Subsections

guyweb · 2005-10-06 08:07:10

Alicson – yes that’d be v-useful for tagging content and I fully support the idea.

However, it doesn’t solve the problem of subsections and content hierarchy. Whilst I realise that it’s great to tag things, often clients want a structural type of navigation since to put content into. Such sites are neither blog nor news sites and therefore don’t depend on the date of publication to determine the presentation.

Let’s assume we wanted to build the Textbook (http://textpattern.net) using Textpattern instead of MediaWiki. Out of the box, Textpattern will not allow us to do this. Sure, we could hack it a bit and hardcode the navigation in a template but wouldn’t it be great to be able to impose some structure using the Textpattern section/subsection tab?

If this was possible, it would make the statement..

“A free, flexible, elegant, easy-to-use content management system for all kinds of websites, even weblogs.”
(http://www.textpattern.com/)

far more accurate!

Of course Textpattern is absolutely brilliant for blogs and newspaper type websites. The best in the field I’m sure.

davidm · 2005-10-06 08:36:09

<blockquote> alicson wrote: wilshireone: multiple category support in progress </blockquote>

Thx Alicson, totally forgot, too much info on these forums !

That’s a great thing Rob is doing there :-D
I’ll keep tabs on this, most def

Last edited by davidm (2005-10-06 08:36:42)

grad · 2005-10-06 12:18:13

davidm, I used term containers intentionally because I think of them as logical containers. Should it be made with TXP’s sections or categories, I’m not sure. To achieve the goal of CMS — separation of content and presentation — it seems obvious that presentation should be hooked to content structure. With what TXP offers now, it should be sections. However, it may turn out that the concept of content structuring and classification in TXP will need a total rework.

Right now, we can only name for sure the end result — a way to structure and classify content through use of logical multi-level containers — from visitor’s point of view. Should I mention navigation and clean URLs? Having the structure of content we can classify and tag it as needed which may require the content item to belong to more than 2 ‘categories’. Maybe TXP should go orthogonal.

Textpattern is a nice and powerful piece of software. It’s small, fast and has useful admin interface. It may be the CMS of choice for small or even medium (corporate) sites. And that’s the way I want to use it. For bigger or more complex ones I would prefer Xaraya which is more powerful but more complex at the time.

NyteOwl, try Xaraya.

Last edited by grad (2005-10-06 12:21:06)

Deep · 2005-10-11 06:34:53

Actually I am also looking for subsection feature, I had posted one query about it earlier and found kind of work around to it but till now I could not find proper core solution for that.

I have an idea; can zem or any staff member who works on development team can tell how much cost can be involved in it? May be we can donate some money and get it done or something?

I was thinking of using txp for all my new developments but this subsection is stopping me, because in many cases clients need subsections….

for e.g.
Other Services (static page) – Web Designing (static page) – Web Dev (static page)

It will be really helpful if someone can add that feature…

Thanks
Deep

guyweb · 2005-10-11 07:43:45

Deep, I have since discovered that the current version of Wordpress supports sections and subsections, even though they are not called such. You can either do them structurally using ‘pages and subpages’ (if your content is not of the blog or news type) or ‘categories and subcategories’ (if it is blog or news based). Wordpress allows for query-based templates (http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development#Query-based_Templates) which means you can pretty much build any type of website, not just blogs, using Wordpress. I imagine the next version (1.6) will enhance this even further.

So whilst waiting for Textpattern to evolve further, it might be worth considering Wordpress for the time being as I have.

grad · 2005-10-11 08:35:11

Deep, I have since discovered that the current version of Wordpress supports sections and subsections (…)

Interesting. I considered Wordpress but then found TXP which at that time looked more CMS-like than WP. I think I’ll try WP with next project.

There are dozens of CMS systems out there but only few which are able to output standards compliant code (mandatory for me). I mentioned Xaraya already – a great CMS, very powerful and probably the most customizable available. You can do almost anything in it and it has an advanced privileges control, the subsections are not a problem too – there is a dedicated module (xarpages) which lets you ‘model’ site structure from visitor’s point of view. However its biggest drawback is its footprint as it takes al least 9 MB. Also, the configuration takes noticeable time due to its flexibility.

Because of it I was looking for a smaller one. That’s how I found TXP. Unfortunately, due to lack of subsections and very strong blogging heritage TXP is not suitable for “all kinds of websites”.

guyweb, I agree with you. Whilst waiting for TXP to evolve towards CMS it may be worth considering other systems. I think I’ll check Etomite

Last edited by grad (2005-10-11 09:12:20)

ubernostrum · 2005-10-11 08:40:28

FWIW, I think Wordpress has a much stronger “blogging heritage” than TXP… witness the very-recent addition of static pages which can function like sections.

Deep · 2005-10-11 08:43:09

@guyweb – To be frank, I did not find much flexibilty in wordpress compared to txp..
Wordpress is very good for blogging but for full sites I still choose txp..
On my current site also I needed subsections but since it was not possible with this so I installed another txp on subdomain to get the things rolling for the time being…

@grad – I will try the CMS you mentioned…

Deep

Last edited by Deep (2005-10-11 08:45:46)

guyweb · 2005-10-11 08:57:34

Deep – was this using Wordpress 1.5? it’s streets ahead of 1.2. The thing is I’ve not found Textpattern to be very flexible for anything but blogs or news based sites. I guess it’s down to an individual understanding of how the applications work. I recognise that mine is lacking somewhat!

enarsson · 2005-10-11 11:35:49

I really like Textpattern for its flexibility, lack of complexity, and the active developer community. However, I find the current system for categorization somewhat weak:

Content and presentation are not really cleanly separated as sections do organize the information. To split content into sections is organization of data regardless of how they are presented.
Categories can be hierarchal organized, but it is currently poorly supported (even though there are some useful plug-ins).
Keywords are kind of supported, but you can’t really do much with them.

What I suggest (without thinking of compatibility with earlier versions) is a system for classification that is:

Easy to understand. It should be easy to get a clear mental model of how things work.
Powerful without being to complex or rigid.
A good base for really separating content from presentation.

From this I conclude:

Use a true hierarchal categorisazation. This is how much information is organized in the real world. Everybody understands the concept as it works like the content-pages of a book.
Use real keywords as an alternative or a complementary way of organizing information. This is also something everybody is familiar with as it comparable with the index pages of a book. For this to be really powerful there must be a tag that generates a full index with the keywords listed in alphabetic order with links to each article.
Use a search function that is aware of both keywords and the hierarchal organization to give relevant matches.
Make it possible to apply presentation to categories and/or keywords at any level.

My suggestion may not meet all needs, but it will be simple to understand and more powerful than the current system in my humble opinion.

Deep · 2005-10-11 15:29:37

> guyweb wrote:

> Deep – was this using Wordpress 1.5? it’s streets ahead of 1.2. The thing is I’ve not found Textpattern to be very flexible for anything but blogs or news based sites. I guess it’s down to an individual understanding of how the applications work. I recognise that mine is lacking somewhat!

Actually I am also running my blog on WP 1.5 for quite long time but it lacks features like forms (which I use most), things like flexibility of using static pages on front page and many more things which txp has and wordpress doesn’t

Wordpress is best app. for blog kind of sites but for static sites or corporate sites txp wins :)

Deep

guyweb · 2005-10-11 15:37:42

enarsson – I agree with everything you say.

Deep – Loving your site – excellent design!

Have you read: http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#WordPress_as_a_CMS

It’s quite a useful piece of info and might help address the issue of having static pages on the front page. I guess you and I are going to have to differ on opinion here regarding Textpattern being better at doing static and corporate sites as Textpattern doesn’t support sub-sections.

Which all brings us nicely back to where we started..

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#37 2005-10-06 08:07:10

Re: Subsections

#38 2005-10-06 08:36:09

Re: Subsections

#39 2005-10-06 12:18:13

Re: Subsections

#40 2005-10-11 06:34:53

Re: Subsections

#41 2005-10-11 07:43:45

Re: Subsections

#42 2005-10-11 08:35:11

Re: Subsections

#43 2005-10-11 08:40:28

Re: Subsections

#44 2005-10-11 08:43:09

Re: Subsections

#45 2005-10-11 08:57:34

Re: Subsections

#46 2005-10-11 11:35:49

Re: Subsections

#47 2005-10-11 15:29:37

Re: Subsections

#48 2005-10-11 15:37:42

Re: Subsections

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