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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
In related thoughts, I just came across Baldur Bjarnason’s post about Gall’s Law.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.
You have to start over with a working simple system.
In my contemplation, Textpattern has started as a “working simple system” per the definition above. OTOH, e.g. from my experience TYPO3 is a complex system that never worked – for it’s users. WP enters the stage of being a complex system at least with the introduction of the Gutenberg editor methinks.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
WP enters the stage of being a complex system at least with the introduction of the Gutenberg editor methinks.
…which is ironic given the relatively easy on-ramp for getting Wordpress up-and-running. Actually making stuff is sometimes a head-scratcher.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
When I needed a CMS 15 years ago (yep, I’m at least 20 y.o.), WP, Joomla, Drupal et al were already there. I have chosen Textpattern because it was small (~500kb), fast and cute. Even if it’s a small niche, I think there will always be people who care. Actually, Greta should sue WP, since an average (non-cached) WP page takes 5 times more resources than txp.
This said, txp is getting fatter with each release. Fortunately, mainly the admin side is concerned, the public one is about as fast as 15 years ago.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
etc wrote #335976:
When I needed a CMS … I have chosen Textpattern because it was small (~500kb), fast and cute. Even if it’s a small niche, I think there will always be people who care.
As Increasingly the web has become a cesspool of bloat, click-bait, and flotsam, I occsionaly revist this website and marvel at the simple beauty of clean design and brilliant writing. An exemplar of Less is More.
I hope there will always be room for the little CMS that is crafted for writers and writing, which Textpattern was born to serve.
…. texted postive
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Hi
Even when i arrived at the 5.1 version of me, i still love Txp and use it in my website project, i only use WP when the client is insisting on usung it.
I can do quite anything with TXP : from simple company website to a marketplace, what i love is looking at activity tab and seeing all that script snnefing to find my wp security holes ;)
I have websites that s been untouched for more than 8 years, i only need to update them when the php version is upgraded by force and the txp version dont support it.
I think there always the need for a CMS like Textpattern, a lot of time there is a big hypes about new stuf but some month later you find it s not that good and feel the old script is better.
Like some said i dont see a need of a lot of improvment UCF is a good thing so, i am not using the theming things i havent take the time the get my head around that thing yet.
Big thanks to the devs for all the good work.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Bloke, regarding ActivityPub and the fediverse, I’ll stew on it and see if I can offer anything more clear, but I doubt it. I’m not trying to create more work for anyone. It’s just an idea in case anyone gets bored in retirement.
In any case, if this is the WP integration I’ve been hearing about, then I’d say it’s a long way from being worth bothering with. That’s not even close to what I was thinking was possible.
Let’s wait out the decade and see what has changed or not.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
wet wrote #335956:
Perhaps this poll fulfils those requirements: dud-poll.inf.tu-dresden.de/txp-maturity/ ← Vote now, please!
The results are in:
Younger community members apparently didn’t get the call to vote.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Destry wrote #335996:
In any case, if this is the WP integration I’ve been hearing about, then I’d say it’s a long way from being worth bothering with.
I think this is the ActivityPub integration that has been in the news lately. According to the WordPress plugin page, it is now running on about 4000 sites.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
wet wrote #336147:
The results are in:
Younger community members apparently didn’t get the call to vote.
I am grateful that there is a large cohort of young turks ….
…. texted postive
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#25 2023-12-14 22:05:11
- GugUser
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- From: Quito (Ecuador)
- Registered: 2007-12-16
- Posts: 1,477
Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Yes.
Incidentally, I share jakob’s arguments and I’am very grateful to him for keeping some plug-ins up to date in that sense.
I’m only 66 years old and I think there’s still a lot I want to do.
Many thanks to all those who continue to work on the further development of Textpattern.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Destry wrote #335948:
All speculation, but informed by near 7 years of floating around in the fediverse, watching and listening to the vibes and trends.
Destry, as I try to wrap my head around the ActivityPub issue, a few questions spring to mind that I hope you might be interested in answering:
- Didn’t we old-timers have all this when Atom/RSS feeds and feed readers were still a thing?
- How is ActivityPub different from feeds, apart from the fact that nobody wants to run their own website anymore, but rather live in a rent-free corporate silo?
- Can I follow the money, i.e. who pays for my Mastodon or pixelfed resource consumption if there are no advertisers around to pay for my presence?
Curious to hear your thoughts…
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Wall of text alert!
wet wrote #336178:
Didn’t we old-timers have all this when Atom/RSS feeds and feed readers were still a thing?
I guess I see what you mean. Feeds are like fedi TLs (timelines), and if you saw an article you liked in your feed, you could jump to that website (instance), regardless what software it was using, and if they had comments on, you could comment. A kind of decentralized system, yes.
How is ActivityPub different from feeds…?
I don’t know if I can answer this, but one problem with feeds, in fact, maybe this has nothing to do with feeds at all, but one problem in regular web is that commenting on a blog puts your content in their DB. Once there, you could rarely change it and never delete it. Even in these days of GDPR, many blog owners ignore requests to delete comments from their site. I’ve tried. (I kick myself for ever falling for article comments.)
Exceptions to this, surprisingly, are commercial commenting services, where you had to have an account before using their service for blog commenting (we used one on TXP Mag for a while, but I forgot the name). Because they are a commercial service (not a private blog), they have to acknowledge requests for account deletion, and when you delete such an account, they then have to anonymize all the posts you made, or simply delete them all in bulk. I deleted the account on the platform who’s name I forget, and it first anonymized all my comments on their servers, then simply deleted them. I was quite happy about that. It was probably easier for legal reasons.
Anyway, you could argue the same is true in a system of Mastodon instances, for example. In other words, you’re putting your posts/replies in the DB for that instance, a ‘Robert’s Law’ concern. :)
But there’s a couple of differences:
First, if the instance is not yours, there’s still the better culture of Mastodon to give you more control over your data. You can auto-delete your posts after a time of your choosing (what I do), or you an kill your account entirely, zapping all data from the instance, and start anew elsewhere (I’ve also done that, four times now).
Second, a person can run their own instance instead of having an account on someone else’s, which is like having your own Txp install instead of being on Blogger, or whatever. Mastodon is rather hard to install/setup for most people, though, which is why they join an existing instance and don’t mind donating a few spondulicks to the admin once in a while. There are even pop-up resellers who specialize solely in providing/maintaining Mastodon instances for people, e.g. MastoHost. This is why I think if simpler systems (e.g. Txp) adopt the AP protocol to integrate in the fedi, it will give more individuals the power to interact on their own terms.
The one snafu in both situations above, as I understand it, is that if other instances your instance federates with cache your posts (I’ve heard about this), then you lost control of those. You can delete your source posts, but cached versions remain in the wild for a while. That’s why I like to use the auto-delete feature on my posts, so they don’t linger and circulate too long, which reduces the odds of them being cached. Celebrities, on the other hand, probably like that kind of sticky thing.
…apart from the fact that nobody wants to run their own website anymore, but rather live in a rent-free corporate silo
Well, as mentioned, a lot of people donate to their admins, which is a neat local-community thing I’ve only ever seen happen in the fedi. No kickstarter BS, just straight up by me a coffee donations. That’s part of the interesting culture I speak of. When admins make it clear they need cash for the servers, people usually kick in, or move on. And of course, Masto instances are typically not corporate (Threads aside). And if one tried to be, no other instance would federate with it.
Part of that donating and moving around, though, is due to the complexity of the current tech. I know I couldn’t and wouldn’t install Mastodon. I don’t have that energy or interest. But I’d certainly explore the fediverse via my own Txp starship. @fake@wion.com would be a cool way to fly. Regardless, I don’t put stock in keeping socmed posts for long anymore, so if Txp ever did integrate in the Fedi, I’d like that auto-deletion feature included. ;)
Can I follow the money, i.e. who pays for my Mastodon or pixelfed resource consumption if there are no advertisers around to pay for my presence?
Part of appreciating the Fediverse is looking at it through a different filter; not the capitalist one that has taken over centralized web, where everyone’s reason to be online is to exploit, profit, and be keynote speakers. The fedi is the exact opposite. People are there to get away from that kind of thing, and tools are built in to help with it.
That said, solo makers, crafters, builders, artists, scientists, teachers, academics, open-source devs, etc are pretty well accepted in the fedi from what I’ve seen. Content marketers, journos, and loud silicon valley types… not so much. I guess that’s why twitter is still lurching along, vanity loves an audience.
Admins in the fedi are mostly just people doing it for the good will of being in a surveillance cap-free system and making it possible for others to share that ability too. When admins need a little help with costs, they generally get it. If admins are smart, they don’t allow more accounts than their tech/time/mind can handle. The instance I’m on is offered for free, but keeps the accounts low to make it manageable.
In my opinion, folks, avoid the big instances. It’s mostly noise anyway. And move to a new instance if/when the one you’re on goes south. Usually admins give a fair early warning if they have to pull up and quit. No big deal. Migrate to a new one. Data migration is built into Masto.
I’d give my fedi location, but I only talk about woodworking anymore, and I don’t follow people who don’t or my home timeline gets overly polluted with posts about things I don’t want to see. That’s what my social web has come to. :)
Last edited by Destry (2023-12-19 11:55:59)
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Disqus. That’s the commenting system we used on TXP Mag, IIRC.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
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Re: Is there still a need for a "small content management system"?
Disq.us has already been bought, made obscene and unethical. I am looking for an open source alternative.
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