I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

merz1 · 2011-06-21 13:03:05

Guys we don’t have enough bad news – compared to alternative CMS – to make Textpattern a trending topic in social media world. The superior alternative CMS discussion is powered by people not getting it after setting up their CMS.

Let’s face the marketing situation: We need more bloated code, more security holes, more raw PHP obstacles and at least one crashing TXP core update every week.

Microsoft is a great archetype.

Destry · 2011-06-22 10:35:12

merz1 wrote:

Guys we don’t have enough bad news – compared to alternative CMS – to make Textpattern a trending topic in social media world. The superior alternative CMS discussion is powered by people not getting it after setting up their CMS.

I know you’re being partly facetious, but let’s actually look at this situation closer.

First, let’s drop the word “trending”, because nobody (certainly not me) is talking about competing with Lady Gaga.

Also, we can be honest and admit Txp’s track record hasn’t always been a bed of roses.

Yet while problems are often the nature of social discussion, it’s not always that way. Nor is talking about problems necessarily bad, on the contrary. The point isn’t whether the discussion is bad or good, but that the discussion is happening at all, openly, where more people see it. When someone observes a problem being voiced in the social air, and someone else (especially a representative) responds in timely, courteous fashion with a satisfying answer/solution, people see that and value the “customer service” more than they hang on the initial problem; they take note of the good intention and commitment to the cause. This is observed in social media all the time, and companies (or open source projects) that practice it are reaping rewards. It’s about a project showing it cares, and that’s where this community shines—it cares! Right?

/* turns attention to the crowd */

We talk about this community as one of the friendliest and most helpful out there. While this may be true, the emphasis seems to be more on this bulletin board than the actual people. This even comes across right in textpattern.com’s Support copy…

“No web site is an island so when you need to reach out, Textpattern’s community is there for you. If you cannot find what you are looking for in the Textpattern manual then the forum is the place to visit.
.
Widely regarded as one of the most helpful and mature CMS forums, you can seek answers and ask questions of fellow site designers, developers and enthusiasts. Even the core development team hang out there and regularly answer questions, as well as actively supporting their own plugins.”

(I still laugh reading that, which just seems a little over the top.)

The real problem, as I see it, is that this friendly, courteous community has lived inside this aging and crumbling bulletin board for too long. While the forum has served it’s purpose in the past, this community is long past due for a migration outward. Another bulletin board is not the answer! That’s not to say the forum doesn’t still have it’s place. But I think it’s a smaller role that what is currently heaped upon it.

Let’s look at all the discussion forums in these boards:

Official Announcements
Development (Existing Issues, Corrected/Resolved Issues, Internationalisation, Feature Ideas, etc.)
How Do I…? & Other Questions
Plugins
Presentation
Textile
Developer Support
Latest Happenings
How-tos and Examples
Lets see yours, then
Mentions
Seeking Txp Pros
Contributing
User Documentation
Feedback
General Discussions
Forum and Website
International Users

Now, let’s take out what should be channeled through textpattern.com, as either new content or regular blog posting:

Official Announcements
Textile (textile.textpattern.com)
Developer Support
Latest Happenings
Mentions
Contributing
~~Forum and~~ Website

Now remove what should be handled in the new and improved Plugins site (textpattern.org):

Plugins

Now let’s take out what could feasibly be handled in documentation (and maybe a move away from Mediawiki to something more cloud-based):

How Do I…? ~~& Other Questions~~
How-tos and Examples
User Documentation
FAQ (note this is a move from .com to .net, slowly in progress)

Now removing what could feasibly be handled in a more high-traffic (social) channel (and this is as much for promoting Txp as it is providing support):

Seeking Txp Pros
General Discussions

Leaving a lot less:

Development (Existing Issues, Corrected/Resolved Issues, Internationalisation, Feature Ideas, etc.)
Presentation
Lets see yours, then
Forum ~~and Website~~
International Users

Note that what remains are conversational topics that can get rather complicated (languages, code examples, etc.), and so a bulletin board is a decent fit.

I’d question the value of Presentation simply because it’s not Textpattern specific and there’s a million other sites on the web that provide the juice.

International Users is a tough one—you look at those forums and see they’re not really used, but the forum is probably as good of place as any for localized conversations.

You can see some cross pollination going on here too, like TextGarden taking on presentation discussions since that’s the context. And even TXP Mag rolling some content too on these areas, highlighting activities and pointing people in the right direction, etc.

At any rate, by making content (and conversations) more distributed—by putting it where it should go—you also make it easier for people to find (especially first-timers), or at least where they are more likely to stumble across it. This will help search rankings too, which you may recall was one key factor in the 2010 CMS market share report.

On the other hand, remaining inside a silo does make for a controlled environment, though silos aren’t much good for anything but old, dried corn, which some of us might start resembling. :)

Last edited by Destry (2011-06-23 12:53:44)

merz1 · 2011-06-22 13:07:50

While this may be true, the emphasis seems to be more on this bulletin board than the actual people.

No and Yes. Some people do monitor the social streams for the tags (or hashtags) TXP and Textpattern. The feed I monitor is socialmention.com and you will also find it in my OPML (see signature). Beside spam and frequent love/hate messages you won’t find too many real requests.

What I resist to do is to support single users via 1:1 conversation or excessive mail threads. That’s a big NoNo for me and help seeking people should better understand that there is more competence to be found in an open conversation on the TXP forum.

IMHO microblogging is pretty dead when it comes to more complex subjects like CMS. Even in an environment with sophisticated threaded views there is not much action happening. I’d love to see more action in this Textpattern group (or somewhere else) but microblogging in this context is pretty dead.

(And no, I am not willing to support switching this thread towards a forum structure discussion.)

Destry · 2011-06-22 14:38:54

merz1 wrote:

(And no, I am not willing to support switching this thread towards a forum structure discussion.)

Me either.

I’m simply trying to say there are two sides to the greater good of things—user support and product promotion. This community has a tendency to focus on the former and completely neglect the latter (though typical of a developer-only lead project). What I was trying to say with regard to the forum earlier is that a more distributed used of modern tools alongside the forum (itself paired down to essentials) continues to provide support while at the same time aides Txp promotion. As long as the forum is everything for this community, Txp will never be effectively promoted.

Another point I was trying to make was about the specific nature of tools—each have strengths and weaknesses. Twitter is about guiding people more than having discussions; sharing links, making announcements, etc. So, for example, a blog article is written at .com, and at the same time twitter is announcing it and providing a link back to it. But not just .com blog posts, any blog post anywhere about Txp. Facebook, OTOH, is perfect for discussions (even has a discussion tool, and photo albums). The community meetups, which have the potential for photographs, etc, would be one ideal thing to manage through a Textpattern Facebook site, thereby getting the eyes of many thousands more people than any thread in this forum could ever hope for. (The Txp FB site seems to be a “fan” page, but I think a FB group or something would be better, wouldn’t it? I’m not a FB expert, so I’m not sure about the differences with FB tools.) Even this forum, which is mostly used by this community (habitually), isn’t used very well, and somewhat contributing to the fact other sites/tools aren’t used as effectively as they could be in relation, which, again, undermines the promotional side of things.

Btw, isn’t anybody else sick of the forum spam? Most thread notifications I get about new posts are actually dead ends to a spam comment that was deleted. That’s not helping anybody. Surely we can do better than that with a more leveraged use of tools, and at the same time promote Txp better by doing so.

Last edited by Destry (2011-06-23 12:55:51)

Destry · 2011-06-22 15:03:32

I’m following @Markus_Merz for this tweet alone.

Destry · 2011-06-23 00:04:14

Destry wrote:

Textpattern has a Facebook site…

Revealing how out of touch I am with progress, I rediscovered today via this thread that there are two Txp locations on Facebook: the Txp fan page and the Txp group. The fan page is pretty meaningless against the group; the latter providing more ways to interact with it. I made a couple of relevant posts in the group.

michaelkpate · 2011-06-23 01:32:34

Destry wrote:

The fan page is pretty meaningless against the group; the latter providing more ways to interact with it

If you go to the top of the page, though, you may have missed…

This group is scheduled to be archived. Over the next few months, Facebook will be archiving all groups created using the old groups format. When this group is archived, its wall posts, photos and discussion threads will move to the new groups format, but group members will need to be re-added.

We actually need someone to make a new group at some point.

Destry · 2011-06-23 07:10:32

I saw it. The switch is automatic, so the group location isn’t actually lost, just modernized, or so it seems. We only need to keep an eye on it and make announcements when the switch happens so people realign with it.

Bloke · 2011-06-23 07:56:31

Destry wrote:

there are two Txp locations on Facebook

If you search on Facebook itself, there are 3:

The “Product/Service” which is the most complete imo, although doesn’t have a discussion group (I wonder if this is because of the “type” of the page as you alluded to earlier)
The “Organization”
The “Group” (with the old logo)

I thought Robert had control of these so I asked if I could become an admin of the various page so I can start adding stuff to them like the dicsussion board, setting things up writing blog posts, etc. But he has nothing to do with any of them.

Clearly someone set the pages up and administers them. We need to find out who (and Facebook customer service is an oxymoron). Then we can decide how to proceed (i.e. which one(s) we keep and what the focus should be). If anyone knows who owns the pages or can find out, please holler. The “Group” lists its admins, but the Product/Service and Organization pages don’t.

I wrote a Textpattern Facebook app ages ago and was in a dialogue with Stuart over sucking dedicatde content from .com to go into a FB tab. That kind of stalled for various reasons but if I was a page admin I could continue with this avenue as well.

lister · 2011-06-23 10:50:28

I’m not being funny but if it’s awareness you want posting items on a textpattern facebook page isn’t enough. You need to drive people to that page for new users to like. But how do this? For too long Textpattern is a great tool with a small voice. I’m one of those people, who, sort of gets textpattern, but have always strived for more helpful content ie tutorials, downloads, advice, etc which demonstrates a clear basic walk through. Marie Poulin’s post at fuelyourcoding.com was really helpful for a newbie.

I often visit smashing magazine, noupe and webdesign.tutsplus.com, I read net and Web Design.. all with a clear fan base. I’m sure if there we’re more articles posted there, with a clear walk through; tutorials, demos and videos, people would sit up and take note and maybe explore more and follow. Having a Youtube or Vimeo channel with tips and tricks.

I know smashing magazine had an article a few years ago explaining the core benefits of textpattern, but this should have been followed up with more articles…? If you want to get more noticed, posting on these forums, getting a few responses, and then leaving it for another few years isn’t enough…

Last edited by lister (2011-06-23 10:52:51)

Destry · 2011-06-23 12:36:06

Bloke wrote:

Clearly someone set the pages up and administers them. We need to find out who (and Facebook customer service is an oxymoron). Then we can decide how to proceed (i.e. which one(s) we keep and what the focus should be).

I contacted Amit Varia^* , the creator of the group. His contact form does’t work (nothing sends), so I sent him a message on FB. I’ve offered to share admin duties, or take it over entirely (I’ll get Stef on board too).

As for the Fan page, I was under the impression it was Mary who created that?

^* There should be a rule: If you’re going to manage a Textpattern resource, you should have a website that is powered by Textpattern. :)

lister wrote:

I’m not being funny but if it’s awareness you want posting items on a textpattern facebook page isn’t enough. You need to drive people to that page for new users to like.

Yes. I think we can all agree that just having the tools doesn’t make them work. There needs to be a plan for their use, which is harmonious across all the existing resources. And each tool needs to be used in context to it’s respective strengths and audiences.

I would add that the center stone of it all is the textpattern.com website, which could use some more attention, but getting all the tools accounted for (what we seem to be doing here) is a good first step.

philwareham · 2011-06-23 13:39:04

lister brings up some valid points I think. SmashingMag and Envanto Tuts+ are so popular now that any articles posted there regarding Textpattern are bound to generate some new interest and awareness.

I’ve got a (unfinished) sideproject to create an easier to use/understand default theme for new TXP users to learn from and pick apart, maybe elements of that could be lifted to form part of an article. Maybe. Maybe not.

SmashingMag seem to always be looking for new contributors and content, so I’m sure they would be open to publishing some articles on Textpattern.

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#13 2011-06-21 13:03:05

Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

#14 2011-06-22 10:35:12

Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

#19 2011-06-23 01:32:34

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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#24 2011-06-23 13:39:04

Re: I had never heard of it (Textpattern) before

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