[contrib] Looking for a community-picked Textpattern admin theme

wet · 2009-05-27 07:11:03

If you followed Textpattern’s development, you might have noticed that the latest development version supports admin-side theming.

We intend to distribute one (1) user-contributed admin-side theme with the next release, and are now on the lookout for the most attractive candidate. The winning admin-side theme will subsequently be distributed as an integral part of Textpattern CMS with every single download.

We would prefer the community to drive this hunt, starting from the presentation of the participants up to the (more or less) democratic election of the winning theme.

What you would have to do:

Draft the rules
Collect the candidates
Devise a showroom (might be a plain flickr group or a fully dedicated site, it’s up to you)
Show us the winner, stemming from some kind of a community vote

Any individual or collaborative team here who wants to take the stake of managing the selection campaign?

The fine print:

All participating themes must be licensed under the GPL and/or compatible free licenses.
The theme’s author(s) will be given full credit.
The rallye ends on June 30th, 2009.
The development team reserves the right to veto for technical or other reasons.
The theme’s authors will earn the community’s eternal gratitude and fifteen minutes of fame with every newly setup Textpattern-powered site. No cash.

Bloke · 2009-05-27 07:52:48

Smart!

Draft the rules

In the absence of a (*cough*, my) admin side theme cloner/editor plugin that works under the latest SVN — it’s coming… promise! — if anyone wants a hand with the PHP side of things just let me know. I suspect a lot of submissions will be cosmetic upgrades that can simply extend the classic theme with no extra code but (if the rules allow it) and you have any slightly wackier ideas for the tabs/layout but don’t know PHP then don’t let it stop your imagination: get in touch and I’ll see if I can help out on the coding front

Devise a showroom

Stuart, could Textgarden be used to host such a “competition”?

caruso_g · 2009-05-27 08:29:29

Nice idea, could be that we can just create a simply Txp website with screenshots and a live preview link.
It could be easily build like one example in the book Textpatter solutions where one can review restaurants but without the search feature as the home, just the entries.
I can provide the domain and the hosting for free and all my css/html skills. ;)

wet · 2009-05-27 10:09:31

Oh, and BTW: The current Textpattern CMS admin-side theme documentation has room for improvement. Feel free to add what you’ve learned.

thebombsite · 2009-05-27 18:16:41

Textgarden is already set to take admin themes. Problem is that the only one there at the moment is mine. The only limitation I see is that you would only be able to view “images” of the themes. I’m not sure whether a site could be set up so that people can login to the admin and switch themes willy-nilly without certain security problems needing to be overcome.

Other than that, I’m game. It’s where they ought to be anyway rather than setting up yet another site.

els · 2009-05-27 18:36:15

wet wrote:

We intend to distribute one (1) user-contributed admin-side theme with the next release

In addition to or instead of the current one?

wet · 2009-05-27 18:41:13

In addition, giving us three (Classic, Remora, NN) in total.

masa · 2009-05-27 18:42:32

wet wrote:

We intend to distribute one (1) user-contributed admin-side theme with the next release, and are now on the lookout for the most attractive candidate.

That would be an excellent step as long as the chosen theme doesn’t try to emulate Word Press’ look ;-)

Something that doesn’t deviate too much and still adheres to Textpattern’s branding colour scheme would be nice in my opinion.

On a related note, what’s the current state of the logo redesign that belipe and matthew were working on ?

wet · 2009-05-27 18:44:50

masa wrote:

Something that doesn’t deviate too much and still adheres to Textpattern’s branding colour scheme would be nice in my opinion.

Or in contrast something totally different, like a reduced mobile theme. Themeing plus pluggable_ui() could help a lot, I assume.

masa · 2009-05-27 18:57:16

wet wrote:

Or in contrast something totally different, like a reduced mobile theme. Themeing plus pluggable_ui() could help a lot, I assume.

Certainly, that would be an interesting option to show off the possibilities. The thing is I haven’t quite grasped how themeing will work in the backend from a user’s perspective.

I kind of assumed there would be a switch in the prefs, but I admit I haven’t been following the threads on this topic as they seemed a bit too technical for me.

Bloke · 2009-05-27 18:57:42

thebombsite wrote:

The only limitation I see is that you would only be able to view “images” of the themes.

That’s kind of what I meant but I guess it could be limiting: what looks good as a screenie might be ‘orrible to use!

But if screenshots + a description are deemed a valid way to go, you already have the submission procedure for finished (zipped) theme packages. Could you maybe add a section specifically for this ‘competition’ as it were, that allows people to upload screenshot(s) and some supporting description? These could then be browsed by everyone to see which is the snazziest and compile a shortlist by a certain date?

After that, perhaps we can look at opening up a login (I have a site we could use, or caruso_g could set it up, as graciously offered) so people can try them out in order to pick a winner.

Depending on the level of submissions expected, if you didn’t want to update it by hand every day, one way to do the screenie thing would be to have a form that allows people to upload a description + screens into an automatically-created article in your ‘competition’ section. It’s easy to do on PHP or even with mem_simple_form. The description is inserted into the Body and the list of screenshot URLs could be stored in a custom field (if kept on the submitter’s site) or perhaps the images themselves uploaded to the images dir — whichever you prefer. Either way it’s possible to browse entries in the section with their screens. And maybe wlk_rating to vote? Not sure.

Shout if you think this has merit and need a hand setting it up. Might be overkill.

I’m not sure whether a site could be set up so that people can login to the admin and switch themes willy-nilly without certain security problems needing to be overcome.

When I’ve rejigged the smd_admin_theme plugin (working on it tonight), remember it has the ability to offer a switcher on the admin tab for low-grade users. So we could nominate a user level and make accounts at that level, then from the main admin_theme panel, set the list of finalists to be switchable per user.

This could actually be done from Day 1 if we like and make all submitted themes switchable by users. Saves bothering with the whole screenshot thing I outlined above! People could just upload their zipped package (either created manually or via my plugin) to Textgarden as an admin theme. All you have to do is install them, make them available for switching, and grant temporary accounts to people who want to try them out.

Last edited by Bloke (2009-05-27 19:02:18)

Bloke · 2009-05-27 19:06:26

masa wrote:

I kind of assumed there would be a switch in the prefs

There is, but of course it’s only available to people who have Admin->Prefs access. This allows a privileged user to set a ‘global’ theme that everyone sees (although the ability to ‘read’ themes chosen per-user is built into the core).

My admin theme plugin extends this idea and allows an admin to nominate themes that are user-switchable. A new tab then appears under ‘Admin’ for all low-priv users that allows them to choose between a subset of the nominated installed themes. Per-priv themes are also on the cards if I can factor them into the new theme mechanism. Useful for magazine sites so an admin could set one theme for Freelancers, one for Staff Writers, etc and the themes coiuld complement their workflow.

Bringing the plugin up to speed now and hoping I can deliver the above under wet’s ingenious theme system :-)

Last edited by Bloke (2009-05-27 19:10:14)

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