[docs] Github wiki

hcgtv · 2015-06-29 16:44:40

Destry wrote #292278:

Can we step back and start over?

Sure, I’m easy.

Sorry for taking my TXP frustrations out on you, it’s the reason I stepped away from the forum for 4 years, I was none too happy and rather than sound disgruntled all the time, I stepped back.

Moving forward, I’ll hang for a bit, see if things do actually change with the new blood, like Stef and Phil, what happened to Gocom?. If not, I’ll ride into the sunset, taking with me valuable knowledge that I learned from this excellent community.

There’s one constant in this universe, and that’s change.

Textpattern, the project, has two choices, move forward or retreat, it can’t stand still. The reason Textpattern has lived a quiet existence is that there hasn’t been any forking activity since xPattern, note that the xpattern.net domain points to Textpattern.com now (name brand protection).

I would like to seriously get involved, be part of the team and all that, there’s probably others that feel the same way. It’s been like that for many years, people asking to participate falling on deaf ears, I could dig up the relevant forum posts if anyone is interested in the History of Textpattern.

Keep in mind that xPattern sprung up because those in charge refused to open a branch on SVN for participation by non-core developers, then we forked.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 17:28:11

hcgtv wrote #292281:

I would like to seriously get involved, be part of the team and all that

Great. Whaddya need specifically? Where do you see yourself adding most value? Code? Docs? New sites? Support? Branding? Evangelism? Marketing? All of the above?

I dunno where this “devs hold the keys and nobody’s invited” thing came from. Perhaps it’s a relic from a bygone era. I’ve been asking for aeons for helpers to help motivate me to do stuff. People make noise, come forward, get the access they need and then (as wet eloquently put it) : crickets.

With Github a reality, things have improved drastically. And I’m feeling the vibe again after a period of frustration.

But everything still comes down to the age old enemies: time and resources. Since I sadly can’t manufacture the former, the more of the latter we can get the better.

Destry · 2015-06-29 17:47:08

There’s more to running an Open Source project than just buying up sites to protect your brand.

Coming back to that notion…

Textgarden is now going away in favor for themes.textpattern.com, I think. Smart. And when the wiki docs are vetted to github then .net isn’t needed either. Not really. Redirect that to Github. And, frankly, .org hasn’t been worthwhile in ages, so could put that on ice too (probably a painful subject for Stef, but…).

That’s a lot less domain real estate to worry about in terms of content, development, and branding, thus should help Phil focus on .com more.

Theoretically speaking.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 17:57:04

Destry wrote #292278:

I had my server rights taken from me on the magazine.

I didn’t realise. If I’d known I’d have tried to sort it out, sorry.

Haven’t tried to log in for aeons so my account might well have gone too…

Bloke · 2015-06-29 18:05:17

Destry wrote #292285:

[.org] probably a painful subject for Stef

Not especially. I don’t have the technical smarts to integrate it with all the myriad mechanisms there are out there for source management. Github, BitBucket, personal website… etc.

But I think it’s important that there’s a central repository with a cached copy of the latest plugin from every author. Because too many times plugin authors go away or rejig their sites and things become unavailable, which inconveniences the community. So even if the repo is not the endpoint for developers, it needs to have a means of spidering content (or being informed, simply and easily from approved authors) from an author’s external repo and storing their wares.

From the front-side, the only thing it needs is:

good search
a way to indicate compatibility with Txp versions
a wiki-esque page per plugin for curated content (extra release notes, idiosyncratic behaviour that might trip people up, things that need to be done to make version a.b.c work with Txp x.y.z, that sort of thing)
maybe some periodic “these plugins work well together” articles, perhaps with examples from an author who has put a site together and would like to reveal the magic behind it

Probably not rocket science. See previous comment regarding time and resource constraints. Anyone with any free time or energy can have whatever support we can give to help make that happen.

Destry · 2015-06-29 18:30:33

Bloke wrote #292286:

I didn’t realise. If I’d known I’d have tried to sort it out, sorry.

Haven’t tried to log in for aeons so my account might well have gone too…

A minor annoyance at the time, and a non-issue now. Only my reputation as an editor was tarnished. :/

Truth is, as I mentioned to Bert, the community is too small for a magazine. We gave it a good shot, but neither the writers nor audience is there. How the mag is structured and branded is entirely insignificant in comparison.

In another thread I happened to just notice today, there was an idea for a newsletter. That is a much more workable option for Txp right now, and a txp mono-brand vibe would be appropriate, but you still need the editor.

hcgtv · 2015-06-29 18:36:42

Bloke wrote #292283:

Great. Whaddya need specifically? Where do you see yourself adding most value? Code? Docs? New sites? Support? Branding? Evangelism? Marketing? All of the above?

Let me know what’s on the todo list, and I’ll let you know where I can help.

I already have my Textpattern branded shirt to wear when I’m working.

Can’t wait for the weekly status meetings where I can ask Wet poignant questions, like:

Where does Dean fit into the picture, I know he’s the father of Textpattern but he’s not been around for years?
Why can’t we own the Textpattern domain, set to expire on July 26, 2017?
Who do we actually work for, is this an Open Source project, or are we building value add for an eventual sale to the highest bidder.
What happened to all of Zem’s TXP work, especially interested in his work on templating.

That’s it for now, I’m just full of questions :)

philwareham · 2015-06-29 18:53:25

Hi Bert,

I’ve emailed you the latest snapshot of Textpattern’s Wiki. I will continue some setup of the GitHub Pages site tomorrow in between my day job.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 19:16:23

hcgtv wrote #292290:

I’m just full of questions :)

And that’s why we love having you around. Without questions, things stay the same.

Let me know what’s on the todo list, and I’ll let you know where I can help.

In no particular order:

Marketing, evangelising, brand building, see point (3) of your questions, he says only semi-jokingly ;-)
Site building / content: .org, Themes, Documentation, and .com. Docs exist for The Txp Voice (a.k.a. the Style Guide) that I’m sure Destry will be able to furnish you with. ~~I hunted in Google Docs but came up empty~~ Ah, here it is – let me know if you can’t access it and I’ll tweak permissions. Last time I checked, it laid the groundwork for the tone toward which we should be aiming. The crux of it was common sense: accessible, not overly corporate, and not first person unless necessary. Something like that.
Code. Code. Code:
- I’m going to iteratively tinker with unlimited custom fields in a branch. I have the bare admin-side structure working: a few tweaks and it should at least be viewable and playable, even if not very functional yet. But NOT for people who have glz_cf installed (yet) because it needs a component in there to stop it trampling over your data. Anyway, roll out from there. Any help once I commit the branch, welcome.
- Ditto Themes. I have it set out straight in my head, and the first pass (the simplest Pages, Forms, Styles only, with file system integration), is not hard at all. Again, a new branch for that will be forthcoming (as soon as I’ve committed this first custom-fields branch) and we’ll go from there, building on top of it to expand the functionality. Help appreciated.
- Admin side layout tinkering and integration into master branch. Inline help. A collapsing system for the tag builders. Pophelp improvements. Rolling language packs into core instead of relying on the RPC server.
- i18n: plans for multi-linguality are afoot. I can dig them out if you like and anyone who wants to run with them or improve them can do so.
- Documentation — even just DocBlocks for the remaining functions in the code would be a massive help. I switched over to an unregistered beta of Sublime Text after reading a blog post by our very own Andy Carter and the DocBlockr plugin is damn handy as it analyses your function signature and inserts a DocBlock template with as much detail as it can glean, all automatically filled in with just four keystrokes. Takes a load of the drudgery out of documentation.
- Migrating more stuff to Objects instead of functions. Mainly grunt work, with some opportunities for making things better.
- Optimisations if necessary (see Ruud/etc tag parser speed enhancements).

Any and all of the above would be amazing if you could get stuck in. For the code side, fire up your Github account, clone the repo and get those Pull Requests or feature branches in! Thanks.

EDIT: btw, this isn’t a list of what will necessarily drop in 4.6.0, but it’s all slated for the 4.6.x family, among other things like improving the Images panel (see the tom_image_grid plugin for ideas on where things might be heading), improving image handling on the Write panel, and allowing the panels to be rearranged for workflow using drag ‘n drop.

Last edited by Bloke (2015-06-29 20:20:49)

sacripant · 2015-06-29 19:25:31

Destry wrote #292289:

Truth is, as I mentioned to Bert, the community is too small for a magazine. We gave it a good shot, but neither the writers nor audience is there. How the mag is structured and branded is entirely insignificant in comparison.

It’s probably true, Textpattern English community is too small for a magazine.
But Textpattern is available in over 40 different languages… and Internet is a multilingual ecosystem.
If you found some chief editor in other langage than english, you can open the magazine to other language so other contributors.
Yes it’s a completely a different concept to the actual mag concept. But it is not totally uninteresting.

hcgtv · 2015-06-29 21:39:55

Bloke wrote #292296:

Marketing, evangelising, brand building, see point (3) of your questions, he says only semi-jokingly ;-)

That’s one thing I’ve always done for the projects that I use, I turn people on to their wonderfulness.

Now, I get a piece of the pie should Dean sell Textpattern.com to someone who’s interested in clicks and could care less about Open Source, like Informer did with PunBB ;)

Site building / content: .org, Themes, Documentation, and .com. Docs exist for The Txp Voice (a.k.a. the Style Guide) that I’m sure Destry will be able to furnish you with. ~~I hunted in Google Docs but came up empty~~ Ah, here it is – let me know if you can’t access it and I’ll tweak permissions.

Got the doc, will read it tonight. Just letting you know that I’m color blind, so site design is not my forte, but I can massage content like the best of them.

Also, I can beta test, my LAMP platform is at the ready – just let me know when you need another pair of eyes on some code changes.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 21:47:45

hcgtv wrote #292306:

Just letting you know that I’m color blind, so site design is not my forte

At least you have an excuse! I just suck at design.

but I can massage content like the best of them.

Awesome, anything you can do, please do. Anything you need, please ask.

Keep an eye on the branches in the Github repo. There’ll be some new ones popping up soon.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#37 2015-06-29 16:44:40

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292278:

#38 2015-06-29 17:28:11

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292281:

#39 2015-06-29 17:47:08

Re: [docs] Github wiki

#40 2015-06-29 17:57:04

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292278:

#41 2015-06-29 18:05:17

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292285:

#42 2015-06-29 18:30:33

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Bloke wrote #292286:

#43 2015-06-29 18:36:42

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Bloke wrote #292283:

#44 2015-06-29 18:53:25

Re: [docs] Github wiki

#45 2015-06-29 19:16:23

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292290:

#46 2015-06-29 19:25:31

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292289:

#47 2015-06-29 21:39:55

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Bloke wrote #292296:

#48 2015-06-29 21:47:45

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292306:

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