Learning Textpattern building my own site

GuyVerville · 2011-09-26 12:45:53

I am very pleased to have found Textpattern. This is a breath of, perhaps old, but fresh air in the CMS world where everything can be so much complicated. I do Drupal websites, but I find the CMS quite slow, hard to maintain (always a security patch to implement somewhere…). I am not an expert in PHP, but I can manage.

I tried to learn Typo3, it was worst. Then Textpattern. :-)

What you will see is not complete (and mostly in French, except a translation in the Bio section). With this site, I want to know if Textpattern will be fit for:

create a multilanguage site (and easily)
create a private section with a self subscription mechanism (some photos taken by me are not for all eyes)
create a blog
see if companies like (www.innergex.com [site actually in Drupal] could be made into Textpattern [i am very doubtful though]

www.guyverville.com

My feelings about Textpattern for now are:

Textpattern, except the official portal, looks verrrrrry old and obsolete. I am afraid this CMS will not be ported to more advanced Web technologies
How is it secure?
While I like Textile (which Google+ seems to adopt), is it friendly enough for my clients who will maintain their own site?

If i can see real possibilities here, I will be quite ready to propose Textpattern for my clients, and ask them give money to the organization to continue their good work (well, it will be part of my fees, they will not know I will pay you ;-) ).

Anyway, good luck to all of you.

Last edited by GuyVerville (2011-09-26 12:50:37)

colak · 2011-09-26 13:18:12

HI Guy and welcome to txp.

1. create a multilanguage site (and easily)

Can be done. You will need the mlp pack but it can also be achieved without it

2. create a private section with a self subscription mechanism (some photos taken by me are not for all eyes)

Self register plugin could be of help or smd_access_keys might be easier.

3. create a blog

No problem.

4. see if companies like (www.innergex.com [site actually in Drupal] could be made into Textpattern [i am very doubtful though]

yes they can:)

1. Textpattern, except the official portal, looks verrrrrry old and obsolete.

I’m not certain as to what you imply by that because the official portal is made with textpattern.

I am afraid this CMS will not be ported to more advanced Web technologies

txp is a php/mysql cms. If you are talking about other languages/databases you are right. There are no plans for that. But yet again Drupal has the same requirements.

2. How is it secure?

I’ll leave the devs to answer this one.

3. While I like Textile (which Google+ seems to adopt), is it friendly enough for my clients who will maintain their own site?

There are also a couple of wysiwyg plugins

GuyVerville · 2011-09-26 13:25:08

Thank you for your insights. What I meant about Textpattern being ported to modern technologies, was simply wondering if the CMS has a real future or is it dying slowly… (Drupal development is very active)

The sites www.innergex.com and cartv.gouv.qc.ca use a bunch of custom fields and are a patchwork of data coming from many parts of the same sites. I will try to rebuild one of them in Textpattern to see how it is easy (or not) to do so.

Bloke · 2011-09-26 13:43:37

GuyVerville wrote:

see if companies like (www.innergex.com [site actually in Drupal] could be made into Textpattern

If you browse the “Let’s see yours, then” forum you’ll find all manner of corporate sites designed by Textpattern achitects. People have also ported sites from other CMSs to Txp succcessfully and then added flair to them with the power of Textpattern’s tags and plugins.

Our original showcase site (WeLoveTxp.com) has not been accepting new submissions for a while but we’ve just (this week) kicked off a project to rectify that and bring attention to the wealth of sites our community create.

I am afraid this CMS will not be ported to more advanced Web technologies

Not sure on what you base your ‘obsolete’ comment — I added a commit less than an hour ago. Sure the out-of-the-box template looks old school. But that’s just a template. The new one committed last month to the next version of Textpattern is more modern looking. But again it’s just a template to give a flavour of what the Textpatten tags can do. Very few people use the default for their own sites.

With regards porting, work is (ahem, slowly) underway at porting the code to a more modern framework. The framework supports databases other than MySQL if you are worried about that and wish to use something else. If you mean PHP, well, yeah, hmmmm. For good or bad it’s here to stay for a while (and not just in Textpattern but for WordPress and Drupal and Joomla and…)

How is it secure?

Versions 4.4.0 and 4.4.1 incorporated major security upgrades to counter the rising tide of CSRF and other web-based attacks. We take security and stability very seriously (which is why we don’t issue a new version every few weeks!)

While I like Textile (which Google+ seems to adopt), is it friendly enough for my clients who will maintain their own site?

Depends how you class ‘friendly’. It’s simpler and uses fewer keystrokes than BBCode so if anyone is used to posting in forums it should be easy. And after a brief bit of training it really does become second nature and a lot quicker than stopping typing, selecting text, clicking an icon and typing paramaters into boxes. But as colak says, if you really want to offer a wysiwyg editor there are a few plugins to choose from. And they can co-exist with Textile so you can offer a choice to your user base.

Hope that helps.

GuyVerville · 2011-09-26 13:48:53

Thank you, Stef. I am already appreciating your work here (already had added some of your useful plugins in my site). I know where to ask questions now, anyway. I’m glad to have found Textpattern!

Dragondz · 2011-09-26 14:50:30

Hi

Question to GuyVerville: how did you find Textpattern?

GuyVerville · 2011-09-26 14:52:28

From a The Next Web article .

tye · 2011-09-26 23:47:10

I find the CMS quite slow

TXP is fast… all my clients love it, I love it :)

hard to maintain (always a security patch to implement somewhere…)

I upgrade my own sites and the process is very simple (believe me, I fail at tech stuff) – not many patches to install

philwareham · 2011-09-27 09:38:49

@GuyVerville

If by modern technologies you mean the admin-side look/structure and front-side templates. I’m currently working on new versions of both. The first cut of the front-side default theme is already in the subversion (in development) version of Textpattern as of revision 3591 onwards – and the admin-side is in early development stages (a preview will be available in due course).

GuyVerville · 2011-09-27 11:57:14

This is promisng, according to what I see on your company website!

ploinkr · 2011-10-07 23:52:21

Bonjour Guy, bienvenue dans la communauté!
That’d be great to see a QC gov. site running on Textpattern :)
I personally found the learning curve a bit steep at times (mind you, that was my first experience with a CMS) but now that I’m looking at other CMSes for the sake of diversification, I find the language more intuitive than most.
B.

GuyVerville · 2011-10-08 01:59:42

Hello B.
I do hope Textpattern will fulfill my needs. I’m still struggling with a lot of things albeit the fact that, at the core, this is simple. Textpattern will have to evolve a bit to be able to compete with Drupal though. I am actually trying to resolve two things: self-registration and multilingualism. The worst parts are those plugins that are no more maintained.

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#1 2011-09-26 12:45:53

Learning Textpattern building my own site

#2 2011-09-26 13:18:12

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#3 2011-09-26 13:25:08

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#4 2011-09-26 13:43:37

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#5 2011-09-26 13:48:53

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#6 2011-09-26 14:50:30

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#7 2011-09-26 14:52:28

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#8 2011-09-26 23:47:10

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#9 2011-09-27 09:38:49

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#10 2011-09-27 11:57:14

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#11 2011-10-07 23:52:21

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

#12 2011-10-08 01:59:42

Re: Learning Textpattern building my own site

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