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Re: Marketing TXP
Zero,
Thanks for the heads up. My wife and I have a 9 month old…so I’m just coming out of my “new dad” fog. I’ve got some catching up to do.
Cheers!
—
Tom
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Re: Marketing TXP
wet wrote:
Which of course won’t negate the usefulness of client-specific dashboards, but then again what would those clients gain from receiving updates on alls thing Textpattern?
It doesn’t need to be Textpattern related updates. If this was a plugin, those that use Textpattern as a tool for their client base could inject their own specific feeds. Businesses that use Textpattern for their intranets could use it to keep their department authors updated on company wide news.
The way Wordpress uses the dashboard might not be how we envision it, but we shouldn’t dismiss it completely.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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#100 2008-06-17 17:56:22
Re: Marketing TXP
hcgtv wrote
It doesn’t need to be Textpattern related updates. If this was a plugin, those that use Textpattern as a tool for their client base could inject their own specific feeds. Businesses that use Textpattern for their intranets could use it to keep their department authors updated on company wide news.
Sounds like a great idea. I second it.
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#101 2008-06-17 18:13:21
Re: Marketing TXP
jstubbs wrote:
This is what I suggest:
- textpattern.com…
- plugins.textpattern.com…
- templates.textpattern.com…
- docs.textpattern.com..
Some facets on the topic of domains and the desirable consolidation of resources:
- Textpattern.com and .org are registered by Dean Allen.
- Textpattern.net is registered by someone with privacy protection enabled, probably Destry (I was too late in 2005 to the party to know for sure).
- These three sites are hosted on a donated server by Joyent, backed by a support staff of one (1) person in his spare time.
- Requirements for server admin capacity from the dev team reduce development time. The collective expertise is scarce for some fraction of the involved components. As we’ve seen in the occasion of the moribund Trac host, this leaves a bit to desire.
Given this environment, I would assume that some services can reliably be hosted on a central resource (i.e. *.textpattern.com), while other services are better off with a decentralised cloud.
Reasonably manageable central services could include the project website, forum, and docs.
Hosting plugins is not a core requirement – every plugin author managed to spare a few bytes on her own so far. A future incarnation of Textpattern (the application and/or the site) could provide a standard channel to communicate update needs and/or download methods between site administrators and plugin authors along the line of the “Check for updates” button which Txp incorporates itself.
I’m very indetermined about themes/templates. As long as we have no established means of deploying these, there’s little rationale in a central repository for them.
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#102 2008-06-17 18:47:50
Re: Marketing TXP
I think .net was provided by Dean as well if I remember the whole Textbook inception correctly, although it could be Ubernostrom. I don’t think Destry actually owns the domain.
Shoving is the answer – pusher robot
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#103 2008-06-17 18:52:04
Re: Marketing TXP
wet wrote:
- These three sites are hosted on a donated server by Joyent, backed by a support staff of one (1) person in his spare time.
- Requirements for server admin capacity from the dev team reduce development time. The collective expertise is scarce for some fraction of the involved components. As we’ve seen in the occasion of the moribund Trac host, this leaves a bit to desire.
I want to be delicate in asking this given the long history of mutual encouragement that TextDrive/Joyent and Textpattern have enjoyed. Forgive me if I’m opening the proverbial “can of worms”. Is there an implication that the current hosting situation (and required administration) needs to be evaluated to determine if it might be detracting from long term goals/success?
wet wrote:
I’m very indetermined about themes/templates. As long as we have no established means of deploying these, there’s little rationale in a central repository for them.
From a development/delivery standpoint I would concur re: themes/templates. From a marketing standpoint I’m would suggest that creating easy access to what is out there is a plus for new customers. Is it enough of a plus to outweigh the fact that they have to copy & paste? There’s the debate.
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#104 2008-06-17 19:05:21
Re: Marketing TXP
maverick wrote:
Is there an implication that the current hosting situation (and required administration) needs to be evaluated to determine if it might be detracting from long term goals/success?
No, not with the scope of services I sketched in my previous post. And this scope is mainly determined by capacities with no dependence on what Joyent or any other host would deliver. Administration capacity might impose a limit in the future when additional needs arise, but this would have to be fulfilled by us and not by the hosting provider.
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#105 2008-06-17 19:27:51
Re: Marketing TXP
And a big debate it is too Mike. I would hesitate at trying to move Textgarden into a central location as it is quite a complex task to not only list all available themes but also have demos for them. In fact, not long after being handed the reigns to the site by Dean, I found it too complex to do the whole thing in a single site. For that reason all the demos for my own ports are now located on the j.a.t. site. This separation makes managing everything a lot easier oddly enough.
With regard to showing which version of TXP a theme is suitable for I added an extra field to allow for this and if you check the site you will see that I have started using that field for some of my own ports. Problem of course is time. I don’t have as much of it as I used to so the process is rather slow. I shall get there eventually, but it will only be for my own ports. In my view it is the designer’s responsibility to update their own themes. I definitely don’t have time to sort everyone else’s themes out.
I did discuss with Bert some time back about converting my ports to use his plug-in which would make things a lot easier for users to install a theme however, after I had thought about it for a while, this would make it more time-consuming to keep the downloads up-to-date. At present the j.a.t. site uses the latest revision of TXP via SVN so I immediately see any problems with a theme that might arise from any new TXP code. It is then an easy matter to make any necessary changes on-site which I can then easily transfer to the download file using an editor, re-zipping and uploading to Textgarden. If I use one of the template plug-ins I would need to install the theme to a vanilla install of TXP which includes the plug-in, make the necessary changes, output all the forms, pages and CSS via the plug-in, re-zip them and upload the new zip to Textgarden.
As Robert suggests, I think we need to wait until a uniform method for deploying themes is arrived at. Until then I think Textgarden should be left out of this discussion.
Last edited by thebombsite (2008-06-17 21:58:52)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
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#106 2008-06-17 21:53:30
Re: Marketing TXP
hakjoon wrote:
Honestly I kind of feel like the last thing textpattern needs is one more site.
We already have txp.com, txp.net, txp.org, txpmanual, textgarden, textplates, We love txp, txpq, textpattern pro, txplanet, and txpmag
At wordpress.com almost all of the above data is accessible on one site from a simple tab menu. (Except the blog which launches a new site.)
With Textpattern this info is spread around to much as mentioned above. Theres broken and out of date links on the plugins download site.
Maybe thats not as accessible as it could be. Maybe there should be a redesign contest to consolidate the info into one or two sites, i would submit some jpegs if there was. The logo is the first thing to be changed imho.
Just thinking out loud.
edited to say-my design work is mediocre and im only a fringe user of txp – i dont want to sound pretentious .
Last edited by kvnmcwebn (2008-06-17 22:13:20)
its a bad hen that wont scratch itself.
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#107 2008-06-17 22:33:56
Re: Marketing TXP
Kevin, perhaps you don’t know but the redesign thing all started here and then went here. Somewhere amongst all that good stuff (you need to read it all to see why it has come to the stage it is now at) Wet decided there were enough words and it was time for action so started this wiki with various guidelines including graphics/logo. I then started this thread (with no intention or idea it would become so long!) which would have affected the relaunch if my modified idea had been accepted but it seems I am alone wrt an extra site. So really it’s all gone beyond contest ideas and needs actual work on the relaunch now. It’s a wiki so you can sign up and leave your ideas, jpegs etc because I don’t think the roles are finalised or anything like that yet, although all kinds of work might be under way that I don’t know about. That’s my understanding anyway.
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#108 2008-06-17 22:56:31
Re: Marketing TXP
thanks zero
i was just brainstorming.
here are some rough screenies:
http://www.macdesign.eu/textpattern.html
Obviously still needs a lot of work but if anyone thinks i should continue give me some input on the content.
-best
kevin
Last edited by kvnmcwebn (2008-06-18 01:02:14)
its a bad hen that wont scratch itself.
photogallery
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