Why Textpattern

philwareham · 2011-06-11 18:46:22

And here is the start of a basic theme I knocked together a few months ago based on the HTML5 Boiler Plate by Paul Irish and friends. It was made as a proposal to replace the old default theme in Textpattern so new users got a better bit of eye candy when they first install Textpattern.

It’s fully responsive CSS too so it will scale right down to a iPhone portrait screen.

Also, I’ve commented a lot throughout the code to give new users some indications of what the code actually does – something that is sorely lacking in the old default theme IMHO.

Download here

I’ve not had a chance to work more on it due to heavy work commitments – a few of the practices might have changed slightly with newer releases of boilerplate since I wrote it so be aware. If I get significant interest from users I may proceed further with this project.

See it in situ here

PS. I’ve not included the javascript so you’ll need a copy of Modernizr, go to the modernizr site to grab a copy

Last edited by philwareham (2011-06-11 19:18:34)

hcgtv · 2011-06-11 19:01:26

philwareham wrote:

See it in situ here

Nice, I like it. It’s a good starting point for building a site.

Quick question, on view source, everything is left aligned, no spaces or blank lines. Yet the pages and forms do have indents and blank lines. Do you run the site through something before output?

philwareham · 2011-06-11 19:15:35

@hcgtv

Yes, I use Google’s Page Speed Tools on my server, collapses whitespace, lines etc to speed up delivery of webpages.

Crikey, from a simple question about ‘Why Textpattern’ this thread has turned into a bit of a beast!

Last edited by philwareham (2011-06-11 19:21:14)

hcgtv · 2011-06-11 19:39:29

philwareham wrote:

Yes, I use Google’s Page Speed Tools on my server, collapses whitespace, lines etc to speed up delivery of webpages.

Ah, I see now. I usually left align everything on the backend, but Textpattern will insert blank lines whenever it encounters some conditionals, unless if you put all the logic on one line, which makes the code a bit unreadable. Thanks for the tip.

Biofobico · 2011-06-11 22:57:55

Can’t thank you enough Phil :) I think im all set now to dive into Textpattern :)
One thing is certain, you guys make justice that the Textpattern community is amazing. And i have to agree you you Phil. A simple question turned out a good reference for starters like me :)

els · 2011-06-11 23:12:14

Biofobico, you might want to read the contributions that were written following this topic :) It’s a nice overview, because they’re written from developer/designers as well as from users perspective.
You can read the thread to find them, but here they are anyway (in random order): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Biofobico · 2011-06-12 15:05:52

Els wrote:

Biofobico, you might want to read the contributions that were written following this topic :) It’s a nice overview, because they’re written from developer/designers as well as from users perspective.
You can read the thread to find them, but here they are anyway (in random order): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Very nice read. Thanks Els :)
Im beginning to understand why you guys love Textpattern so much and those links you provided are very true from what i was able to extract while dissecting Phil’s template :)
And while the admin panel is a bit “ugly” from a designers perspective, the structure of it is perfect to work on.

gour · 2013-01-19 20:32:58

I hope you don’t mind jumping into old thread…

philwareham wrote:

Not sure what that means, since Textpattern essentially is a collection of logical and easy to use tags which you use a building blocks within your website, the final website is as up-to-date as you want to make it. Think of it as lego for PHP.

The more I read about Textpattern, the more I like its concepts. :-)

I always code my sites in the latest HTML5 standards and TXP has never had a problem with that. For example, this site is powered by Textpattern.

I cannot say I’m really a designer guy, so wonder if I can e.g. easily use YAML (or some other) CSS framework and base my theme(s) on it?

colak · 2013-01-19 20:42:51

gour wrote:

I cannot say I’m really a designer guy, so wonder if I can e.g. easily use YAML (or some other) CSS framework and base my theme(s) on it?

yes you can. some of my sites use the 960.gs css framework, and others here use other ones such as blueprint, foundation etc.

philwareham · 2013-01-19 20:51:53

@gour

Yes that’s relatively straightforward. Use their HTML templates as a starting point and gradually strip in the various Textpattern tags you need to make a dynamic site. Any common bits of code (such as headers, footers etc) can also be split out of the page templates into form snippets, making the whole thing easier to maintain.

Some users do just that with various frameworks including Bootstrap, Foundation or even their own dev framework (I built my own over a period of time).

gour · 2013-01-19 21:08:44

philwareham wrote:

Yes that’s relatively straightforward. Use their HTML templates as a starting point and gradually strip in the various Textpattern tags you need to make a dynamic site. Any common bits of code (such as headers, footers etc) can also be split out of the page templates into form snippets, making the whole thing easier to maintain.

Ohh, this is really very nice and gives Textpattern big advantage over Tiki when theming is concerned.

Thanks a lot guys for all your help – really awesome community!!

sochicomputerRU · 2013-01-20 06:31:22

For me it doesn’t matter much which CMS to use, I can shape anything into anything. Initially I just wanted a blog for my site, and come upon Textpattern. I chose textpattern because it looked simple, keyword is SIMPLE. But when it came to inserting my site design into textpattern I understood that textpattern is much more than blog, it is a fully blown CMS, you can build anything on it. I even had plans on rewriting my whole site using textpattern.

Check out my blog, made using textpattern sochicomputer.ru/blog

I offer website development services among with computer repair, network setup, the whole IT spectrum basically. I definitely would use textpattern in my client’s sites when opportunity arises.

Why?

Simplicity on back end. Web developers love to say that site made with CMS can be changed by anyone. Thus far I’ve seen your average Joe user to be able to add only text articles, and even that with minimum formatting. Systems like Drupal and Wordpress are just way to bloated. Textpattern is simple and easy to use on back end. Tags are well documented. I can teach anyone to use textpattern within an hour.

Textpattern is definitely one of my favorite CMS.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

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#36 2013-01-20 06:31:22

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