Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
A Few Questions About TextPattern's Features
Hi guys. I’m new here. So, I’m planning to change my CMS to Textpattern, but first, I need a few questions answered regarding its capabilities.
These questions are those I couldn’t find answers for in the How do I…? list and the plugins directory. I’m fairly new to the system of textpattern, so I do apologize in advance if I wasn’t able to find something there but is supposedly there. I guess I just didn’t word it right.
You see, I have been using Fusion News for around 2 years now, but development has been excruciatingly slow with only one person developing it. I had to ask that one person for so many custom code modifications before I could get it looking like this: http://www.abyssalchronicles.com/indexv3previewtesttralalalalaaaa.php
I searched around and found Textpattern to be actively in development, looking easy enough to use and with a big community, so I thought this one was a good option.
Before I dive in though, I was wondering if it could do the following?
- Will Textpattern allow having the FN entries still online in my site, and just have TextPattern above it? (i.e. Textpattern will start posting above the last FN post, and pretty much just… bury it, or something). You see, FN is a solely PHP-powered CMS that just focuses on blogging/news posting. It stores the posts in little PHP files and just uses a show PHP code in the homepage to fetch those posts. The problem is, all of my posts there are already linked from various places such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and N4G.com. I can’t simply “remove” them, so to speak.
- So I checked and there are various plugins that support a bunch of avatar formats (gravatar, etc.), but does it allow Avatar URLs? What I mean is, can there be an additional field in the comments forms wherein the user can just post a URL of the icon he/she wants to use? i.e. tinypic.com/dfghj.jpg
- You see, I used to design and write the other parts of my site with nothing but just Notepad and Photoshop. Is TextPattern like Wordpress where you have to place parts of the layout in files/pieces, or can it just be integrated? Or specifically, would it be hard to integrate my layout into TextPattern? I’m guessing the tags are used to build the code, essentially? Thanks.
I guess that’s pretty much it for now. I’m sorry if I wasn’t able to find any of these while I was searching.
If this will be a clockwork fate, destroy it and set me free. – Maze (Pandora Hearts)
Offline
Re: A Few Questions About TextPattern's Features
All your article pages have an URL that ends with something like fn_id=795 where that number appears to be a unique ID for that article. If you use an URL scheme for TXP that also includes that ID, you should be able to redirect all requests for the old URLs to the new TXP based URLs.
This does require migrating the article content (and comments, which aren’t working on your website at the moment) to TXP, storing them in the TXP database while preserving the old article IDs.
Or simply keep the old content where it is now and put new content in TXP. TXP can run alongside FN.
It’s probably quite easy to create the design you have right now in Textpattern (using special TXP tags, yes). The layout is stored in the database as well. You edit it through a web-interface.
I can’t answer the avatar question (never used them).
Offline
Re: A Few Questions About TextPattern's Features
- You see, I used to design and write the other parts of my site with nothing but just Notepad and Photoshop. Is TextPattern like Wordpress where you have to place parts of the layout in files/pieces, or can it just be integrated? Or specifically, would it be hard to integrate my layout into TextPattern? I’m guessing the tags are used to build the code, essentially? Thanks.
A lot of people start by doing View Source->Copy All->Paste into default Textpattern page, erasing whatever’s already there. Then you can work through each section and split things like menus, footers, etc. into forms, which are what Textpattern calls the “files/pieces” you refer to. But you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. It just makes it easier to re-use the same code rather than duplicating it in several places.
The tags are used to build the dynamic parts of the website. Beginners seem to like to start out with <txp:site_url /> (for putting in things like CSS and JS links in the header — <txp:site_url />css/my-styles.css for example ) and <txp:site_name /> in places like the header: <h1>Welcome to <txp:site_name /></h1>
Give it a try, you’ll probably like it. It’s a step up from using Notepad and Photoshop :-)
Offline
Re: A Few Questions About TextPattern's Features
ruud wrote:
All your article pages have an URL that ends with something like
fn_id=795where that number appears to be a unique ID for that article. If you use an URL scheme for TXP that also includes that ID, you should be able to redirect all requests for the old URLs to the new TXP based URLs.
This does require migrating the article content (and comments, which aren’t working on your website at the moment) to TXP, storing them in the TXP database while preserving the old article IDs.
Or simply keep the old content where it is now and put new content in TXP. TXP can run alongside FN.
Oh right. That was because the demo page just underwent some code changes (prior to posting here, I was asking the FN developer if those avatar things I asked can be allowed. He tried a code change and it… yeah, didn’t work >_<; He said he’ll need more time on it because of other things, and I pretty much decided to just switch to a new CMS after that. The working (horrendously designed, I’m sorry. That layout’s from 3 years ago) working version is in the site’s homepage (http://www.abyssalchronicles.com).
And hrmm, the exporting thing, I’m having a problem with. Maybe it’s because I haven’t exactly started studying the structure of TXP. For now, I think I’ll try running it alongside FN. But once I study TXP a bit more, maybe I can do what you suggested.
ruud wrote:
It’s probably quite easy to create the design you have right now in Textpattern (using special TXP tags, yes). The layout is stored in the database as well. You edit it through a web-interface.
Ah, thanks. It seems easy enough.
ruud wrote:
I can’t answer the avatar question (never used them).
I see. I guess I can ask that in a different thread altogether.
maruchan wrote:
Give it a try, you’ll probably like it. It’s a step up from using Notepad and Photoshop :-)
Thanks. About that though. What I sort of fear is if my current design will be able to transfer looking the same once I use TXTP. This is going to be a stupid question, but it does allow HTML and CSS in those “pieces”, yes?
Thanks for all your help :).
Last edited by a745 (2012-01-22 02:21:34)
If this will be a clockwork fate, destroy it and set me free. – Maze (Pandora Hearts)
Offline
#5 2012-01-22 15:41:01
- els
- Moderator
- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: A Few Questions About TextPattern's Features
a745 wrote:
What I sort of fear is if my current design will be able to transfer looking the same once I use TXTP. This is going to be a stupid question, but it does allow HTML and CSS in those “pieces”, yes?
Yes it does. Your site can look exactly the same after integrating Textpattern. Here are some links that may be helpful:
The first two are great for understanding Txp’s workings, the third one contains some video tutorials about moving an existing design to a Textpattern installation.
Last edited by els (2012-01-22 15:42:25)
Offline
Re: A Few Questions About TextPattern's Features
a745 wrote:
So I checked and there are various plugins that support a bunch of avatar formats (gravatar, etc.), but does it allow Avatar URLs? What I mean is, can there be an additional field in the comments forms wherein the user can just post a URL of the icon he/she wants to use? i.e. tinypic.com/dfghj.jpg
Custom Fields in Comments have been asked about here and here and seriously discussed here but unfortunately there hasn’t been a lot of movement in this area unless I am missing something.
Offline