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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Cool! I like it. Simple, clear, different and distinctive. The typography and white space is refreshing, the text-based approach akin to Textpattern, the vertical text a quirky idea that could just work. I can imagine the geometric animation idea being an interesting device to entice people to stick around (perhaps responding to scrolling, which GSAP can do I believe). Maybe the tagline could join the name somewhere as an “explainer”? Maybe the device of the dot-constellation could recur elsewhere so the animation doesn’t seem too gratuitous (just throwing out some wild ideas here).
The most obvious thing that I would find missing as a new visitor, is screenshots (or some kind of informative/annotated UI screenshot) of the admin area. I’m always a bit sceptical when a software site won’t show its product. A while back the now sold email client Postbox even advertised with schematic pictures of its UI that were not its UI, which I found a bit disingenuous.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
wet wrote #340230:
Aside, from the Textpattern advertising department (i.e. me):
We already had AdSense and SeedingUp (and web host referrals). They both ceased placing ads here for unspecified reasons.
informer.com is very particular about the wording they require for payment.
Bummer. Would placing the informer.com panel in the ‘Advertisements’ div jeopardise payments?
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Thanks all :)
@jakob: I’m with you.
The screenshot could live just above (or be a banner within) the yellow bit.
We need content for it, and I’d rather not do a repeat of existing copy…
I’d love to do a post by Donald Swain, dated 24/02/2004, but only TXP diehards would snigger!
Any suggestions for content?
Maybe an auto-playing video would allow us to show all kinds of things TXP related; there would be little time for the visitor to dwell on the words…
Last edited by giz (2025-08-20 17:26:05)
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
giz wrote #340245:
We need content for it, and I’d rather not do a repeat of existing copy…
I’m a big fan of “reasons to use it”. Especially if they speak to pain points in other CMS systems, such as:
- Ease of maintenance [show site before, change a tag or a page template, show difference after].
- Blazing performance [show how quick it is respond, or resource usage, on modest hardware].
- Tag simplicity / no need to hire a developer [show how altering attributes like wraptag changes layout].
- Rapid content creation [show the new article live preview windows, with security options being toggled, save, then show content immediately published].
- No staging environment needed [show live site, show dev lane template being changed, show changes to logged-in user vs live site still with existing site in force, change article content, show how it’s changed in both live and dev, show three-click deploy to live].
- etc…
If one of these is displayed randomly on page reload (ugh, cache) and/or all can be accessed on a /reason-to-use-textpattern page (or in some area on the front page) then it goes a long way towards demonstrating that we’re not just about empty platitudes.
I’d love to do a post by Donald Swain, dated 24/02/2004, but only TXP diehards would snigger!
I’d smile.
Last edited by Bloke (2025-08-20 18:05:14)
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Yes, lots of options. It could be more than one screenshot, like a widely-spaced carousel (see Craft for example), a topic-driven screenshot fader, a screenshot with image interest points, or perhaps just a looping screen recording of Textpattern in use, switching between panes, making a change, and viewing live. That’s not as overt as an explainer video “selling” Textpattern.
And if it starts to get overloaded, maybe one needs just enough to convey an impression with a link leading to a “more reasons to use…” page.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Yes. That’s exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Short loops of stuff being done that show how easy it is to make sweeping changes. Show not tell.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Bloke wrote #340246:
I’m a big fan of “reasons to use it”. Especially if they speak to pain points in other CMS systems
Like! These need to be prominent…
.
As a hook for a video: maybe use the new homepage (and a facsimile of its admin side) as the subject. User: Donald Swain.
Start with half a second of scrolling into the public site, so there is some recursion and visitors will think what the?
Video zooms into one of the main points, Donald selects/highlights typo.
Click on the adjacent ‘Edit article’ link1, and the article opens in Textpattern. Edit, Save, back to the site, typo fixed. Then vignettes of visits to various TXP tabs doing useful stuff…
A pure 1:1 recording of the full interface would be boring, so the video would need to be composited in FCP / iMovie so we can dynamically zoom into say the Content tab menu opening.
1 While they aren’t part of a default install, my ‘little hand’ links have proven very popular with clients. They enjoy the directness, especially after having used WP.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Regarding the video.
As GDPR regulations are now valid worldwide, we have to be careful about its hosting, cookies, etc.
Yiannis
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
giz wrote #340249:
As a hook for a video: maybe use the new homepage (and a facsimile of its admin side) as the subject. User: Donald Swain.
Hah, very nice. Donald lives!
Start with half a second of scrolling into the public site, so there is some recursion and visitors will think what the? Video zooms into one of the main points, Donald selects/highlights typo…
Yes, this kind of thing. As you say, edited in DaVinci Resolve or something to slicken it. I’m not having screencasts of someone pointing and clicking and narrating as they’re not engaging for frontpage promo purposes.
colak wrote #340250:
Regarding the video. As GDPR regulations are now valid worldwide, we have to be careful about its hosting, cookies, etc.
It doesn’t have to be on YouTube. If we’re not using sound, it could be a self-hosted animated gif if we have to (though that’s not streamable so would be a last resort). YouTube require minimum two clicks to even launch a video these days, and then ask me to sign in to “protect their site” if I’m using a VPN, and even then serve me 2 or 3 shouty ads at random locations per video. I mostly avoid it if I can.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Bloke wrote #340256:
If we’re not using sound, it could be a self-hosted animated gif if we have to (though that’s not streamable so would be a last resort).
If we’re doing videos, we’re doing videos properly. Self-hosted, cookie-free, bullshit-free, ad-free. And we can do sound. We can narrate. We can avoid background music drivel.
We’ve currently got 5TB of transfer available each month, last month we used 125GB total…2.5% of allowance…and that’s with considerable ‘behind the scenes’ traffic for backups and replication. There are plenty of decent self-hosted video players we can weaponise.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
gaekwad wrote #340264:
If we’re doing videos, we’re doing videos properly. Self-hosted, cookie-free, bullshit-free, ad-free.
💪✅
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