

dla wrote:

What, in your opinion, is keeping TXP and the developers from reaching the same stature?

Brandwidth

iblastoff · 2007-12-26 09:13:50

dla wrote:

As far as active development goes, I would prefer that new releases/features are released frequently enough to stay up to date with the competition, current technologies, and user demand. More importantly though, I’d just like to now that the software is constantly being approved on.

unfortunately if you’re looking for frequent releases then TXP may not be your cup of tea. i think the main reason WP releases on a monthly basis is because people ALWAYS manage to find a security hole or ten in every release and of course you want to immediately patch these. i don’t know of anything even remotely like pwnpress for textpattern.

I understand that they need to feed their families and such. My statement was geared more toward the implication that the free version of TXP’s was almost being completely ignored while the developers pursued more lucrative ventures. While I would understand (if that is the case), it would still be a turn off for me. In sort, I wouldn’t be opposed to them wanting to make money as long as it wasn’t at the total expense of the software that I’m using. Get what I’m saying?

yep i understand. just to clarify, maintaining TXP is not anyones full time job here. you are right to assume the developers generally ‘pursue more lucrative ventures’ (aka their normal jobs) and tend to TXP on their spare time. to me, its more community-driven then anything while the developers keep our feature requests/changes/pleas in check and implement what they can if it makes sense and fits the minimalistic TXP model.

Off topic but since the question of funds were talked about, how do you think WP and MT went from small low/no paying open source projects to the big cash cows that they are now? At one point or another, the software developers at both companies were in the same boat that Alex was and the others are in now. Matthew Mullenweg, for example, provided free software and still figured out a way to make a very good living off of it. What, in your opinion, is keeping TXP and the developers from reaching the same stature?

WP is much better as a blogging system. i think it won out because its easier for laymen to use and customize (in the sense that a WP user can just download one of the trillion WP themes available, select it to use and wham you have a decent looking, albeit cookie-cutter blog). as for actual theming/coding (aka not using a premade theme and creating one themselves) i have no idea how a WP newbie could possibly understand concepts like the Loop. but eh…

there is no simple, universal theming mechanism existent in TXP. many of the themes available at textplates.com, ~~textgarden.org~~, etc come with a ridiculous amount of text files that you have to copy and paste here and there in the TXP backend. its a very archaic system and although there are plugins like hcg_template (which basically allows you to import/export your pages, forms, styles etc as a package/theme) to ease the load, its not as universally known as it should be.

either way i think TXP is looked upon as a simple but flexible content management system with some blogging features, while WP is a simple but flexible blogging system with some CMS features. in the end there are more bloggers who just want to write/post photos/whatever and have some pretty template to use then there are developers willing to dabble with TXP’s flexibility and/or create their own theme/site/coding from scratch.

Last edited by iblastoff (2007-12-26 09:17:22)

colak · 2007-12-26 09:41:21

dla wrote:

As far as active development goes, I would prefer that new releases/features are released frequently enough to stay up to date with the competition, current technologies, and user demand. More importantly though, I’d just like to now that the software is constantly being approved on.

Well, this is one point of view. Another one might be to develop and worry about the content of your site as much as you can with what the software offers and not to worry about updating the software all the time.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2007-12-24 12:08:39

TXP Status?

#2 2007-12-24 12:14:42

Re: TXP Status?

#3 2007-12-24 12:14:52

Re: TXP Status?

#4 2007-12-24 12:33:08

Re: TXP Status?

#5 2007-12-24 13:10:42

Re: TXP Status?

#6 2007-12-24 13:19:01

Re: TXP Status?

#7 2007-12-24 14:53:32

Re: TXP Status?

#8 2007-12-24 15:02:28

Re: TXP Status?

#9 2007-12-24 15:30:55

Re: TXP Status?

#10 2007-12-24 15:40:18

Re: TXP Status?

#11 2007-12-26 09:13:50

Re: TXP Status?

#12 2007-12-26 09:41:21

Re: TXP Status?

Board footer