TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

bizartist · 2005-06-28 01:13:56

> ~~www.textgarden.org~~

>Holy crap! What a brilliant template! The simplicity of this default output is deceptively banal, but on closer >inspection reveals itself for what it is: black-on-white, uncluttered clarity. Simply beautiful.

Ack! You’re giving me Art School flashbacks! There were many professors that talked that way, I’m not kidding…

Anyway, I’m onboard with the “theme” thing, have we settled on categories of submission? and if so, is Dean behind integrating them into TextGarden? So maybe the most downloaded files are only compared against their own categories…. I think that would be best… any ideas?

Last edited by bizartist (2005-06-28 01:14:19)

davidm · 2005-06-28 06:14:54

Well guys as I said this week I am a little bit overloaded at work, can’t work on this right now… I’ll have some time next week.
In the meantime, feel free to edit the wiki !

Mary · 2005-07-09 02:48:42

So dudes, when are we doing this? :)

Jeremie · 2005-07-09 02:55:04

Sivni is still working on Textgarden it seems.

davidm · 2005-07-09 07:09:55

Mary, I have been crawling under work lately, sorry for the delay. Jeremy is right, Sivni is making headway on textgarden.org, we discussed it this week.

The “how” the contest will fit into the plans laid out by Dean with textgarden.org is still to be defined though… what’s your take on this ?

Mary · 2005-07-09 16:30:42

I like the idea of Textgarden and I feel confident it is in good hands and will be a success. This kind of thing is the ultimate result of what this contest was originally thought up to achieve.

I had also started on the installer I mentioned, but its only a very basic shell done as a proof-of-concept thing, so you can have an idea of what it may look like. Still, you can check out what I have so far here: (links removed)

That said, designers should be designing! What good is a nice theme/template site without much actual content, right? ;p

I happen to know that Sivert (sivni) is waiting on me for some plugin-related stuff and Textgarden, regarding sorting by download count. I’m working on it as soon as I can. In the end I may have to forgo submitting an entry myself this time around, so I can devote more time to this.

I think we’ve all been waiting long enough, and we shouldn’t halt this little enterprise because of my not being fast enough. Lets just decide on a bare-bones type of competition and leave it at that. We can always have a fancier contest later when we have more programming in place to support it.

When I say barebones I mean change or add pages, forms and styles, but no plugins (this time around). We set a deadline and make up our templates.

We may find by the time we are all done, the site will be ready. Remember: we can’t have them offered for download until all the entries are in, otherwise we could have unfair counting: you could have two templates equally loved, but one has been available for longer, so its been downloaded more.

Last edited by Mary (2013-01-24 17:33:07)

Jeremie · 2005-07-09 16:56:42

Well, is there any kind of guidelines ? What level of semantic, accessibility and useability is required ? Are we talking about theme (pure CSS), simple templates (pages&forms) with or without plugins, full templates (with CSS), etc etc.

In any case, TXP may move a lot before 1.0, so I don’t see the rush. A first try may be nice, but as I can see it the first real one can’t start without a solid 1.0.

davidm · 2005-07-09 17:30:34

Well, Jeremie, I had the same idea to wait for 1.0 at first, but you never know w-h-e-n it will come out… As for guidelines, check the wiki page I set up earlier

You can edit/add whatever you feel is appropriate :-)

Mary, cool I’ll test those plugins :-))
Your remarks about the rules are right on target, I’ll try update the wiki with that tomorrow…

Jeremie · 2005-07-09 17:52:03

Well, as far as I can tell it’s not really templates, but more “themes”. Maybe my taxonomy is wrong especially in english, but I understood template to be the full thing (pages, forms, and so on). The graphic side would be more “theme” to me.

On that, I suggest you wait for the next default template (pages&forms) of Textpattern. They will be out soon (less than a week), and will be much more capable of supporting such contest.

alexandra · 2005-07-10 19:20:16

Hey all,
as this is a design contest i agree with Davids No. 1 + No 2. rules listed unter Template Requirements in the WIKI. Especially as it is the first contest of its kind and will probably take place before 1.0 is out, we should keep it simple, shouldn´t we?.

For the No. 3 rule (brwoser compatabilty) i like to suggest to set up the rule, that all templates have to work properly on Opera, Firefox, Safari – but not in IE. Why not IE? I believe IE did take us designers so much time already for just nothing, that i dislike the idea to work for it anymore :( . MS is such a big global play and could have updated their browser by now easily. Instead working on it, they leave the work to the designers/coder. I will not support that kind of policy anymore. Not for a free contest anyway.
Nevertheless i like to make a suggestion how the issue can be handled: we could always add a kind of sign (blue dot…whatever) meaning this is although working in IE, MacBrowser and so on. But working for IE should not be a prerequisition.

Timeline: as it is summer and many people go for holydays and/or enjoy the long evenings, i wonder if it makes sense to have the contest taking place before september/october?

I offered sivni my help with textgarden.org and he asked me to help with designing and setting up the contest-area on textgarden.org, which i happily will :) but if you ever come across a nice site, presenting templates, drop me an email, so we can get inspired :)

Last edited by alexandra (2005-07-10 22:33:25)

sivni · 2005-07-10 23:49:35

How about we call this contest “Out of the box 2005”?

I vote for an easy contest.
-TXP Default template. CSS and images allowed.
-Categories: blog/photoblog/corporate/wild/zine.
-All entries compared to eachother, disregarding category.
-A jury decides on a winner based on their favorites and download counts.

Categories:
I need your help to settle on some categories. Got any better ideas?

Vote by downloads:
Upon layout submission to the contest on textgarden.org, one set the article date to a common future date. This way all entries should be displayed at the same time, and download counting will start simultaneously.

A jury:
I think a jury would be in place for this contest. Setting up a jury to evaluate the submitted layouts would make it easier to agree on the outcome. As layouts appear quite different to all of us, a jury would declare a winner based on their favorites and the download count. I think we need some celebrities in the jury. Some Hollywood stars would be good. How about Steven Spielberg and Al Pacino? Or, perhaps Dean would have the honor?

The default template:
I’ve been monitoring Jeremies work on the new template, and as he say it’ll be out in less than a week, this one will surely be worth the wait. Plenty of nice CSS hooks to enable those wild tricks.

Last edited by sivni (2005-07-10 23:56:55)

alexandra · 2005-07-11 18:21:16

I like Out of the box 2005.

Regarding the categories i am not sure. What is the difference between the layout for a zine and a blog? Both can look pretty much alike. Same with corporate and zine.
Well i am not asked but if so, i would forget about the categories …

btw. how about using sIFR?

sivni · 2005-07-11 19:51:13

> Well i am not asked but if so, i would forget about the categories
I get your point, one could just forget about categories if we are just working on the default template. On the other hand, the categories can describe an intended audience, not only a type of look.

> btw. how about using sIFR?
Would you not need a plugin for that?

alexandra · 2005-07-11 20:21:28

> sivni wrote:

one could just forget about categories if we are just working on the default template

this is the question, or did i miss something on this long thread?

> btw. how about using sIFR?
Would you not need a plugin for that?

i used sIFR once on one of my txp sites and… lol.. i can´t remember if i did use zems plugin….i think i did it by hand. for sure a javascript file is needed and of course a flash file.

jonimueller · 2005-07-14 00:47:25

I’m very interested in designing for textpattern. Be careful to caution your designers that they must be careful about using images from such places as istock.photo.com, which strictly PROHIBITS redistribution of the image whether for profit or not. (In other words, it’s okay for you to download an istockphoto.com image to use to design for yourself or a client. As long as there’s no mass distribution involved.)

Also, playing the skeptic/devil’s advocate here, as in other blog template competitions, are the licenses individual, with the designer/author, or should be be made clear to all those submitting designs that they should all be open source/GPL with leeway for end users to chop hack and modify them?

Something to chew on for later on down the road when this contest is ready to be unleashed on the world!

And in any event, I’m ready to go!

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#151 2005-06-28 01:13:56

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#152 2005-06-28 06:14:54

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#153 2005-07-09 02:48:42

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#154 2005-07-09 02:55:04

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#155 2005-07-09 07:09:55

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#156 2005-07-09 16:30:42

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#157 2005-07-09 16:56:42

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#158 2005-07-09 17:30:34

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#159 2005-07-09 17:52:03

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#160 2005-07-10 19:20:16

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#161 2005-07-10 23:49:35

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#162 2005-07-11 18:21:16

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#163 2005-07-11 19:51:13

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#164 2005-07-11 20:21:28

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

#165 2005-07-14 00:47:25

Re: TXP Template Contest : Starting a Pledge ! Will you sign up ?

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