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#1 2005-12-12 15:24:25

thame
Member
Registered: 2005-06-07
Posts: 96
Website

Textpattern Theme Competition

The last talk of one seems to be a few months old, so I apologize if I’m kind of reposting here:

With the huge success of the Typo theme competition (it produced some truly amazing entries), I think Textpattern could really benefit from a similar competition.

I’m willing to “host” the competition, find sponsors, and design and enter some layouts to get things started.

I know there are some problems with the lack of any templating engine, but Textpattern users are generally more advanced (else they would stick with something more common like WP) and should be able to handle an installation with proper documentation.

Most current templates are ports of common themes, and a competition could bring originality to the CMS that we have never had.

What do you think?

Last edited by thame (2005-12-12 15:24:40)

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#2 2005-12-12 16:53:05

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

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

A competition does bring a lot of original themes, rather than ports of designs from other systems.

Ports are good also, it shows that a certain system can be made to look and act like another. When a user sees the Kubrick style running on so many systems, then their choice of a system comes down to the backend features rather than the look.

I would like to see a competition, since I’ve yet to see two Textpattern sites that looked the same ;)

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#3 2005-12-12 17:32:25

lee
Member
From: Normandy, France
Registered: 2004-06-17
Posts: 831

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

I wouldn’t ask “what do you think? because you risk getting into the endless loop of debating competition rules and other such stuff which sank similar ideas. Set out the rules, guides or what ever, and go for it. Getting Dean to back it would be good, especially if he put up a lifetime hosting account as top prize.

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#4 2005-12-12 17:53:30

thame
Member
Registered: 2005-06-07
Posts: 96
Website

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

> lee wrote:

> I wouldn’t ask “what do you think? because you risk getting into the endless loop of debating competition rules and other such stuff which sank similar ideas. Set out the rules, guides or what ever, and go for it. Getting Dean to back it would be good, especially if he put up a lifetime hosting account as top prize.

Good point(s)

I’ll contact him just to make sure it won’t conflict with any plans he may have and I’ll start looking for sponsors.

The rules will likely be quite simple:

  1. Set Deadline
  2. Multiple entries allowed
  3. Only original work (i.e. No Ports)
  4. Must work across platforms and browsers

I’ll also be looking for judges, preferrably well-known Textpattern users.

If I’m missing something, please let me know.

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#5 2005-12-12 19:40:51

Jeremie
Member
From: Provence, France
Registered: 2004-08-11
Posts: 1,578
Website

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

Yep, would that be themes, templates or what ?

Aka can I set my sections, txp page templates and forms as I want ? Can I use plugin ?

What licenses should be used (I think a Creative COmmon is the minimum, if not the theme would not be re-usable) ?

And I think you should ask for strict valid semantic xhtml, with true accessibility in mind. We are not in 1998 anymore :p

Edit : and define the criterias used by the judges. Purely “Good looking” (ok, 100% flash based here we come), or usability, acesssibility, ease of customization/adaptation, etc.

Last edited by Jeremie (2005-12-12 19:44:21)

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#6 2005-12-12 20:32:23

thame
Member
Registered: 2005-06-07
Posts: 96
Website

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

I believe full templates would be best because they would give designers more room. So the submitted designs can include page templates, section creation and settings, form creation and modification, and plugins (designers may want comment_alt, live search, etc)

Yes, the licensing should definitely be CC. Templates can have credit links to the designer, but the submissions will become public.

An accesible design is also a must, but I’m not sure about valid code…should we lower the level to XHTML 1.0 Transitional? I wouldn’t want to reject a good design because a plugin or something else was causing a validation problem.

Jeremie makes another good point in clearly defining the judging criteria. There seems to be some confusion with the Typo contest juding, and I think it would be really good to publicly provide the judging rubric. Each element that will be judged will have a scale and the designs would be ranked according to final score (as determined by the judges).

What should the rubric consist of?

  1. Layout (is it original, typical blog structure, etc)
  2. Design (how does it look, graphics and images)
  3. Code (Valid? Semantic?)
  4. Features (Any extra feature?)
  5. Browser/Platform support
  6. Accessibility

Last edited by thame (2005-12-12 20:32:51)

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#7 2005-12-13 00:39:07

thame
Member
Registered: 2005-06-07
Posts: 96
Website

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

Does anyone have any suggestions for sponsors?

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#8 2005-12-13 02:17:51

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

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

Sponsors can come from users themselves, I’d be glad to donate monies towards the contest.

I have an idea for the contest, would it make sense to divide up the design submissions by target audience?

Business sites, Personal Blogs, etc. This way we can get some business style templates to enter the channel than just blog like templates.

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#9 2005-12-13 02:58:39

thame
Member
Registered: 2005-06-07
Posts: 96
Website

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

That’s a good idea hcgtv. It would help promote Textpattern as a full-scale CMS (which it is).

It might be a good idea to try to pool some cash together to pay for prizes, but do you know of any companies that seem open to this sort of publicity?

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#10 2005-12-13 03:10:37

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

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

Well, for publicity you can approach:

1. Hosting companies, they like to be associated with helping the open source community.
2. CMS comparision sites like opensourcecms or cmsmatrix.
3. Template design sites like openwebdesign.
4. Heavily trafficked sites like slashdot, digg, etc.
5. The user community, provide badges, banners, etc.

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#11 2005-12-13 07:21:13

Nichod
Member
Registered: 2005-06-06
Posts: 119

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

Great idea. I’m up for it. Lets not hash on the details and prizes to much. Or this will never get started. But I will say one nice prize idea would be to choose a feature for TXP. The winner would submit 5 ideas for a new feature to be added to the next release. And Dean would choose which one he’d be willing to implement, with control over how much of it is implemented, etc.

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#12 2005-12-13 16:45:07

Mary
Sock Enthusiast
Registered: 2004-06-27
Posts: 6,236

Re: Textpattern Theme Competition

“…one nice prize idea would be to choose a feature for TXP.”

Features should be added because it is both desired by a large amount of people, and follows the direction of Txp’s development. What if all five suggestions are neither?

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