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#37 2011-06-28 16:37:50

philwareham
Core designer
From: Haslemere, Surrey, UK
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 3,564
Website GitHub Mastodon

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

I know I’ve said it a number of times, but I still think one of the main problems when evangelising to potential new users is that the default core themes are so bloomin’ ugly and uninviting. Something I’m trying to counter here and here.

Last edited by philwareham (2011-06-28 16:39:37)

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#38 2011-06-28 18:21:00

michaelkpate
Moderator
From: Avon Park, FL
Registered: 2004-02-24
Posts: 1,379
Website GitHub Mastodon

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

Destry wrote:

You know what I mean, keeping the core light and using plugins for extensibility rather than integrating everything people scream out.

I have been digging into stuff lately and finding some things a bit confusing because I had never explored them before. If everything were this simple:

everything is a page. You’d then apply rules to the relationships. For example, If page is two levels deep and the parent = (parent-title) then apply this template. – Subsections

Alas,

Basically, I think the problem is that we are unnecessarily associating a function (cross section aggregation), with a specific position in the layout of a website (front page), and then confusing everything even more by using the same term to describe a fall-back page layout. – Default section and Front page not the same anymore

TXP uses the front page by default for category lists, unless you tell it otherwise by using the section or this_section attribute in category_list. – No Article Tag on ‘Default’ page Causing No Category Listing

So, if your authors have contributed to more than one section, you must ensure that all those sections have show on front page selected in order to see them in the author list on the front page. It’s just the way TXP works. – Why txp:author links to frontpage

What always used to catch me out is that any call to <txp:article> in your default page template when q= is in the URL triggers search results via the search_form form. Since txp:article is clever and is automatically context sensitive, it doesn’t matter whether you use if_search or not — that’s just a convenience function – Disabling search_results?

Telling people to inhale the Semantic Model definitely helps them in the long run, but to repeat this bit of advice from someone much wiser than I:

If people come to planet Textpattern and are immediately forced to start asking questions in the forum, we’ve failed them. – User docs are one thing, but what about Txp content in general?

I think there is a better balance yet to be achieved.

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#39 2011-06-28 18:38:01

maruchan
Member
From: Ukiah, California
Registered: 2010-06-12
Posts: 590
Website

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

I know I’ve said it a number of times, but I still think one of the main problems when evangelising to potential new users is that the default core themes are so bloomin’ ugly and uninviting. Something I’m trying to counter here and here.

I Like This. Have you identified the decision maker for getting this stuff included as default? I mean, if all we have to do is harass Wet or something, I’ll be all over it. :-)

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#40 2011-06-28 19:07:05

wet
Developer Emeritus
From: Schoerfling, Austria
Registered: 2005-06-06
Posts: 3,323
Website Mastodon

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

Gentlemen, start harassing.

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#41 2011-06-28 19:10:56

maruchan
Member
From: Ukiah, California
Registered: 2010-06-12
Posts: 590
Website

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

Gentlemen, start harassing.

lol. Well, one point for the Hive theme being default, IMO: This recent tweet

That’s in addition to all the other points. It’s a really excellent theme and matches a certain front-end theme on offer from the same designer.

Wet, what sort of issues stand in the way of such a transition to new defaults? Waiting for TXP 5?

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#42 2011-06-28 19:15:06

wet
Developer Emeritus
From: Schoerfling, Austria
Registered: 2005-06-06
Posts: 3,323
Website Mastodon

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

Licensing has to be cleared. I’m talking to Phil. And I want the menu select dropdown on the admin side.

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#43 2011-06-28 19:48:56

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

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

wet wrote:

Licensing has to be cleared. I’m talking to Phil. And I want the menu select dropdown on the admin side.

If this happens, a new default theme for the front end, are forms going to be cleaned up? By cleaning up I mean remove forms that are not used (lofi), using links (lowercase) as the default as opposed to plainlinks, and protecting what needs protecting, etc.

Aside from a nicer default front end theme, having the backend forms cleaned up and logical would go a long way to helping new users understand Textpattern way faster. I know when I began using Textpattern, I scratched my head for a while wondering what all the forms were for. I had patience and persevered but we can’t expect everyone to take the time to figure things out before they get frustrated and moving on.

Robert, when you’re creating the txpsql.php file, is it just copy/paste from a MySQL dump via a text editor or do you have another way to create it for releases?

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#44 2011-06-28 20:18:57

michaelkpate
Moderator
From: Avon Park, FL
Registered: 2004-02-24
Posts: 1,379
Website GitHub Mastodon

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

hcgtv wrote:

I know when I began using Textpattern, I scratched my head for a while wondering what all the forms were for. I had patience and persevered but we can’t expect everyone to take the time to figure things out before they get frustrated and moving on.

See Also. I absolute think that we need to get rid of the sample forms that have been hanging around forever. If they aren’t called somewhere by something, they shouldn’t be there.

One thing I really like about Phil’s design is the fact that no images are required so we can get ride of the two pre-loaded images as well. That way, when users begin adding their own images, they can start with 1 instead of 3.

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#45 2011-06-28 20:37:21

philwareham
Core designer
From: Haslemere, Surrey, UK
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 3,564
Website GitHub Mastodon

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

Hi again people, thanks for the props.

The mobile responsive amendments to the Hive admin theme are coming along pretty well so far, I’ve got it working on my test iPhone 3GS to a certain degree but still needs plenty of work. It already works well on an iPad so has not been a massive task to shrink it down. Had to be a bit creative with the CSS in places with this whole theme to design round some limitations inherent in the HTML structure of the admin code so it’s not the prettiest CSS I’ve ever written.

I’d be quite happy to provide some front-end design to future incarnations of TXP – whether that is the Hive theme itself or something that evolves from that initial work. Don’t know what the licensing implications are but would be willing to discuss with Wet, Bloke, Sam and Jeff at some point – naturally I’d just hand over any IP rights onto the Textpattern project itself.

Maybe I should upload this admin theme to Github at some point, as I have already done for for the front-side theme project. Then others could get involved in shaping it, or at the very least stop me going off down the wrong road.

I don’t know anything about your plans for TXP5 but I’d imagine you’ll probably be looking at changing at least some of the admin structure and front-side templates for it, anyway I’m hopefully meeting up with Bloke in early September so I was going to hopefully get some info from him as to future plans.

There would also probably be great benefits to designing a whole UI style bible as part of that new version, with set rules on how plugin authors should layout their own HTML, as I’ve found that a massive headache when designing an admin theme (lots of inline CSS and duplicate IDs and suchlike). That would also mean providing them enough core UI widgets so that they don’t need to constantly reinvent the wheel to get their plugin layout looking acceptable.

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#46 2011-06-28 20:44:51

philwareham
Core designer
From: Haslemere, Surrey, UK
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 3,564
Website GitHub Mastodon

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

One thing I really like about Phil’s design is the fact that no images are required so we can get ride of the two pre-loaded images as well. That way, when users begin adding their own images, they can start with 1 instead of 3.

Agree totally (that’s why I’ve purposely used no images in that design), in fact IMO no theme-related images should ever be part of a CMS (especially not as part of a default install anyway), since they are part of the design itself not the site content. That way, when you come to redesign your site in future you’ve not got a load of redundant images in your CMS database.

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#47 2011-06-28 21:38:59

artagesw
Member
From: Seattle, WA
Registered: 2007-04-29
Posts: 227
Website

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

philwareham wrote:

Agree totally (that’s why I’ve purposely used no images in that design), in fact IMO no theme-related images should ever be part of a CMS (especially not as part of a default install anyway), since they are part of the design itself not the site content. That way, when you come to redesign your site in future you’ve not got a load of redundant images in your CMS database.

This is only an issue when the CMS does not distinguish between images used for content and those used for design.

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#48 2011-06-28 21:57:14

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

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

artagesw wrote:

This is only an issue when the CMS does not distinguish between images used for content and those used for design.

Correct, front side themes should have an images directory, just like the admin themes has. When I first started creating themes, I used a subdirectory off of /images, like /images/kubrick, etc. Now that I use a plugin, everything resides under _templates, as in _templates/kubrick/images.

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