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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
+1 for core plugins
+1 for a proper search
Dozy P My attempt at music
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
artagesw wrote:
BTW, re contact forms, I’m planning on porting my Escher form plugin over to Txp. It is capable of handling practically any type of form – not just contact forms – including multi-step forms and multiple forms per page.
Nice to hear … Thanks!
I can see Phil’s argument about Plugins, and i guess the image edits ones are best served outside of core.
But I do favour the Core/CorePlugins approach. I think there is a strong case for having a TxP_Lite and TxP_Enhanced.
…. texted postive
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
philwareham wrote:
@Dimitri
I’m not sure ‘pathetic’ is the right word to use – we are not charging you up to $299 per install after all. Maybe if we were then that feature would be here right here right now.
I agree. The two products are for different set of users / and applications.
I am big fan of EE and TxP, but we don’t need to denigrate one just because it’s not as “feature rich”.
There is room for both in our toolkit.
Lets play nice and support the TxP team who are doing an excellent job with the updating of Textpattern and the Communication Channels.
Last edited by bici (2012-07-27 04:48:38)
…. texted postive
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
Another wish is for something like “Content Chunks” : A way to have a user editable form or area where oft used text could be updated by the user e.g.. a Footer Area, an Address Area etc.
…. texted postive
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
Why don’t you use articles in an internal section for that?
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
wet wrote:
Why don’t you use articles in an internal section for that?
That would work, i just never that of it before, partly because it seems over-kill. I’ll give it a go on my new site that i am working on.
…. texted postive
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
There is no overkilll in Textpattern. Articles are where our user-editable content lives, that’s why we have permissions set up the way they are. Looks like a perfect fit.
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
Bici, wet… I’m assuming you’re talking about the ‘chunks’?
I’m not sure what Bici had in mind exactly, but we’ve talked about the idea of chunking before, just not using that term. We talked about the idea in terms of custom fields; extending them so that if you wanted real chunks tied to a given article, they would become textarea boxes and positioned in column with the other main article textarea boxes (excerpt, body…).
If you’ve ever done much reading about enterprise content management, or followed talk about using XML or DITA for structuring content, you’ll see “content chunks” or “chunking” used a lot. It’s nearly an industry term, at least with the practitioners.
Custom chunks could function anywhere, such as meta descriptions in templates, pull-quotes in articles, etc. Even more interesting, they could be bits-o-text that you might want to hide in mobile devices and show in desktop; or even alternate versions (more concise) of excerpts and bodies that are served to mobile. The possibilities are endless, and it seems pretty easy to get at via unlimited and flexible custom boxes.
The difference, which you probably recognize, is that you don’t have to use multiple articles (or combinations of articles and forms) for chunks or alternate versions of content; instead it’s all tied together to a single article and easily edited in one place.
In that case, maybe “custom fields” isn’t the best name for them since that was used when they were all just text fields. Instead, maybe something like “custom chunks”, or “content partials”, or whatever, to help suggest what they’re for.
Whether or not it’s achieved via advancement of custom fields, or by some other approach, having more customizable chunks available per article and editable in the Write panel in context would be very useful.
Good interview here of Karen McGrane by UIE (Jared Spool and gang), with lots of context about chunking, why few CMSs are getting it, and why it’s important for the mobile horizon.
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
Yep. as you outline. Chunks/ Snippets etc BUT they need to be able to include custom fields so that we, the designer, can control the “look” via CSS and the user can simply change the plain text. Using articles would also work if they had custom fields.
For example if i want to have the user change images that are part of a jquery slideshow what is the structure that can accommodate this?
…. texted postive
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
This reminds me that in a future release perhaps the images can be freed up from being in the DB. Is this being considered?
I keep all site specific images relating to design in my /assets/images/ directory. But end-users cannot upload/delete images from such a sub-directory e.g.. a assets/usrimages/ dir. One reason is that if during an update or new installation … if the TxP images/ folder gets over-ridden…poof!
…. texted postive
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
bici wrote:
This reminds me that in a future release perhaps the images can be freed up from being in the DB. Is this being considered?
No. We need a place an image’s meta data like alt text, dimensions.
One reason is that if during an update or new installation … if the TxP images/ folder gets over-ridden…poof!
I cannot image how this would occur. The update procedure never touches existing preferences in an incompatible way.
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
Destry wrote:
If you’ve ever done much reading about enterprise content management
I’ve built a bit with TYPO3. Please stop ;)
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
bici,
I don’t know about slideshows, but maybe there’s two levels of additional structure being talked about here:
- content types
- content chunks
Types are like what have been talked about by others before, where they would be defined at the article level in some way and then use in the publishing flow in that context. Content types might be FAQs, book reviews, newsletters, product descriptions… to give a few examples.
Chunks, as I mean them, are atomic parts of a single article. Just like we already have author, publish date, title, excerpt, article image… etc. We could theoretically extend these components for longer text blurbs through better use of custom boxes. Again, example are meta descriptions, pull-quotes, teasers… you name it.
With these two kinds of content structure abilities, happening at two different structural levels, things could get really interesting.
wet:,
I haven’t had the displeasure of Typo3, but I’ll stop beating the dog since I know I’ve been heard, and hope for the best. ;)
Sam,
+1 on core plugins
+1 on multi-use forms
Other plugins I think should be core (or core plugins), since it was asked…
- sed_default_article_status (though I really think this plugin works in reverse of what it should if core was that way: draft by default then change to live)
- wet_article_info (or something similar)
Just off the top of my head.
Last edited by Destry (2012-08-09 15:01:40)
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
I think that default plugins might be the wrong term. I would go for “preferences” (features which we could switch on or off).
- zcr is a plugin which most people are using
- mlp to bring txp to the international market
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: What features would you take from ExpressionEngine
More relevant reading about why types and chunks are so useful. (And why any CMS that provides for this going forward will have a big leg up on the competition.)
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