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#1 2009-05-18 22:04:03
- michnoff
- New Member
- Registered: 2009-05-18
- Posts: 2
TxP vs. WordPress?
I’m a WordPress user, but lately I’ve noticed an abundance of people using Textpattern. I was hoping that someone could give me a basic rundown on the fundamental differences between the two and suggest to me if I should or shouldn’t switch to this CMS.
Thanks so much!
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
I’m not a WordPress user, but …
You might get clearer answers if you give some indication of what you’re currently doing with WP and what you find lacking or troublesome about it (I assume there is something or you wouldn’t be considering a switch). Impossible to know if switching would benefit you without knowing that.
Code is topiary
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#3 2009-05-19 07:40:19
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
It all depends on what features you consider necessary, nice-to-have, or irrelevant. Tell us that, and then you can get a more educated answer.
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
For me Textpattern offers a kind of middle ground between words-and-pictures WordPress (installing other peoples’ themes and plugins), and straying-off-the-path-a-little-bit WordPress (Which seems to involve hacking industrial-grade PHP).
Textpattern has an elegant simplicity but is not perhaps simple, and a lot of its potency is subtle (As I’m still only just beginning to figure out). In fact, I am very much reminded of the O’Reilly slogan for Perl:
[Textpattern!] Makes easy things easy, and hard things possible
WordPress has really appealing things for the casual user (like the beautiful themes which are easily swapped in and out), but [for me] rapidly involves some very deep water indeed…
Anyway, this has been written about a million times before, and it does (as the others have already replied) come down to what your current requirements are and what are the shortcomings for you using WordPress.
[Textpattern does have a great forum though…]
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
from my experiences with wordpress, it was amazing for a blog but anything more CMS i felt like you had to trick it a bit. textpattern seems to be a good fit for many CMS sites out of the box on the other hand. wordpress also might have a better community login system except TXP does have mem_self_register plugin which i haven’t used yet.
designing a site in TXP you can pretty much do everything with xhtml, txp tags, and CSS. but in WP i found you needed more php
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
I’ve deployed sites with both WordPress and TXP (and a few other platforms), and Textpattern is hands down the most friendly. That said, I agree with what Mr. Keynes said above.
I’m currently rebuilding a site in Textpattern that I published 3 years ago using WordPress. My workflow with Textpattern has been much more satisfying— the template language is much easier to manage than the PHP required to customize WP back in those days.
The reason for rebuilding it is more insidious: the design firm I built the site for did not stay up to date on WP security updates, and the site was hacked. Somehow, the hacker was able to overwrite the site <head> file, injecting dozens of spam links for pharmaceutical companies.
Which brings me to a major difference between TXP and WP in my experience:
WordPress seems to be on a very rapid development cycle, which results in version releases that aren’t vetted, requiring dozens of security patches between releases. If you can handle bleeding-edge software and maintain the site yoursef, this might not be a problem for you. If you’re deploying a site for a client who can’t or won’t stay abreast of security updates, I wouldn’t recommend using WP.
Things could have changed significantly in the past three years, and your experience might be very different.
Another big difference between WP and TXP is popularity: WordPress is the crack-pipe of the Internet. The ease with which you can choose a theme and get started makes it a great way for anyone to start blogging without worrying about designing a web site from scratch. The negative side of the popularity that it gives hackers and spammers an incentive to stay abreast of the technology, and how to exploit known security vulnerabilities.
I think that’s what happened in this case: I installed a version that had a vulnerability and nobody updated it. Had I installed TXP, I doubt it would have been hacked so easily. The TXP development schedule seems much less break-neck to me, and the stability of a release candidate is very carefully vetted.
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
…Once upon a time, long long ago, i had the same question.
This link helped me, Textpattern vs Wordpress ,it might help you too.
I think, therefore I AM, … … er … I think :-?
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
michnoff wrote:
suggest to me if I should or shouldn’t switch to this CMS.
In theory wordpess and textpattern do more or less the same thing. In practice textpattern does it better.
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
In theory wordpess and textpattern do more or less the same thing. In practice textpattern does it better.
+1 ;)
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
Also, Sorry Wordpress, you just lost your battle to Textpattern.
Having worked just a little on some WP sites, I just can say I didn’t enjoy it.
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Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
WordPress is the crack-pipe of the Internet.
LOL
its a bad hen that wont scratch itself.
photogallery
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#12 2009-05-20 23:29:58
- masa
- Member
- From: Asturias, Spain
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,091
Re: TxP vs. WordPress?
I initially did check out a few alternatives (Wordpress, Expression Engine etc.) but Textpattern’s clean look and general simplicity won me over soon. Once you’re comfortable with it, there’s little you can’t do.
The new tag parser introduced in 4.0.7 – along with other refinements – was a huge leap. I nowadays don’t bother looking for alternatives anymore.
See also Kevin Pott’s take on Textpattern
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