We Love Textpattern (welovetxp.com) needs a new owner

Sam · 2015-07-07 14:29:00

Hey, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted in these forums!

I ran welovetxp.com a somewhat popular gallery site showcasing Textpattern powered sites from 2007 to 2011.

Embarrassingly, it’s not been updated since 2011 and I’d love to give it away to someone who has the passion and time to run it. Domain, site, the works.

If you are interested, let me know. Else, I’ll probably turn it off in the very near future…

Thanks,
-Sam

candyman · 2015-07-07 16:44:44

I know the site (like all the forum users, I guess): it would be a pity to lose all the work.
If none will be interested into paying the domain, I think that it could be easily hosted on the official server. Maybe showcase.textpattern.com could work.

Last edited by candyman (2015-07-07 16:45:03)

hcgtv · 2015-07-07 17:29:13

Hey Sam,

Nice to hear from you, I’ve also just come back from a hiatus of sorts.

I could take over the site, keep it running and updated. I imagine there’s a few links to former TXP users who are now running something else, and of course all the new sites that appear in the showcase forum that could be added also.

Let me know, thanks.

jstubbs · 2015-07-07 23:22:26

Hi Sam! I agree with Candyman – an internal showcase is much better than yet another external site. A showcase belongs with the main site.

hcgtv · 2015-07-07 23:45:53

jstubbs wrote #292808:

Hi Sam! I agree with Candyman – an internal showcase is much better than yet another external site. A showcase belongs with the main site.

The problem is the websites that get brought in under the Textpattern umbrella lose their momentum and languish. Heck, even the main Textpattern family of sites need attention, and there appears to be no time to handle them, since the internal core team of Textpattern is busy coding.

Textpattern has a small team, mostly coders, no webmasters on staff. The main sites get updates when someone comes on the forum and says hey, look over there. So obviously, and I’m not criticizing, there’s nobody minding the store front.

I’ve been away for 4 years but I still kept the Planet site current. Though I wasn’t around I knew of all the goings on, who put up what new site or resource, what resources bit the dust or moved, new arrivals in the core dev dept., then abruptly disappearing.

I can continue to maintain and update welovetextpattern, but it would be an easier time of it, if it was under my umbrella.

Destry · 2015-07-08 00:28:41

Sam probably doesn’t care about where sites go and who manages them. He just wants to get rid of the domain.

I would bet that a large number of the sites in that gallery are no longer Textpattern sites, if they’re even online anymore at all. For anyone who might take that over, the first thing they’d have to do is audit all the entries and remove the ROT. I don’t know if that could be automated or not, but there’s like over a thousand records, or something, right?

We had to do that with the “Sites Gallery” too in the old magazine when taking it over, and it was quite a chore. 95% of the sites were no longer Txp or live. We scrapped the whole thing.

We were going to fold a “top ten” showcase into magazine operations, profiling the creators of those sites as column articles, but that was way too ambitious as it turned out. Still, that’s the kind of site/content curation you need.

Looking at .com, the profiled sites mentioned there are so ancient and false as to be embarrassing.

An external gallery, if having a gallery is even vogue anymore (doubtful), is probably the answer, but again, that collection of sites is likely full of detritus. Also, allowing people to register any old site just because it’s powered by Txp isn’t exactly curating the creme de la creme. You’re likely going to get a lot of sub-par crap, not showcase material.

jstubbs · 2015-07-08 01:18:31

@Bert – right, websites within TXP lose momentum but those outside are even more difficult to maintain. And if there is going to be a showcase/gallery of sorts, it should be within the main TXP site to show potential users what TXP sites can do.

@Destry – as with Textgarden I wouldn’t even bother trying to ascertain whether or not the WeLoveTXP featured sites are worthwhile or not because the majority won’t be. We can feature new sites of interest. To me at least, it makes no sense at all to have yet another external site featuring content best served from the main TXP .com site.

Even TXP Tips could be folded into the main site if its best served from there. Who manages the new content on the main site is another matter, but it doesn’t have to be the developers, rather like the Blog on the TXP main site.

By the way, can someone change Weblog to Blog on the main site?!

hcgtv · 2015-07-08 02:37:07

jstubbs wrote #292817:

Even TXP Tips could be folded into the main site if its best served from there. Who manages the new content on the main site is another matter, but it doesn’t have to be the developers, rather like the Blog on the TXP main site.

Yes, for that matter the Planet site or even the Template Tags site could be rolled into the family of TXP sites.

How about the new Demo site, or the TXPTALK site, where’s the love for Textile?

My question is, who maintains these merged properties?

By the way, can someone change Weblog to Blog on the main site?!

Sure, let me get that for you ;)

gaekwad · 2015-07-08 12:35:21

hcgtv wrote #292819:

How about the new Demo site, […]

My question is, who maintains these merged properties?

That one’s mine, I look after it. It runs atop DO as a collection of cron’d scripts and known-good files. When time allows, I’ll write it up and perhaps GitHub the process so anyone can roll their own.

hcgtv · 2015-07-08 12:49:47

gaekwad wrote #292838:

That one’s mine, I look after it. It runs atop DO as a collection of cron’d scripts and known-good files. When time allows, I’ll write it up and perhaps GitHub the process so anyone can roll their own.

I know that’s your site, it’s now the official Demo site in my eyes, since opensourceCMS.com still has 4.4.1.

I wasn’t around, but I imagine your idea for a demo site was expressed on his forum long before you coded your first cron scripts. Now if I ran TXP, I would of given you an FTP user id and a folder where you could do your thing, when I saw the finished product, and it was up to snuff, I would of created a subdomain, hey let’s call it demo.textpattern.com, and then you’re in charge of that. On to the next thing …

gaekwad · 2015-07-08 13:24:11

tl;dr: drop the site

hcgtv wrote #292840:

I wasn’t around, but I imagine your idea for a demo site was expressed on his forum long before you coded your first cron scripts.

Yep. Exactly right.

Now if I ran TXP, I would of given you an FTP user id and a folder where you could do your thing, when I saw the finished product, and it was up to snuff, I would of created a subdomain, hey let’s call it demo.textpattern.com, and then you’re in charge of that.

There was a sea change in my thinking, borne out of necessity. I started a Textpattern consultancy service, got some paying clients, and used it as an opportunity to learn cron, scripts, and all that stuff. Fact still remains that Dean holds the keys to the Textpattern kingdom, and there’re only so many times a) I can ask for xyz to happen at Textpattern HQ and b) badger the guy who runs the 3rd party linked site to update it from a known-insecure version. I ran out of energy on that, so changed tack.

There’s no equivalent to Automattic running Textpattern. There’s no Textpattern Foundation. It’s a (very small) group of developer and designer people who run things in their (limited) spare time alongside day (or night) jobs; a group that I am very loosely on the periphery of by virtue of committing small changes on GitHub, doing stuff like writing how-to articles, evangelising and spending a weekend morning learning cron to make a server rebuild itself every three hours so there’s a known-safe demo server.

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the Textpattern cause – heck, I’ve got ten years on my track record and I keep coming back – and I have no doubt the people at the top have their own frustrations, too, but there comes a point where action trumps words. In the main, no-one needs permission to do stuff in Textpattern. I got tired of asking, alerting and other messaging things, so I followed the JFDI philosophy and got the job done. Sure, it’s not perfect, and the demo site is one of about a dozen Textpattern projects that I’m juggling at the moment, but it’s good enough to iterate on later.

What you say about “if I ran TXP” is absolutely valid – and if things weren’t run on donated server space with a domain set that is controlled by a departed founder, then it may even be a reality one day. As it stands, we’re not at that point, so we do what we do to get the job done. Right?

Getting back to topic, I’m inclined to let the OP site expire and let nature take its course. Textpattern doesn’t do so well on marketing and evangelising, and the current ‘back to basics’ approach of making sure the core product is focused on so there’s something great to market and evangelise after it’s done gets my vote. Let’s be honest: Phil doesn’t need more work to do at the moment, and it’d make far more sense to do a need assessment after all the other Textpattern sites are done and updated to see if there’s scope for it. There’s probably a really good reason why the OP site has sat largely dormant since 2011. There are single-figure submissions for 2015 in the ‘Showcase your Textpattern site’ forum – I had some Textpattern burnout in 2015Q1 and slunk back in spring. Since then, I’ve been focussed on Textpattern itself – the machine that powers the sites I make, and not making the sites on Textpattern. Is there too much focus on the machine and not the product? I know the recent spate of changes has gee’d a lot of people up, but I know I’m keen to start making again and not just kick the Textpattern tyres now and again.

hcgtv · 2015-07-08 14:00:57

gaekwad wrote #292844:

had some Textpattern burnout in 2015Q1 and slunk back in spring. Since then, I’ve been focussed on Textpattern itself – the machine that powers the sites I make, and not making the sites on Textpattern. Is there too much focus on the machine and not the product? I know the recent spate of changes has gee’d a lot of people up, but I know I’m keen to start making again and not just kick the Textpattern tyres now and again.

I’m in the same boat, got frustrated and took a break, but I have renewed energies now.

I’ve had 4 long years to think about it, and my approach is this – I’ll voice my intentions on this forum, if someone listens and wants my energies directed internally, then great, if not, then I’ll do it on my own.

Right now I’m concentrating on Themes, next up is Plugins, and lastly I’ll start Packaging it all up.

Debian -> Ubuntu -> same core, totally different user experiences.

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#1 2015-07-07 14:29:00