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newbie questions
Hi folks,
My CMS of choice is Expression Engine usually. However, I’ve had some requests for a free CMS and I’ve heard great things about Textpattern.
It seems to be quite similar to EE in what I’ve seen so far, it has a better CP than EE IMO.
I always try and relate a new system to the way an existing system works so if I’m drawing incorrect parallels between TXP an EE, I apologise.
Obviously EE has the potential for multiple weblogs but from what I can make out TXP runs one main area for articles is that right? If that’s the case, how can I display articles differently? For example, taking a site I’m working on personally, I have an article for homepage text, I then have a series of articles on a work section that contains project information. How would I get my templates to differentiate between articles?
On other thing, EE has a switch parameter which essentially says you can apply multiple classes to various weblog entries, is there something similar available in TXP?
Thanks and regards,
Steven
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Re: newbie questions
Hi Steven,
Welcome to Textpattern :-)
stevieg_83 wrote:
How would I get my templates to differentiate between articles?
When you write articles you assign each one to a Section. That Section has an associated Page template which governs the look and feel of articles in that section. So to make them look different, just alter the relevant templates.
To help you with this task, Textpattern uses Forms — sort of reusable snippets of content / markup / stuff — that you can employ in your site. Use those to repeat markup, for example to display every article in an article list, or simply to write something once and reuse it to save your typing fingers (I put the site’s DTD, or layout my site’s <head> section in Forms, because they change infrequently). Conditional tags allow you to customise what appears at what place based on which page/article you are viewing.
You can get an abundance of information on this topic at Textbook especially under the Orientation section which explains how stuff hangs together, and TXP’s naming conventions / semantic model. Plus there are some great Tutorials and the good old Tag reference which should get you going with generating markup for your content to sit in.
Hope that helps.
Last edited by Bloke (2009-08-10 12:35:22)
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Re: newbie questions
Thanks Bloke,
I missed the bit about assigning an article to a section. Makes sense.
I got the bit about the forms being reusable code, just like an include in EE.
I’ve order the book TXP Solutions so that should help.
Appreciate the quick response too.
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Re: newbie questions
stevieg_83 wrote:
Thanks Bloke,
No problem. Sorry if I came across too patronising ;-)
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: newbie questions
not at all.
How would I address this though?
On other thing, EE has a switch parameter which essentially says you can apply multiple classes to various weblog entries, is there something similar available in TXP?
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Re: newbie questions
stevieg_83 wrote:
EE has a switch parameter which essentially says you can apply multiple classes to various weblog entries, is there something similar available in TXP?
Pass. I’m not an EE user so I’m not quite sure what that refers to. A class to me is something that you use with CSS — evidently they reuse that terminology in EE land :-)
I’m sure someone who has used both EE and TXP will chime in to help out.
Last edited by Bloke (2009-08-10 13:03:05)
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: newbie questions
no worries.
basically what it does is say for article 1 in section xxx apply this class, article 2 in section xxx apply this class.
I use it for displaying entries horizontally so that article 1 floats left, article 2 sits centrally and so on and so forth.
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Re: newbie questions
stevieg_83 wrote:
basically what it does is say for article 1 in section xxx apply this class, article 2 in section xxx apply this class. I use it for displaying entries horizontally so that article 1 floats left, article 2 sits centrally and so on and so forth.
Hopefully people will share a several tricks to accomplish what you are after.
To get you started, a plugin called zem_nth may help.
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