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#13 2015-08-20 17:39:31

maverick
Member
From: Southeastern Michigan, USA
Registered: 2005-01-14
Posts: 976
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

Based on the several threads Bert was contributing to, my sense is that he was frustrated with the focus (or lack) on themes, but really as motivated by a frustration when the community didn’t want to modify the name/domains, etc. to break away from Dean’s passive control.

He didn’t want to build his theme business based on a project that could not control its own destiny. He identified a preferred strategy to move forward and became impatient when the rest of the community didn’t move in that direction at that time.

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#14 2015-08-20 19:08:16

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,250
Website GitHub

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

I must say I’m a little confused by all this. When Bert resurfaced, his idea that Themes weren’t actually that hard kicked me into gear. I realised he was right. Aside from all the other stuff I was doing, I’d been putting Themes off because of the fact I’d (wrongly) made the scope too large. He made me realise it was not only doable, but extensible, with humble beginnings (like I’ve done so far) migrating to grander plans that are in progress.

It seems I didn’t code quick enough. Or something, like the whole domain issue.

In my reply I did not belittle the idea of getting rid of Form types. In fact I brought up Ruud’s point that Forms themselves are (functionally) equivalent to Pages and could be dispensed with entirely, if we so desired — assuming we could come up with a neat way in the UI to deal with the fallout. Not that I’d advocate their removal because it creates tonnes of work, in the same way that renaming them from Form to something else creates work for very little real-world benefit at the moment (besides losing the stupid name and maybe creating a little less confusion for new users).

Form types do have some benefits:

  • They allow categorisation of reusable blocks. Without this, you have a sea of blocks that then require — as Bert pointed out — prefixing if you wish to group them.
  • They permit article Form overrides, which I and others have used in the past to switch out an article to use a different look or different functionality, even if only temporarily.

The problems are:

  • Having a fixed list of Types is sometimes a little annoying. I have some code in a tentative branch that allows you to define your own, but I’m not happy with the implementation yet to know if it holds water long term.
  • The essential Forms thing is a handy convention in some ways (leaner code, fewer support requests) but at other times it can be maddening that you just can’t delete the damn things. And this would hold over to each new Theme too, which is a pain.

Addressing these issues is something I’d like to do at some point. I just don’t know exactly how best to do it yet so I was waiting until the Themes idea was proven by more people (albeit with a few UI niggles at the mo) before wasting time moving forward on something that turned out to be fundamentally flawed.

My only argument with Bert’s rationale for removing Form types was his assertion that “I have to preface each form with the Theme name” under the new Themes branch. That’s not true. Pages, Forms and Stylesheets are entirely separate entities in each Theme. Switch to a different Theme for editing, and you get an entirely different set of Pages, Forms (+ types) and Stylesheets to work with. No prefixing necessary. He did not respond to my question to clarify his point. I thought he was just busy working magic with making themes or tweaking his cool plugin.

I took his points about copying between Themes. It’s part of the plan, once I — or someone else — can figure out a decent and intuitive system to do it. Probably requires a bit of refactoring of the UI so I was kinda hoping that the admin-layout-update branch would be merged in fairly soon so I don’t have to do the work twice.

Repurposing Form types as a Theme switch has nothing to do with not desiring to make changes. It’s simply entirely unnecessary in the current implementation because there’s already a mechanism to keep them separate, so the Types don’t need to be removed or altered. They work exactly as they did, with the added bonus that they can be packaged up and distributed as a set along with other elements of a Theme.

Ultimately, well, I dunno. Still confused. But it doesn’t change the fact that Bert convinced me to put the code down, using his original plan and his definition of scope of what each layer of the onion should be. If that’s not listening, in an effort to make things better that are long overdue to be improved, then I guess I don’t know what is.


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#15 2015-08-20 20:02:18

maverick
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From: Southeastern Michigan, USA
Registered: 2005-01-14
Posts: 976
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

Bloke

If one tracks Bert’s trajectory from his return to his most recent/final(?) post, it was rather intense.

Some really good stuff, plus some excellent energy – both from him and a number of others. If anything, perhaps an overwhelming amount of energy all of a sudden, at one time, hitting documents, themes, Txp Magazine, future directions, Txp domain ownership, hosting options, the new possible Txp Association, the next version of Textpattern, and so on.

All good things. All things that need to be addressed. But not everything could be addressed at the same time.

My perception was that Bert was frustrated at several turns, the themes being one of them but not the only one.

example

example

example

I believe there is a thread on domain / project ownership where Bert gave his first indication that he would leave unless steps were taken to secure the future of the project. Security seemed to mean 1) Dean hands over the keys to the kingdom or 2) Immediate plans were made to change the project name, hosting, and domains.

I don’t recall if this was the same thread, but Phil was part of one conversation, and indicated that while there were contingencies in case of a worst case scenario, we wouldn’t makes those changes unless we had to do so. That seemed to be the trigger: signing off

So, fwiw, I don’t think it was truly your response on forms and themes.

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#16 2015-08-20 20:19:55

zero
Member
From: Lancashire
Registered: 2004-04-19
Posts: 1,470
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

You’re a good listener, Stef, and I think everyone including Bert knows that. And I must admit I was surprised too at Bert’s rapid decision to fork. But there’s a lot of history and lack of action, real or perceived, and it comes down to personalities I guess. I can see the frustration, impatience and business opportunity like maverick sees. But I can also see the determination, urgency and vision that has got Bert in its grip. He’s full of enthusiasm and seems compelled to make his vision a reality and the time has come to take action. He’s heard so many words over the years that it could have been anything at all that triggered his decision to leave the forum for good and go his way. (Certainly not you alone, in case you might be thinking that)

He’s like a fireball or snowball gathering momentum and I believe something good is going to come of his actions, so I’ve supported him in my little way with txpcms just to see where it will end up. I haven’t got a clue what he will do when you get the themes built in. I also don’t know just how well his Bootstrapped themes will go down with a new audience. If his themes are well documented and very easy to install, swap etc then even if yours are much lighter and easier and flexible (which I think they will be), there could well be a demand for both and they could complement rather than rival each other.


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#17 2015-08-20 23:17:21

maruchan
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From: Ukiah, California
Registered: 2010-06-12
Posts: 590
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Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

But there’s a lot of history and lack of action, real or perceived

Perceived. There’s been a ton of action! But it’s accompanied by discussion, and rightly so.

Stef has really solid ideas regarding the un-bucketing of things, which makes TXP more flexible. If this made Bert feel bad, that sucks, but adding more form types is not necessarily on solid ground if you look at other CMS software, which is heading in e.g. Stef’s direction of just making everything pages.

Overall, this stuff from Bert feels like it doesn’t grasp the reality of TXP, speaking of both the software and the community. For example, we could be building on existing strengths rather than lending all of our focus to trying to jack TXP up higher and higher into prepackaged theme territory to please the WordPress-user gods.

TXP also has some incredible plugins now and it feels really zany to see a fork/repackaging/random pedicure happening, right when development is opening up even more than in the past.

Last edited by maruchan (2015-08-20 23:20:29)

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#18 2015-08-21 05:15:24

tye
Member
From: Pottsville, NSW
Registered: 2005-07-06
Posts: 859
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

If I understand correctly – I’m all for it – the more exposure the better :)

Look at wordpress – they have Studiopress / Woothemes / Yoothemes / Eleganttheme etc…. all of these use textpattern as a base, with their own framework / structure built around it…

But I’m not sure thats what he is trying to do…. it just looks like 4 good websites with information on textpattern – more exposure = Great :)

Am I missing something here?

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#19 2015-08-21 09:50:59

kees-b
Member
From: middelburg, nl
Registered: 2004-03-03
Posts: 235
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

ruud wrote #294257:

LOL… that isn’t my linkedin profile he’s linking to.

You must have been forked too!

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#20 2015-08-27 01:25:42

Destry
Member
From: Haut-Rhin
Registered: 2004-08-04
Posts: 4,909
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

I didn’t know Bert left the community already, again.

maverick wrote #294272:

If one tracks Bert’s trajectory from his return to his most recent/final(?) post, it was rather intense.

Yep, I noticed the same thing, even three weeks back, but simply saw it as new energy from someone away from the herd for a while.

I also noticed he was collecting things along the way. For example, he wanted the user docs dump, and he was quick to take We Love Txp, and maybe he put in a private word for zero’s domains, I don’t know. But considering how things have panned out suddenly, just when there was good energy here, I can’t help wonder if he had a Plan B, and it was actually Plan A all along. And maybe his aggressive push on issues and sudden “I’m out” was an excuse to do what he really wanted to do anyway.

Whether or not that’s true, and I’m not saying it is, he’s free to do it. (Fork off, Bert!) He certainly seems to have a lot of time on his hands. Maybe that’s where all the intensity is coming from. Idle hands can make a person edgy. I just think it’s a little unfortunate. He was a tree-rattler, like me, which I can appreciate, because projects need people like that to keep perspective from time to time. But I’m more patient than most, admittedly (I’m still here after all my years of griping), and maybe he’s not.

You guys seem to know better than I if he’s really forking. But if so, then he should at least step away from the brand. That part doesn’t seem like fair play, and especially using a logo that was thrown-out spec for Textpattern’s current brand. I mean, if you’re going to fork a project, you name it something completely different to get away from the old and start something new, right? (Though the triumphant Xpattern didn’t really do that either.)

On the other hand, if he’s forking and adopts “TXP” as his brand, that’s fine with me too. It means you lot can’t use that stupid acronym here anymore without plugging his party. Ha! (Quick, Bert, get a trademark on that!)

All kidding aside, I don’t see that this project has anything to worry about. Keep doing what you’re doing, Stef, and people will be theming in Textpattern in multi-languages just fine. And if not, so what, Bert will have it covered for those who need a generic way out. There are bigger fish to catch, who are more interested in content structuring and publishing mechanisms than quick-skinning.

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#21 2015-10-01 18:11:17

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

Dear Textpattern users and devs,

I hear your concerns and I sit at a crossroads, promote Textpattern or pull away completely.

Go with TXP CMS, or call it something like HCG CMS ?

So I’ll end up with sites titled HCG CMS, HCG Themes, HCG Tags and HCG Planet. I can’t go with We Love HCG, someone would have to take that site over, some TXP community member with time on their hands.

Now, I’ll need to change template tags from txp:article to hcg:article, wouldn’t want to confuse any users that may stumble onto HCG Tags.

Which in turn would make any current and future HCG Themes incompatible with Textpattern.

Should HCG CMS gain traction, plugin authors would need to adapt their plugins to an HCG world.

Documentation, tutorials and blog articles would not make mention of Textpattern, the only way someone would know that HCG CMS is based on Textpattern would be to view the PHP source code.

The current TXP domains would redirect to their HCG equivalents, a Textpattern entity may petition me for domain donations.

Can’t think of anything else I would need to change to appease the Textpattern community, but I’m open to suggestions.

Oh yeah, one more thing, I’ll need to donate my txp:love t-shirt to the Goodwill, that’s going to hurt.

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#22 2015-10-01 21:56:09

towndock
Member
From: Oriental, NC USA
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 329
Website

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

Bert,
I applaud you for coming forward on this. Rather than trying to solve this on the forum… how about discussing it at the Textpattern meetings coming up Oct 10. We’ll talk about it in North Carolina, and you’ll have an opportunity to talk to fellow Textpattern users (and Devs) meeting in the UK via Skype.

I like talking. Sometimes we humans let things escalate when we have a keyboard. The world has more nuance when we sit down and talk.
Keith

PS – Hurricane Joaquin looks like it may stay out to sea. There is still anxiety, but we are calmer now at the NC coast.

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#23 2015-10-01 22:00:42

GugUser
Member
From: Quito (Ecuador)
Registered: 2007-12-16
Posts: 1,473

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

towndock wrote #295319:

Sometimes we humans let things escalate when we have a keyboard. The world has more nuance when we sit down and talk.

Without going into the subject: Very well said!

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#24 2015-10-02 08:53:51

Dragondz
Moderator
From: Algérie
Registered: 2005-06-12
Posts: 1,529
Website GitHub Twitter

Re: TXP:CMS growing rapidly

towndock wrote #295319:

Bert,
We’ll talk about it in North Carolina, and you’ll have an opportunity to talk to fellow Textpattern users (and Devs) meeting in the UK via Skype.

Hi

If we can make meeting via Skype then more people can join no?

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