Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Improvements to Content Control
I’ve mentioned this before (but not quite the same) about how TXP lacks behind WordPress in the way it allows control of content, but on the other had TXP has much better control in other scenarios.
So for example in TXP I can easily create sections like, News, Portfolios, etc and post Articles within those sections, and even categorize them if need be. This is where TXP really shines. However in another example lets say I wanted a simple page like About, creating a whole section followed by an article seems somewhat less intuitive than the WordPress approach of just new page and voila you have a simple static one page without the need of sections/cats/articles etc. My biggest gripe with this, is the duplicate content you get, so for example say I had the article called About in the section About I would end up with /about/ and /about/about/ being the same content, unless I use complex overrides for the Permlinks, but this is looking at built-in functionality and efficiency.
The next part of control I think is over complex is Sections / Cats / Pages and Forms. In WordPress you have your templates which deal with how the content will look and then you have your content being either Posts or Pages, and then you have the ability to Categorize the Posts if need be. Textpattern has a different approach which again has some advantages and disadvantages other WP’s. Sections are not the same as pages in WP, but they act the same in some ways and not in others, perhaps they should be under the content tab? As they are not really templates rather they are content dividers much like Categories are.
So where is this topic going? Well perhaps a relook at the way content is handled. TXP has a much better way of dealing with articles, the ability to write an article, use a form to spit it out and within a section/cat is awesome. But when looking at it from a different angle with simple content like a single page it becomes less efficient and more of a hack, by hack I mean it works, but you feel like your bodgeing the job. Does anyone have any thoughts?
One idea I really like the idea of trying is perhaps rebuilding the sections part to allow a person to choose whether a section is static or dynamic. And then allow the user to type directly into the section for a static section, or post articles to a dynamic section. Like you can in RadiantCMS and FrogCMS!
~ Cameron
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
I always thought it would be interesting to be able to assign articles to the default section that way you could do /section/title permlink schemes but have articles that are essentially at the root. So About could be assigned to section default which would generate a /about url.
Could get tricky if articles and sections have the same url pattern. Although you could match /about to the article and /about/something-else to an article in the about section. It would just remove the article_list mode for that section which for some sites is actually desirable behavior, which I fake a lot with sticky status or custom fields.
Shoving is the answer – pusher robot
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
Adding articles to the default section seems fun, but if you wanted to have sub-pages (using this idea) then it would get messy very quick
~ Cameron
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
I like that Textpattern doesn’t assume these kinds of things about your site design. Whether content is static or dynamic is totally up to the designer and site managers. WordPress’s approach works well for blog-like sites where the difference between static and dynamic content is stark, but Textpattern lets you build sites where that stark division need not exist. Furthermore, you can use TXP to build WP-like sites without learning another language. Or you can build sprawling, Tower of Babylon sites that shatter the normal boundaries of content management systems. Textpattern adapts your needs.
I like that Textpattern deals with the “article” as the primary unit of content— the txp:article and txp:article_custom tags are very versatile and powerful, and you can use them to output “static” or “dynamic” content anywhere you want without the CMS forcing you to make arbitrary distinctions.
I have grown my own development conventions based on the strengths of Textpattern, and none of the cases you mentioned above are a problem for me. I may just be lucky so far, but I haven’t had to use hacks or complex overrides to get Textpattern to do these basic things. Just about every challenge for me results in an even stronger grasp of the power of txp:article and txp:article_custom —and once I have a rich, versatile solution to a common problem, I add it to my development conventions. I don’t know about Radiant and Frog, but I would hate for Textpattern to introduce assumptions about your content and design into the structure of the CMS.
Maybe I don’t understand what specific needs you have that are missing.
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
The specific needs are that when you desire a simple page, your forced to create both a section and article. Where as in WordPress you need just create the page and your done. Further more the TXP method creates a section with an article rather than a section that has the article as its ONLY content like a WordPress page would do. But thats from web geeks point of view (and im the last person who should be stirred by this). From a typical client point of view, creating a new section and then having to set a new article to sticky seems more complicated (and if we are honest it is) than the WordPress simple system of new page and save. And their is no easy way for the rookie to add sub-content either. My main points are that WordPress handles static content far better than Textpattern does, and I’d like to see some improvements.
~ Cameron
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
driz wrote:
The specific needs are that when you desire a simple page, your forced to create both a section and article.
You’re certainly not forced. Who says you need an article for your simple page? I’ve used a form for this type of thing before.
Piwik Dashboard, Google Analytics Dashboard, Minibar, Article Image Colorpicker, Admin Datepicker, Admin Google Map, Admin Colorpicker
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
Me too, Matt – the landing page of my site is just a form – it isn’t in a section, and isn’t an article.
Last edited by keith (2009-08-05 18:53:29)
Keith
Blyth, Northumberland, England
Capture The Moment
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
MattD wrote:
driz wrote:
The specific needs are that when you desire a simple page, your forced to create both a section and article.
You’re certainly not forced. Who says you need an article for your simple page? I’ve used a form for this type of thing before.
Used a form? How would that work :/ You would create a section say About, and then what?
Last edited by driz (2009-08-05 18:55:35)
~ Cameron
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
Then, on your About page template, you will simply write your article there. As said, it’s a way to avoid using an article. Of course, this isn’t very “client friendly”.
On your page template for section About:
<txp:if_article_list>
Hi, this is the section presentation. Creating an article
for it and doing a lot of jugglery
(using article_custom, stickies, etc) seemed
a hassle for just displaying this thing
I'm writing and now you are currently reading
(how is it possible that I'm writing it and you are currently reading it? I'm amazed...).
Of course, you can move this chunk
of content to a form, if you would like to.
<txp:else />
<!-- here my real articles -->
<txp:article />
</txp:if_article_list>Last edited by maniqui (2009-08-05 19:03:59)
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
So your putting your TEXT actually inside the Page Template or Form? :/ Well that would require the knowledge of HTML and the workings of TXP. Clients would need to be able to create static pages like articles.
~ Cameron
Offline
#11 2009-08-05 19:27:04
- Neko
- Member
- Registered: 2004-03-18
- Posts: 458
Re: Improvements to Content Control
Well, I’ve done the form thing a lot of times. It’s not convenient.
- You need to edit forms (and, as Driz says, clients/average users/morons seem to express a strong distaste for such tasks. I can’t blame them. I don’t like working with forms either).
- No Textile.
- It’s counter intuitive.
- It’s an “hack”.
- I could go on and on and on about how this solutions sucks, but why bother? It just sucks. :)
I know Driz posted many preposterous suggestions in the past, but I agree with him on this one. Never thought I would, but there’s always a first time I guess. :D
Last edited by Neko (2009-08-05 19:38:11)
Offline
Re: Improvements to Content Control
I’ve used a form for this type of thing before
Hard coding information for a single page in the page template or a form is not suitable for non-savvy clients and clients expect this to work like all the other areas. In general, I also don’t give clients access to pages or forms.
Patrick’s suggestion would probably be easiest but is currently not possible (I presume because of the url-scheme conflict problem when sections and articles share the same name, which also applies to the subsection issue).
What I do is create an /about/ section and an /about article but never present a sublink to the individual article view, e.g. the page template shows the full article (form including body) with limit = 1 in both article list and individual article view. Theoretically the individual article view will never be seen as there is no link to it (one could leave out individual article view entirely but see below*). While not perfect in terms of internal workings (admin-side effort), it does at least presents a clean link to the world and is easy for the client to find and edit.
There are two caveats: the /about/about link is revealed in the google sitemap and possibly the rss feed too. I don’t really ever offer an rss feed for the about area so that’s not really a problem. Thankfully rah_sitemap allows you to exclude certain sections as well as to include custom urls, so I exclude that section and enter the url I want to use in the custom section and all is well. *If I’m not mistaken, the only other time one needs a single article view is if an editor clicks the “view” link from the backend.
Last edited by jakob (2009-08-05 19:33:34)
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
Offline