Magazine to newsletter

jstubbs · 2015-07-15 13:29:13

wet wrote #293246:

This we take for granted. Alas, Dean apparently likes his domains.

Then its time to move the sites to another .tld…that guy is not reliable and neither is Joyent..

hcgtv · 2015-07-15 13:31:52

gaekwad wrote #293247:

We take what we have and make the changes to start it all up again. Right? It’s a handful of domains. It’s not the end of the world.

Sure, I’ve got my handy search and replace widget all set to go, all mention of Textpattern will be replaced on all of my sites to ??????, and URLS changed to reflect the new domain location, an afternoon’s work.

No it’s not the end of the world, far from it.

gaekwad · 2015-07-15 15:00:57

Destry wrote #293229:

I’m simply responding to your statement, Pete, that anyone can just jump in at any time on any ol’ thing. That’s not true. There are bottlenecks aplenty. Systems security and quality control of content are good things. This long thread is largely the result of some people being concerned about the latter.

I agree – and I hope that doesn’t surprise you.

We might be talking at slight cross-purposes, however. My notion of permission was akin to “hi, Textpattern project, I would like to do x – is that OK?”. Compare/contrast with: “hi, Textpattern, here’s 500 words on x that would make a great blog post – let me know what else you need from me to make it live”.

Forgive me, please, if I’m out of line or antagonistic in this reply: you had the chutzpah to reboot TXP Mag years ago, that was either borne from need or curiosity. We first bashed heads (in a good way, I hope) when you put the style guide together. I don’t recall asking for permission from you on that project. That was a case of “hi, Destry, here’re some tweaks and ideas for the style guide”, and you (from memory) were grateful for the contribution. You put a tonne of effort into the .net wiki, too. I did some stuff there, as well. I’ve sort of gravitated towards the non-code projects in Textpattern, and you’ve done the same, albeit for a much longer time and with more attention to detail than I have.

Yes, there are bottlenecks aplenty. Right hand sometimes doesn’t know what left hand is doing. Things are changing. The move from Google Code to GitHub has taken a while to bed-in. There is some shedding of dead wood elsewhere. The occasional tape-and-string approach to things frustrates the heck of out me. I’ve spoken of that at length, as have many other people, so I won’t waste my words or your time here and now.

Phil has a tonne of work to do on the visual side of things. Stef has a tonne of work to do with custom fields and other pledged features on 4.6. Robert is less visible day-to-day, so I am not sure of his current situation. Jukka – I don’t know, I try not to assume the worst so I won’t speculate. I hope he’s back, one day, and is acerbic as he used to be. I miss him.

Anyone adept in design could talk with Phil about rebuilding the foundations of .com and perhaps make a start on that. Anyone who’s handy with English and knows some GitHub could take a tag from the wiki page and work on the wiki -> whatever transition to remove a small thing from Phil’s to-do list. Anyone who is comfortable with English and an additional language can improve Textpack strings. Heck, I’m hoping that one day I’ll take up enough of Phil or Stef’s time with them approving Textpack commits on GH that they’ll just give me commit rights and Project JFDI can go ahead full steam

I ran a Slack room for a while, and it faded. That stung a bit, actually. I was a bit cavalier about it initially, but it didn’t get traction. There wasn’t the critical mass. And that’s OK, because it was worth a shot and the results were chalked up to experience. There was little actual work involved, and it was an experiment. And failure is OK from time-to-time – heck, it’s important.

The barriers to entry on Textpattern, at least from my faux-ivory tower, are not that high. I’m English-language native, somewhat familiar with some of the GitHub nuts and bolts, and have a decade of Textpattern experience under my belt, so I’m clearly in the minority. What needs to be done to reduce the minimum height requirements further? Is that even viable? Why am I struggling to find someone who can translate a few hundred strings from English to Estonian? So. Many. Questions.

And here are some more: is this forum a product of a bygone era? Am I wasting my time? Are we all wasting our time? I write these verbose replies to your posts because you have the common decency to read and interpret them, which I am grateful for, and I do the same for you. There may come a time when the veneer wears off and I respectfully walk away from the project. I’ve already had two occasions this year when I’ve whiteboard’d my perfect CMS and vowed to write it myself from scratch, and sell it a la Perch. Doing A Drew, if you will.

And yet, I come back. I tweak. I cajole. I push some buttons from time to time. I write articles about Textpattern. I make Textpattern sites for people. There’s something still there for me. What exactly, I don’t know. I do know that a) I’ve used too many italicised words in this reply so far, and b) all it takes is for a few more people to have that something spark to keep things going. There are more commits happening. There is more enthusiasm (at least that’s my perception). There is progress.

“Hey, Phil, here’s a new textpattern.com – let me know what else you need to make it live.”
“Cool, thanks.”

Done.

Destry · 2015-07-15 15:30:39

Resources for the quality control aspects of the marketing campaign?

First, the list of places (again) to pull an inventory of topics from:

.org
txptips.com
this forum
personal blogs
FAQs

Then some handy checklists for evaluating the distributed content that might be refactored. (I’ve adjusted them here for better fit to current discussions.)

Table 1. To determine if content item is worth adding to inventory list.

ASK…	YES/NO
Does this content map to a clear, stated goal?¹ (Are we clear why it’s valuable?)	y/n
Do target audiences need/desire this content? (Does it answer a real question or solve a real problem for each audience type?)	y/n
Does this content fit with Txp’s story to tell? (Is it in line with a message that a given audience type needs to hear?² Does it further Txp’s cause?)	y/n
Is it different enough from other project real estate content? (Not repetitive?)	y/n

Table 2. To identify how the listed content needs refined.

ASK…	YES/NO
Is content inviting/entertaining in addition to useful? (Does more than just inform?)	y/n
Does it strike the right tone per audience type?	y/n
Is it in the right format per audience type or topic?³	y/n
Is it set at the right level for the audience? Not too basic or too complex?	y/n
Is it focused and concise?	y/n
Is it actionable? Are opportunistic ‘call to actions’ or inter/intra links missing that could be added?	y/n
Is it tagged and labelled correctly for quick machine pickup?	y/n

FrontApp, for leveraging responsibility on the social front?
Gather Content, for getting a handle on real estate content? (Maybe a sponsorship is possible.)

Footnotes:

¹ Voila! The context for content efforts. But I get it … we’re winging it in “organic” mode.

² Ditto.

³ While other projects might sensibly be thinking about other formats du jour (video, podcasts, infographics, whatever), the HR issue here likely demands a “text-only” approach for now. But something to keep in mind. I know Bloke is dying to use that video studio.

gaekwad · 2015-07-15 15:43:49

jstubbs wrote #293249:

Then its time to move the sites to another .tld […]

Just realised I can register textpattern.domains to sell Textpattern-related domains. Genius.

Edit: oh, jstubbs, textpattern.builders is available.

Last edited by gaekwad (2015-07-15 15:46:39)

Destry · 2015-07-15 16:33:23

gaekwad,

All good, Pete. No bad vibes were meant. I often use quotes in the forum as a tool; to elaborate on topics I think need it (even if everyone doesn’t agree). Rarely do I quote someone to simply pick on the person, per se. The quote feature just communicates/reflects/misconstrues it badly, I guess.

In any case, we’ve elicited some useful intel from the horse’s mouth, at least useful to me. ;)

hcgtv · 2015-07-15 16:48:17

gaekwad wrote #293256:

oh, jstubbs, textpattern.builders is available.

So is Textpattern.tips, .wiki or .docs, .forum, etc.

My personal favorites are Textpattern.wtf and Textpattern.rip, I’ll be grabbing one of these next week ;)

As for moving the .com to a different tld, what’s to stop Dean from coming after you for using the Textpattern name? He’s obviously holding on to the domains because he feels they are valuable, or else they would be in the developer’s hands by now.

Any move away from Textpattern.com should be to a new name:

Mambo -> Joomla!
OpenOffice -> LibreOffice
PHP-Nuke -> Xaraya
PunBB -> FluxBB
CodeIgniter -> Kohana

Which of the above projects are the most used now?

Joomla! is an excellent example, the enthusiasm in that community after the fork was contagious. The Joomla! project had people ready to take charge of the different departments, docs, support, marketing, etc. It wasn’t a bunch of coders moving code repositories, it was an organized effort, which left the coders to do their job. It was beautiful to behold, this thing we call Open Source.

How much will Textpattern.com be worth if everybody vacates the premises? Sites start running the new code, Published with Textmoved, takes the place of Published with Textpattern. Links dry up, whatever traffic .com gets now, becomes a trickle. Far fetched, go as Mambo if you think I’m kidding you.

gaekwad · 2015-07-15 17:03:17

Destry wrote #293258:

All good, Pete. No bad vibes were meant. I often use quotes in the forum as a tool; to elaborate on topics I think need it (even if everyone doesn’t agree). Rarely do I quote someone to simply pick on the person, per se. The quote feature just communicates/reflects/misconstrues it badly, I guess.

Not at all – in my own awkward way I’m agreeing with you and venting a little frustration with many italics. All good here, sir. And +10 points for your Textile table, too. That’s rare around here, these days.

jakob · 2015-07-15 19:22:10

gaekward wrote:

And here are some more: is this forum a product of a bygone era? Am I wasting my time? Are we all wasting our time?

I ran a Slack room for a while … There wasn’t the critical mass.

FWIW, Pete, I value your wise words and thoughtful contributions – and Destry’s and others too – immensely!

Speaking for myself, I still find the forum immensely valuable both as a way of keeping up, as a way of asking questions, as a way of helping people and as a repository of past, often invaluable knowledge and snippets. The pace is about right (for me) to keep up with, and stuff doesn’t disappear. At present, things are moving faster, which is good, but I’m only just about keeping up.

While I like the idea of Slack and irc channel, google+ etc. they fragment conversations and input across many locations and timeframes and I simply can’t keep track of all of that. It’s probably similar for others. So, it’s no shortcoming of yours in getting it off the ground, just not enough critical mass as you rightly say. That said, it probably is worth trying new channels from time to time, especially when it brings new users to “the fold”. Spreading the existing enthusiasts more thinly across many channels will always be hard unless the medium itself is incredibly compelling.

gaekwad · 2015-07-15 20:16:16

hcgtv wrote #293259:

As for moving the .com to a different tld, what’s to stop Dean from coming after you for using the Textpattern name?

Nothing. He can come after me for .co and .co.uk; I’ll just show him the (lengthy) audit trail of unanswered emails I sent to him when I was registering them explaining the purpose, an offer to purchase .com from him and pass it to the dev team to manage, and other related stuff. Never got a reply, acknowledgement or bounce message. Go figure. Guy’s dropped off the grid. I totally understand why, knowing a little bit about him, but I wish it were different. A lot of people do.

My take it on it, currently: there’s a lot to do for 4.6, and every sentence bemoaning the ownership state of domains here, there and everywhere is just beating the well-beaten horse. I understand that there’s some comms between Robert and Dean, and that’s better than no comms at all. If the domains haven’t been transferred, sold, surrendered, ICANN’d or compromised by now, a decade later, then it’s time to assume they will be staying put. We deal with this, as we have the last n years this has been the case.

I don’t know what’s involved with forking a codebase to a new project, nor am I (personally) interested in it at this stage, but I can understand why there’s talk of it. Heck, there’s talk of everything at the moment.

I did think of ‘Textpartner’ last night when I was trying to sleep, though – that’s a freebie CMS name idea if anyone wants it. Just remember me at IPO time, eh?

Last edited by gaekwad (2015-07-15 20:28:38)

hcgtv · 2015-07-15 20:43:00

gaekwad wrote #293280:

Nothing. He can come after me for .co and .co.uk; I’ll just show him the (lengthy) audit trail of unanswered emails I sent to him when I was registering them explaining the purpose, an offer to purchase .com from him and pass it to the dev team to manage, and other related stuff. Never got a reply, acknowledgement or bounce message. Go figure. Guy’s dropped off the grid. I totally understand why, knowing a little bit about him, but I wish it were different. A lot of people do.

You registered Textpattern.co on Feb 9, 2014, and nobody has come after you yet. I’ve read forum posts here and there alluding to the fact that Dean suffers from depression, I wish him well.

This is the last you’ll hear from me on the domain issue, but I’m not going to go full force on creating Themes until we have a handle on this situation. I’m not to going to create themes with footers that say Published with Textpattern, then down the line we’re now Textpartners or something else.

gaekwad · 2015-07-15 21:00:51

hcgtv wrote #293282:

I’ve read forum posts here and there alluding to the fact that Dean suffers from depression, I wish him well.

I’m in a similar mental health boat (depression, anxiety, bipolar, and more), hence my vague reference to understanding some of his situation. I know I’m not alone with that special cocktail of brain wiring. It’s part of the reason I dropped off the map in 2015Q1 and over-promised deliverables back in 2012/13 when I was going through a farcical divorce.

This is the last you’ll hear from me on the domain issue […].

Yeah, this thread got a bit derailed, didn’t it? I pledge to stop writing subjective stuff here and work on translation cajoling, wiki docs transfers, article writing, end user support and – if all goes to plan – unveiling something special on the Textpattern hosting front by month-end. Mindful not to over-promise, so I’ll leave it at that.

Oh, and writing content for my own Textpattern-powered sites. That’s what it’s all about, right? Right.

Cooper out.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#109 2015-07-15 13:29:13

Re: Magazine to newsletter

wet wrote #293246:

#110 2015-07-15 13:31:52

Re: Magazine to newsletter

gaekwad wrote #293247:

#111 2015-07-15 15:00:57

Re: Magazine to newsletter

Destry wrote #293229:

#112 2015-07-15 15:30:39

Re: Magazine to newsletter

#113 2015-07-15 15:43:49

Re: Magazine to newsletter

jstubbs wrote #293249:

#114 2015-07-15 16:33:23

Re: Magazine to newsletter

#115 2015-07-15 16:48:17

Re: Magazine to newsletter

gaekwad wrote #293256:

#116 2015-07-15 17:03:17

Re: Magazine to newsletter

Destry wrote #293258:

#117 2015-07-15 19:22:10

Re: Magazine to newsletter

#118 2015-07-15 20:16:16

Re: Magazine to newsletter

hcgtv wrote #293259:

#119 2015-07-15 20:43:00

Re: Magazine to newsletter

gaekwad wrote #293280:

#120 2015-07-15 21:00:51

Re: Magazine to newsletter

hcgtv wrote #293282:

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