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Re: TxP.com home page
Added my name for visuals/wireframes.
On holiday for the next week, but will be contributing when I return.
@wet: why not use the txp wiki?
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Re: TxP.com home page
milkshake wrote:
@wet: why not use the txp wiki?
From my POV, Textbook is our Users’ Manual, and I wouldn’t want to litter it with volatile scratchpad content.
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Re: TxP.com home page
I would like to think aloud about the mechanics behind the next version of Textpattern.com.
First, a summary of ideas:
- because TxP powerfulness comes not only from TxP core functionality, but also because its great variety of plug-ins and its helpful community, and…
- because, as stated in the wet’s draft, one of the main groups of the audience are wesigners, web builders, agencies, “web people” at companies
- then, Textpattern.com would really benefit by using and promoting some powerful plug-ins which adds great (and often desired by the audience) capabilities to a TxP powered site.
- using some plug-ins on TxP.com won’t be just for the sake of using them
- they will bring benefits to
- Textpattern.com content and maintenance
- Textpattern promotion , because they will show what can be achieved with TxP (core + plugins), directly on TxP.com.
By now, you may be asking yourself which plug-ins could both make Textpattern.com a great site and at the same time, show off TxP powerfulness to the primary aimed audience.
The short list I propose isn’t a matter of personal taste, but a selection of the few plugins I think (trying to be objective) will make the difference for creating TxP.com and promoting it.
This plugins are:
MLP: The Multilingual Publishing Pack
Even if the first version of TxP.com relaunch is just in english, having the MLP pack running on the back will make it really easy to have a real multilanguage site for Txp.com. Then, all of us (developers, collaborators, community) can easily help with translating the content: static content (description, features, etc), FAQs, and even dev’s weblog posts.
I’ve worked with MLP and I can say its a gift.
Benefits:
- for TxP.com
- being a multilingual site, then…
- it can make a difference compared to direct TxP competitors (WP, Drupal, Expression Engine, MODX). Their sites aren’t multilingual, and I would bet anything that making their sites multilingual isn’t as easy as it is using TxP + MLP.
- appeals users which speak different languages
- improves exposure on search engines (SEO)
- all the content can be really easily translated by collaborators (and here, people can collaborate even if they don’t have access to the admin side) (hey, if Facebook made people work for them on translating all the FB strings, we can make it too)
- for promoting Textpattern
- multilingual sites is an often required feature for the audience niche TxP is aiming to:
- small/medium business (the average type of business where a TxP-driven site easily/perfectly fits and makes the difference) are requiring multi-lingual sites more often than ever.
- bloggers, particularly, high-quality-content bloggers whose primary language isn’t English and want to blog both in their native language and English too.
- again, Designers, web builders, agencies, “web people” at companies will clearly know that a multilingual site is possible with TxP (other CMS/blog softwares doesn’t state that so clearly, maybe because those software can’t do multilingual sites, so, +1 for choosing TxP)
- multilingual sites is an often required feature for the audience niche TxP is aiming to:
This is probably just a short list of benefits of having a m-lingual site for Textpattern.com, and really, I can’t think of too many disadvantages (if we commit ourself with this task).
BTW, I’ve done an approach to a TxP m-lingual site without using MLP. I’ve to write the tutorial yet. But I don’t suggest to use my approach for a site like Textpattern.com.
The Multilingual Publishing Pack is the right tool to do it.
Postmaster: a simple to use email-on-post / newsletter manager for Textpattern
A plug-in like Postmaster will also bring benefits for both TxP.com and for promoting Textpattern.
Again, I’ve used it: it’s a dream come true for those (particularly, our clients) who need/want a simple tool to manage newsletter and notifications.
Benefits
- for TxP.com
- interested people (newcomers, old users) can subscribe/unsubscribe to get notifications of TxP updates, new articles on dev’s weblog, upcoming things, TxP mentions, a monthly digest, whatever
- and all those tasks can be easily done from the TxP admin side.
- promoting Textpattern
- people may visit the time once, and subscribe, and then forget about Textpattern existence. Weeks later, when they receive a notification about TxP (a new article, a newsletter, etc), they will remember TxP exists. This is branding and white-hat marketing. They will get noticed about TxP news, come back to the site, and hopefully, become a TxP users. If not, they can easily unsubscribe.
- a newsletter manager is also another tool often required by the niche of users (and user’s clients) TxP is aiming to.
- so, somewhere on TxP.com we can talk about Postmaster, or even in a footnote below the signature of an e-mail sent by Postmaster, it can be stated: “This e-mail was sent using Postmaster, the superb and simple newsletter manager for Textpattern”.
Zem contact reborn: a contact form
Every website needs a contact form and TxP.com isn’t an exception. Probably, messages sent using this contact form should go to dev’s e-mails accounts.
No need to say that our sites (and our client’s site) always need one of this.
Benefits
- for TxP.com
- provide a way to contact the people responsible of Textpattern.com (“Convey trust like an A-grade newspaper”, wrote wet) to:
- give feedback (over site’s content, or just to thanks people behind TxP.com, report something broken on the site)
- provide a way to contact the people responsible of Textpattern.com (“Convey trust like an A-grade newspaper”, wrote wet) to:
- for promoting Textpattern
- show that a Textpattern site has a contact form. Below the contact form we can state: “This form was created using Zem Contact Reborn plug-in, etc”.
- set
copysender=1, so the visitor receives a copy of the e-mail (this is something helpful, and aids marketing an promoting the brand) - use
txp:zem_contact secret=""to add useful information (link to FAQs, Textboook) on the copysender’s e-mail.
Of course, taking care of replying the e-mail sent by this contact form could (or not) be something that is beyond what our devs can manage on their time. If one or more devs are willing to care about those e-mails, great. If not, someone (or many, or the community) can take care of those e-mails.
Even better, the e-mail could be sent to a mailing list (friends@textpattern.com), and then everyone who wants to reply (just to the author or to the whole list), can do it easily.
The contact form is something that needs a little more of thinking.
But I have no doubt that a contact form on TxP.com has some advantages related to successfully get it touch with those newcomers that are interested on Textpattern…
Other plugins
Of course, we can take advantage of the power provided by many other plugins, particularly plugins which help on the admin side and on site maintenance.
Please, suggest other plug-ins that could bring benefits to both TxP.com (content and maintenance) and promoting Textpattern.
Concluding
Textpattern.com is the ground base to have a great site (that reflects what TxP core + plug-ins + community effort can do) and to start promoting this beautiful piece of code pottery.
TxP.com will be probably a pretty simple site (no need for real complex content organization nor too many “cool” functionalities)
TxP.com shouldn’t be nor look as a fancy web application (as wet stated on Design principles). (it shouldn’t look as a site or something you couldn’t do with TxP).
It should be a classic but modern website, thought as an HTML document, styled with CSS, enhanced with some JS, and powered by Textpattern ;).
The benefits of this community effort will probably be for us, our clients and our/their visitors.
The End
PD: It would be great to develop TxP.com using WP, and have to do a security update once a week and convince the world TxP is an active project. Just kidding.
Last edited by maniqui (2008-05-24 19:55:58)
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Re: TxP.com home page
Instead of naming specific plugins, I think it’s better to have a list of websites that showcase TXP capabilities. TXP.com does not have to be one of those sites.
MLP isn’t a plugin, it’s a hack.
ZCR is already installed and in use on TXP.com. copysender + faked email address = spam
Weblog updates can be followed through RSS. We already have an announcement mailing list that uses Mailman, which is superior to using Postmaster (nothing against Postmaster, but it’s no match, IMHO).
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Re: TxP.com home page
Ok. All this pain on my fingers… for nothing… ;)
But I’m happy about writing ideas which then being discarded. Someone has to do it. Then, the good ideas, the clever ones, finally come to light.
MLP is not a hack, it’s an add-on (some files have to be added, but is that a hack?) . The only modified file (txp_db.php, or something like that) isn’t even needed now for MLP to work. Then, I agree it’s not a pure TxP plug-in.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
ZCR: sorry, didn’t check it was already installed.
About Postmaster: ok, Mailman is probably superior on many features, but Postmaster is superior on the integration with Textpattern :P
Also, I agree about having a list of websites that showcase TXP capabilities, but that shouldn’t exclude the possibility of having a multilingual (even if “MLP is a hack”) website for TXP.com
OK. Ideas discarded. Let’s go on.
An idea that doesn’t become a word is a bad idea. A word that doesn’t become an action, is a bad word.
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Re: TxP.com home page
Heck, maniqui, and I thought I wrote long posts :-) Thanks for all that great reasoning, however I agree with ruud (sorry!)
Both MLP and Postmaster are excellent tools in their own right but they are kind of ‘advanced’ insofar as I wouldn’t want to really let a complete newcomer to TXP loose with them.
MLP has the problem that it’s not a true plugin and because it relies on so many database calls and callbacks, varying versions of MySQL and PHP cause many obscure issues that may put newcomers off TXP. Similarly Postmaster, imho, has quite a few minor bugs and is not ready for prime time just yet. It can’t handle some of what I consider fairly standard newsletter/mailing tasks right now without some heavy modding… unless I’m using it wrongly of course, which is very possible ;-)
But when used properly within their limits, both tools can really add something to a site. So having a list of sites that show them off is a great way of demonstrating how TXP (the “stock” out-of-the-box version in use at textpattern.com) can be enhanced with a few key, amazing bits of code like MLP, Postmaster and glz_custom_fields. Sort of a “before and after” type of thing?
Last edited by Bloke (2008-05-24 21:58:47)
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: TxP.com home page
Heck, maniqui, and I thought I wrote long posts
Hehehe, “inspiration will find you working” could be “inspiration to avoid working will find you working”.
Instead of doing what I have to do, I start to think this great ideas and then I can’t stop.
In fact, when I was writing the post, I thought: “this will be longer than any post by Bloke”. But this isn’t also my first inspired post (and it isn’t the first one rejected, hehe).
OK, if both of you are not convinced by my ideas, at least I’m convinced by yours…
Well… I have this another great idea: avoid posting great ideas for a while.
We can start discussing this: http://notes.wetzlmayr.at/textpattern:relaunch:should-textpattern.com-match-the-template
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Re: TxP.com home page
Hi maniqui, I think your idea for MLP sounds great, except for the practical problems for new users. But I don’t know anything about MLP, having never needed it, so what do I know? Perhaps it could be incorporated in the new txp.com with a disclaimer attached, or perhaps not. Perhaps it’s better to point to sites that use it successfully.
As a user who knows MLP well, would you like to write an article about it on TXPQ? Some details about how wonderful it is and some explanation of setup, possible problems etc. Also links to some sites using it. It will help you spread the word and give a good understanding that must be difficult without reading a very long forum thread.
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#33 2008-05-26 18:33:26
- kevinpotts
- Member
- From: Ghost Coast
- Registered: 2004-12-07
- Posts: 370
Re: TxP.com home page
Bloke wrote:
Added a couple of bits about SEO placement to try and at least put us on the radar. Help out if you can in the discussion on the right sort of search terms
Added some thoughts to this page. I would really like to contribute to the content side, since I think half of these issues people have is how the product is positioned and marketed to the rest of the world.
Kevin
(graphicpush)
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Re: TxP.com home page
ruud wrote:
MLP isn’t a plugin, it’s a hack.
Agreed, it is a hack.
But should TxP.com be multilingual? Is it something the devs would like? If so, I would be willing to try make MLP less hacky.
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Re: TxP.com home page
@ ruud, zero, Bloke
The questions are:
Does TXP need a multilingual site or not? Wouldn’t it be beneficial for TXP itself? (main questions, if the answer is “no”, then skip this post)
Suppose:
I’m a newcomer, I’m looking at TXP.com for the very first time, I notice (or don’t notice) that the site is multilingual. If I notice the site is multilingual, I would think: “cool, this TXP thing does multilingual sites, although right now (or maybe never) I won’t need this feature”.
How is that confusing for newcomers?
Newcomers don’t know nothing about MLP, so they don’t know if it is a plugin or a hack or if it is built-in on TXP.
They will just notice that multilingual sites are possible with TXP. How? Well, if they need a multilingual site, they should investigate and learn how to do it. And, BTW, MLP is not the only way of doing a multilingual site with TXP.
@ zero
I still owe you a reply to another email (sorry). I’ve started to reply to it a month ago, and there it is: still saved as a draft.
About writing an article about MLP, give me sometime, I’m really bad at writing ideas (if you don’t believe me, re-read my long post, hehehe).
No, really, I would like to, so, I will try to. Thanks for inviting me (again) to collaborate with TXPQ.
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Re: TxP.com home page
graeme wrote:
But should TxP.com be multilingual? Is it something the devs would like?
The “facts”, as far the access log reveals them:
| lang | % visitors |
|---|---|
| en | 70% |
| de | 13% |
| fr | 4% |
| nl | 3% |
| ru | 3% |
| zh-cn | 3% |
| es | 3% |
So, without any disrespect for non-english visitors, I’d rather allocate resources elsewhere.
If so, I would be willing to try make MLP less hacky.
MLP being less hacky would be appreciated anyway, and I’d like to add that we would glady introduce unobtrusive hooks/extensions/callbacks into core which helps with that goal.
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