4.6 issue of TXP Magazine

Destry · 2014-03-21 08:44:41

It’s no mystery that TXP has been sitting idle for a while. The main reason being a lack of article contributions, and a lack of editor time to blow magic powder into the cauldron. There’s also the need for some front-end changes (see notes about changes, if you’re so inclined), which have long since been in the domain of Phil, and we all know he’s been busy. But, again, the real reason for lack of activity at the magazine is the lack of articles.

In truth our article submission form does get the occasional proposal from fly-by-night writers who will write any ol’ crap just to get link backs to whatever self-serving campaign they’re operating under. The kind of people who contribute to content farms like ask.com, about.com, etc. As long as I’m TXP’s editor, there won’t be any of that crap. I want genuine content from genuine digital people. It doesn’t always have to be about Textpattern. We have a defined range of possible topic areas someone can write under. This broader scope is important in order for the magazine to serve its purpose as content marketing channel for the Textpattern project. (I hate to make it sound so base, but that is the truth.) But it’s only effective if there are articles being published on a more regular basis.

Getting to the point, it would be great to have a Textpattern 4.6 release issue of TXP. Several articles, where each addresses a new feature or functional change in Textpattern 4.6, and does so at sufficient length to make them insightful tutorials as well. Some might be shorter, like introduction and demo of the upcoming Markdown filter, and others will be longer, like new custom fields functionality. Likewise, some will appeal to weekend website owners (e.g., Markdown), and others will appeal to TXP developers, like the new tag registry functionality that I’ve heard mention of.

This would be much better than having one really long .com blog post that tries to cover all the changes at once, or (as it would probably turn out), one medium length blog post that doesn’t sufficiently describe new features enough. And it gives a reason to focus on the magazine again — jumpstart the ol’ jalopy.

Now we come full circle, because in order to make this happen, someone has to write those articles, and that’s not me. I am editor, however, so I can contribute greatly to that side of things. If English isn’t your native language, or writing in general isn’t your strong point, don’t worry about that. That’s what I’m for. Anyone writing these articles would need strong insights to what these new 4.6 changes are, which means if it’s not the developers themselves (ideally) doing the writing, then it’s someone who bugs the crap out of those developers to get sufficient details for putting the articles together. I.e., doing journalism 101.

That’s my proposal on the table. Let’s see who’s willing to sail.

I’d recommend a list of topics (new 4.6 features) be created first and go from there. I’ve mentioned three ideas already, what are some others?

Destry · 2014-03-21 09:31:40

I should probably point this out… The new custom fields work that Steph is deep into is going to be a huge step up for Textpattern. Huge! You probably don’t know that people in the content strategy circles are all abuzz right now about the content structuring/modeling limitations of available CMSes (below component content management systems), and the fact that not enough is written about for those systems that can provide such structuring abilties to some degree. You might know, however, of some visible content strategists like Karen McGrane talking about these things from the authoring perspective, but there are also developers talking about it from the technical side too, like Jeff Eaton (a Drupal boy), who wrote this for ALA recently, The battle for the body field.

Jeff is a member in the CSF community, and he and I were both agreeing that more articles are needed from respective CMS camps (discussion in this thread), specifically around the content structuring abilities of their tools; i.e., what can be done, how, and what the limits are. I’ve taken up the challenge to write such an article about Textpattern for publication in CSF. My intention is to do so with a forward look to 4.6 capabilities. I could, however, write that article for the magazine, but honestly, an article by Steph in the magazine from a developer point of view, and one by me in CSF from a “strategist” point of view would be doubly valuable for Textpattern exposure.

Point is… the new custom field capabilities that are coming for Textpattern could be a game-changer for Textpattern adoption. And with the right marketing, it could happen noticeably fast.

philwareham · 2014-03-21 09:33:14

I can write something about the UI changes and localisation (things like better RTL support)… eventually. Just so little spare time at the moment.

The images as a grid layout will be a 4.6 feature.

There’s an overhauled version of the front-end theme (actually, that’s targeted for 4.5.7) which is more lean and nicer looking.

Destry · 2014-03-21 09:55:56

Phil, that’s great… I see a couple of articles in all that (not suggesting you write them, though you could if you wanted to):

One around image handling changes — a mention of all the different kinds of things that happened, big (image insertion from Write panel) and small (a true “caption” field, not title attribute) that would be of interest to authors/editors.
Another around structural/markup changes (front or back) that would inform (be of interest) to site designers and theme developers.

I’d imagine there’d be a fair amount of cross-linking between various articles in a 4.6 mag issue.

Gocom · 2014-03-21 10:24:16

Writing about working code as a definitive isn’t smart. It’s smart to log development process, but not to present working code, as working code changes.

Let’s point out that none of those things actually exists. No new image handling exists. There is nothing to write until its actually done. Same goes for custom fields. Nothing actually exists. And the underlying PHP code is not final either.

philwareham wrote #279866:

There’s an overhauled version of the front-end theme (actually, that’s targeted for 4.5.7) which is more lean and nicer looking.

Just keep in mind versioning rules. There can be no theme or feature changes in 4.5.7 as its a patch: patches can only make backwards-compatible bug fixes. Even if we wanted to, we can not add features or do structural changes in our patches. If we do, users will not be getting backwards compatible theme in 4.5.7 and their previous work goes to waste. They won’t use the newer version, resulting in boggled bugs and security issues, and our release versions loose their meaning.

Thus the reason why I had to go around and update two years old PHP-Textile versions, branch out and release new legacy updates. All just for backwards compatibility for all those stuck on 2.4.

What we can do, is to release 4.6.0 with that new theme; 4.6.0 that is branched from the upcoming 4.5.7 with the new theme added on top of it. The current dev branch doesn’t have to be come out as version 4.6.0.

philwareham · 2014-03-21 10:49:31

I was hoping the theme could update as it’s independent of standard updates (it only applies at initial installation), but I agree it’s not a bug fix.

Sounds like I need to revert it.

Destry · 2014-03-21 11:16:13

Gocom wrote #279868:

There is nothing to write until its actually done. Same goes for custom fields. Nothing actually exists. And the underlying PHP code is not final either.

Well, duh!? That is the assumption, that when code is in the can, packaged up and 4.6 is ready for release, then the 4.6 mag issue is published too to promote 4.6 and provide valuable insights about making use of the changes.

That means there’s plenty of time for ‘writers’ to take notes, revise, whatever they have to do to get facts straight and ready for editors when the time comes.

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