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#1 2008-01-19 04:26:28
- standupguy
- New Member
- Registered: 2008-01-19
- Posts: 2
straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
Hi.
I’ve been exploring txp and tutorials for a few days and find it a bit daunting. I’ve tried making sections and categories – with links to those sections and categories on my main page – and they don’t appear. I’ve explored the Tag Builder, but txp seems to assume I know what to do with those tags once they’re created.
I don’t.
My knowledge of CSS, etc. starts and ends with changing fonts and colors – real basic stuff.
What I want to do and a couple of questions:
I’m a stand-up comic and want to create a site with: a blog (main page), an easily navigable archive of that blog, and static pages for video clips, schedule, merch, pics, and that’s pretty much it.
I’ve found a couple templates I like. Should I install that before doing anything?
If a template comes with a pic or graphic, can the pic be changed?
Is the Textpattern Solutions book aimed at morons like myself?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
Hi
First welcome to the community.
It s not very easy to understund how txp work first time you come, but that will be more easier for you in next few days!
My advice: install a blog template (you said hav found some nice), and then make changes to match you needs.
You can changes what you want in a template by using CSS and XHTML.
For your last question: sure, if you have a book it will be easier for you! cause the book had written by the devs!
Cheers
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
man textpattern can be really difficult sometimes, but certain things inside it are easier to do than other blog software. for example basic customizations can be really easy in txp cause you dont have to much with php templates like in other programs.
i actually don’t recommend using templates cause i’ve found they add a lot of stuff that you will have to sift out later on. i like to work with the most basic template(in any prefab code program i use).the book is pretty good, i don’t use it as often as i should but if you’re serious about learning any program you’ll want to get your hands on as much literature as you can. and make sure to keep brushing up on your css and xhtml at places like w3schools.com and in the library. best of luck
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
About book – i’ve tried to read it at the moment when me and Textpatern striked up an acquaintance. But a lot of thing in the book made me puzzle.. I stopped reading for a while. For a half of year I was looking through this forum (the most useful thing) and became clever in textpattern’s philosophy. When i retried to read book – it seemed to be very interesting.
So, try o lot, make errors, become professional and than read a book :)
Good luck!
Providing help in hacking ATM! Come to courses and don’t forget to bring us notebook and hammer! What for notebook? What a kind of hacker you are without notebok?
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
Hi and welcome,
Besides the Textpattern Solutions book, here are a couple more resources for you if you’ve not found them so far:
Textbook site administration gives a guide with examples of each tab in the TXP interface and what they are used for.
TXP Tags is the full list of tags and how they interact.
The biggest hurdle I found at the start is Textpattern’s nomenclature. It is logical once you get your head round it. Sorry in advance if this is too patronising but it might help:
- Section = a part of your site that can have a different page layout structure and even CSS if you like. Usually accessed by the rest of the world via http://www.standupguy.com/sectionName
- Page = the layout of an HTML page within a particular section. Normally one Page per Section works well, although you can double up if you like and use conditional tags to take action depending on, say, which Section the visitor is currently browsing
- Style = your CSS sheets. Associated with a Section exactly like you do with Pages: from the Section tab. Use
<tcp:css />to load the default stylesheet into a page - Form = a snippet of HTML/code/tags that you can re-use in Pages to save you having to write the same thing over and over again on each Page. So instead of copying and pasting the full
<!DOCTYPE blah blah>code from one section to the next, you could replace that chunk of HTML in all your pages with<txp:output_form form="dtd" />. If you create a TXP form called “dtd” (with a type of “misc” probably, since it’s just a hunk of stuff you can reuse) and paste the DOCTYPE definition in there, then all your pages will read that form. The advantage is that you only need to update it once if you later decide to change the way your page renders or when a new version of HTML comes out, etc. For mostly static sites I use forms all the time and my Pages are virtually nothing more than a few choice HTML tags and a load of forms that pull in various chunks of content depending on the Section. Forms are more versatile than that and are used to display lists of things very efficiently as well (files, articles, comments etc) but that’s probably best reserved until tomorrow :-) - Article = your content/blog posts. Each article is assigned to one Section and one Section only and ones with status “Live” are usually visible to the world as http://www.standupguy.com/sectionName/article-title-here
- Category = each Article can be given up to 2 categories to classify it and help your visitors find stuff. Articles, Links and Files can be in only one category. You can use the various conditional category tags to display lists of articles under a particular category so your visitors can find what they want easier
- Image = collection of images that you can place on your page using the
<txp:image />tag. You may also associate an image with an article by putting an image ID number in the Article Image field (under Advanced Options on the Write tab). Such images are displayed with the<txp:article_image />tag - File = other content like your flash, video clips etc. Again, tags exist to place those on your pages
- Plugins = 3rd party code by weirdos like me that allow you to do more — or usually more specific — tasks. Browse them at textpattern.org
Once you begin to “see” the overall big picture of how the TXP blocks interact it becomes easier, then after a couple of days of tinkering it become second nature and then you never look back!
Shout if you need anything specific that isn’t covered in the FAQs on texpattern.com, or in this forum or on Textbook. The community is really cool and, like the_ghost says, the forum and TextBook are the best resources there are.
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: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
hey good post bloke! i forgot to mention that i use the Web Developer Toolbar for firefox quite intensively. the first good feature on it is the CSS… Edit CSS – it lets you tinker with the CSS properties right then and there so you can see the results instantly. also then you have the Information…Display Element Information function which lets you figure out what element something belongs to. and then beyond that there are a ton of similar functions for letting you zero in on where something belongs in your site. i really can’t imagine working on a dynamic site without it.
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
Yeah mrtunes, between the Firefox Dev Toolbar and Firebug I can’t imagine tracking down site problems and editing CSS any other way! They truly are amazing bits of kit.
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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#8 2008-01-28 19:25:44
- standupguy
- New Member
- Registered: 2008-01-19
- Posts: 2
Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Good stuff.
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
Bloke wrote:
Yeah mrtunes, between the Firefox Dev Toolbar and Firebug I can’t imagine tracking down site problems and editing CSS any other way! They truly are amazing bits of kit.
ha well now can you tell me how you make your css code browser cross compatible? that is the real mystery to me.
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
mrtunes wrote:
ha well now can you tell me how you make your css code browser cross compatible?
Sorry for the OT:
Step 1 = Use Dev Toolbar/Firebug, code close to the CSS spec and make it look good in FF
Step 2 = Test in Opera and Safari; fix 1 or 2 odd things
Step 3 = Test in Internet Exploder 6 and 7. Fall about laughing as the output resembles roadkill
Step 4 = Swear profusely, spend 3.5 hours hacking it to fix the layout in IE, wish I could sue Bill Gates for the amount of my life he wasted, then either give up or add conditional CSS to fix the “problems”. Resign myself to the fact that it has to look crud in IE but smile inwardly because people that use it deserve everything they get :-)
Step 5 = Pity people using the AOL browser. Choose to do nothing about it
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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#11 2008-01-29 04:20:15
- cliffordu
- Member
- Registered: 2005-11-14
- Posts: 10
Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
OR: simply post a note on your website that “this site looks better on anything other than Internet Exploder…..;~)
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Re: straight up noob needs a txp tutorial for total dummies
well sorry if i took it a little off topic but it’s good for newbies to be forwarned that this is a really frustrating hurdle in web design in this era. it’s definitely been one of the most frustrating things for myself. the sad part is i often go over to friends house and see them load up internet exploder as their browser
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