Some Thoughts on Textpattern
On a recent project, I worked with a lesser known and charming little CMS known as Textpattern (or "Txp" to its users). The decision came after a long and drawn out process of researching and theming various CMS solutions to see what would be the easiest to develop (there was a time constraint) and what would be the easiest to maintain for a non-technical manager.
First came Drupal. Drupal came highly recommended nearly everywhere I looked. I had long been searching for an opportunity to give it a shot, so I did. For a day. And that was enough. Drupal does EVERYTHING I could ever ask, and then some. For some sites, this may be a good thing, but for a little vet clinic site, it was overkill times 10. Plus, all those people who recommended Drupal, I'd be willing to be that none of them were designers. Theming drupal is like getting your head sewn to the carpet. There are very few quality themes to start with, and even the starter themes (like Zen) were difficult to understand. The problem is that you're basically given a template with preset classes and ID's and it's up to you to do whatever you want using only the CSS. A "CSS Zen Garden" type of approach. This sucks. Those who are willing to dive into a little PHP can modify the template (to an extent...a lot of it is buried in Drupal's core files including like 18 stylesheets that made me want to cry) which I did, before deciding that it just wasn't worth it. There had to be a better way.
I then tried ExpressionEngine. As we all know, I'm a long time CodeIgniter user, and it just so happens that ExpressionEngine is made by EllisLab, the same guys who made CodeIgniter (and seem to have an affinity for UpperCamelCase). I love ExpressionEngine. I downloaded the free core version and twiddled with it. The templating engine is awesome. You have COMPLETE control over all of your pages in an easy to use interface. Each page is basically an HTML page with tags like this:
-
{exp:weblog:entries}
thrown in to make the page. For me, it just clicked. Also, version 2.0 is on the way and from the sneak preview it looks to be pretty sweet. However, the core version just wasn't enough for what we needed for the site, and the client didn't want to pay for the commercial version, so we moved along.
Along came SilverStripe. It looked nice. It had a lot of functionality. The admin section was pretty simple to use. Everything was fine and dandy. Then we got around to developing. The dang thing just didn't work! A lot of the modules threw PHP errors, installation was a pain, etc. Although it might have been some kind of crazy server issue, we just decided that things didn't look good, and moved on. EDIT: We were notified shortly after writing this that the errors were do to a wacky php.ini setting our host had thrown in for a few hours, so scratch that! I definitely want to give SilverStripe another shot with that in mind, as it looks to be one of the most promising CMS solutions out there. Although I do wish that it did not require mod_rewrite, because I do a lot of testing on localhost (running Ubuntu Studio - classic LAMP setup), and I'm trying to avoid that headache on my own box.
Then there was WordPress. WP is one of those things that every designer has worked with before, like a car salesman with a Honda. It's everywhere. And I still like it pretty well, despite the somewhat messy theming process. However, you have to pick the right thing for the right job, and a blogging solution for a site not centered around blogging just didn't mesh well. We could have done what we wanted with a few addons and some creativity, but why?
Finally, we found Textpattern. It had the simplicity we wanted, the templating engine of ExpressionEngine (basically), the CMS tools we needed, the flexibility everyone wants, it was perfect. And unlike SilverStripe, it worked. So we set forth!
First impressions, this thing is clever. Installation is a breeze, the admin section is laid out well, it had everything we need and nothing we didn't.
Second impression, what the heck is a form? Turns out, "forms" in Textpattern are little bits of code to use wherever you want. For example, we created a header and a footer form to include in all of the pages. Forms could definitely use a new name (Snippets, perhaps?).
And that was just about all the learning we had to do. Once we new what a form was, we understood txp. It's that simple. The templating just makes sense, and the page building section includes a little tag builder so you don't have to remember what the tag for the header of a blog entry is (or whatever it is you're trying to output).
The only thing you need to realize when building a txp (or ExpressionEngine) site is that articles are EVERYTHING. Don't think of articles as articles (or blogs), think of them as content. If you want an "About Us" page, you could just create a new section "about", write one article in that section (called "About Us"), and set the section to use a page called "about", which basically would just output all the articles with section="about" which would be our one article. This way, if your client ever wants to update their about us page, they can just edit the article rather than having to change the page itself with the tags and html everywhere. It sounds complicated, but it's really the most logical thing in the world. We loved it.
It also has a cool little visitor log that keeps track of who visits, when they came, and where they were referred from. For a site like this, anything more would have been overkill. It let us see what people were searching for and that was all that we needed.
Here comes the disclaimer: txp is pretty stripped down. There's no forum, no photo gallery, no ecommerce solution, none of that. There are a pretty decent amount of plugins so that you can probably find things to do all of this, but out of the box, it's basic. That's part of the reason we chose it, because we wanted basic. But if you're building something complicated, you'd probably be better off with something else (EE!) rather than trying to huddle together a bunch of different plugins to do the job.
So I guess that's a pretty rave review. We loved txp, and will be glad to use it the next chance we get. It's still no match for end-all-be-all that is ExpressionEngine, but its charm and simplicity bring it to a pretty close second.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
The bulk of the gigs I get is exactly like that; simple, basic sites for small companies; and I’ve always used and loved TXP for that because it is just perfect for that kind of site.
For a complete non-techie who will only sporadically update the site, even WP’s interface is a bit overwhelming. But I’ve got nothing but praise from my clients who I’ve set up with TXP.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Exactly! Most of the stuff any future updater will need will be under that preselected content tab, so the more complicated stuff is tucked away. A perfect example of the K.I.S.S. method. Well said, Rafael.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Great article. Exactly all the reasons why I have chosen Textpattern and have realized some nice small websites with it. BUT I have absolutely no doubt that Textpattern is also able big sites with big traffic. Yes, the community feature list is near zero but hey, if you need a forum or member blogs then don’t take Textpattern.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:39 am
I was using MovableType for my freelance job (web design with cms) but not anymore…
What I like about TXP is helping me to finish my work 5 times faster…
So thanks for the articles…
August 21st, 2008 at 8:14 am
It’s fair to say that Txp is a great choice for simple sites but one can build fairly complex ones too.
If you need very specific functionality then you will need a programmer to build an extension for you, which will be managed via the admin interface.
But you can do a lot with what’s out of the box and some useful plugins. For example, a non-programmer like me can include if / then like logic to display information in all sorts of ways.
I’m re-designing my site using Txp and will include product pages, blog, articles, news, photo galleries, directory and few more bits and pieces (including integrating a miniBB.com forum). I’m using categories and custom fields to associate content so that if I create a product page and there is news about that product the news will be listed on the page. Have a look for yourself: http://beta.tabletpc.it (in italian).
Of course one can probably do the same thing using Drupal and EE. However, these solutions are a bit too advanced for me. I don’t have the skills and time to be using more advanced systems.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:03 am
@Markus - Oh yes, the ability to handle traffic is one of the great things about Textpattern. Benchmarks show that it compares pretty favorably to most other CMS solutions.
@Lawrence - Thanks for the reply (and for turning me on to miniBB…somehow that one’s new to me and I like the looks of it). Of course, you’re right, the plugin interface is nice and pretty easy to implement whatever you need (basically just a PHP function and an HTML help file).
And, like I said, you can do whatever you want if you have the time to mesh a few plugins and possibly create your own. However, I think the skill required to do that in Textpattern is greater than the skill required to do it in, say, EE, because the tools you need are included out of the box, and you’re not forced to add on/debug them.
I think that one of the low points of Txp is the process of finding a plugin you need. Many are outdated, many don’t work with current Txp versions, many don’t really work well period, and often it’s up to you to try them all out and figure out for yourself what works and what doesn’t. If I have two critiques of Txp, they are “rename forms” and “reorganize plugins.”
But you’re right. You can do whatever you want with pretty much any CMS solution out there.
Thanks for reading :).
August 21st, 2008 at 9:04 am
Great article. I think a lot of designers have gone through the same process of trying to find the right system for the job at hand. I echo your thoughts on Drupal theming: “Theming drupal is like getting your head sewn to the carpet.” So true. Not to disparage Drupal, but when you publish a 250 page book on Drupal Theming–it means it’s too hard.
Having cut my teeth on Textpattern when it was first released, I’ve been a staunch supporter of it for sites that have a flat design. While it’s core is very lean, there are some great community plug-ins. You just have to wade through all the deprecated stuff. The txp community has regalvanized as well and I am looking forward to the 4.07 release.
If you like both Textpattern and ExpressionEngine, take a look at modx: http://modxcms.com
I’ve used it on several projects and it has a very similar templating system.
Thanks for talking about SilverStripe. Prior to this, I’ve never seen it before.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am
@Tai
Thanks for the recommendation of modxcms. I’ve seen the site a few times, but never gone as far as trying it out myself. I’ll have to give it a shot.
I gotta say, I’m surprised to see a few Txp users around here. Where have you guys been hiding!?
August 21st, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Well, most of Textpattern’s users are not hiding but very busy building beautiful, elegant and easy-to-handle sites for their clients
August 21st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@Robert
How right you are.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
Great article, I will have to give Txp a proper look next time I’m doing a brochure site. That said, I always go with WordPress as a small CMS for brochures sites. A big part is inertia, I use it a lot already and it’s well supported by a huge community. Also, almost all my clients want a news or updates page so it makes sense to use blog software that supports some static pages.
Recently Happy Cog helped them redesign their admin interface, they have a robust media uploader and the ability to make a regular page the landing page instead of the blog is now built in, no extra plugins required.
August 25th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
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August 26th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I recently used the postmaster plugin for textpattern to set up a simple but elegant newsletter tool that can even send HTML mails. I like textpattern very much and I hope it will be continued for a very long time. It’s seems there is not such a rapid progress in the development, but I don’t see that as a disadvantage. With wordpress you have to update your site every few weeks, with txp it’s just 2 times a year.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
@nico
Thanks for turning me on to the postmaster plugin. That’s pretty slick.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
> “I gotta say, I’m surprised to see a few Txp users around here. Where have you guys been hiding!?”
Well, I/we monitor the internet for Textpattern and then we automagically show up when you need us
September 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Great blog post! And what a BEAUTIFUL theme!! Me like!!
I just downloaded TXP and will take it for a spin on my iBook.
Where do I find great themes to play around with?
September 8th, 2008 at 10:00 am
@Maxwell
What beautiful theme are you talking about? Anyway, textplates is a good theme site for inspiration.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Mike wrote: “what the heck is a form?”
That’s one of the most common questions of new users. Badly needs a new name, but I think the old name may be too much inertia for a change.
Tai wrote: “I am looking forward to the 4.07 release.”
Same here. The new template parser in 4.0.7 has some nifty features, like being able to use template tags as attributes for other template tags.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:00 am
@Mike: You might be interested in a few of the plugins by Mary Fredborg, a pillar of the Textpattern community and a coauthor of the book Textpattern Solutions.
Four of my favorite Mary plugins go a long way toward extending the “articles are everything” philosophy you mentioned in your post. The upm_image plugin allows you to associate more than one image with an article (still using the article image field) and provides much more flexibility for choosing and displaying an article’s image(s) in a template. It works nicely with the upm_img_popper plugin, which provides a visual image picker — no more going back and forth to the Image tab to copy ID numbers. The upm_file and upm_file_popper combo offer similar features for files that have been uploaded using Txp’s file management interface. With these plugins installed, articles move even further away from being chunks of text and become generic containers for any type of content managed with the Txp system.
October 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I’ve went through some ot the same steps as described and ende up finding my perfect solution for probably a few projects to come- xMOD. It’s not suprising that it’s been mentioned already, since it has a big cominity. I have not used textpattern as I’ve just heard of it, but would be interested in seeing the difference.
I have to say though, when I started using xMod, I was so excited, because it did everything I wanted it to .. easily.
I’ve also tried kajoona, miaCMS (also worth a look), typo3 (wow, for like 3 minutes), sNews aside from some of the listed (I didn’t try expression engine, and joomla and drupal seem like overkill)
I had technical issues with just about all packages, and I couldn’t get any help on my caching issue, which was a server issue. But for some reason I fealt I was let down the most by silverstripe. On the other hand I was able to fix my issues with xmod myself.
personaly for my own site I just converted to cuteCMS…. it’s cute, no database, which should make it portable in the future, but certainly not robust.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:15 am
@Daniel
Thanks for the comment. MODx is coming along nicely. I also looked into MiaCMS after your post, and I like what I see so far. What’s cuteCMS? I can’t find it anywhere. Are you talking about CuteSite? The content management framework?
October 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I agree with this post!
I went through almost every CMS going and came to the same conclusion about a year ago - if you have money, get EE, if you don’t, get Textpattern.
The same goes if you’re not a PHP junkie. Wordpress was annoying me with some of its PHP template tags, and Drupal was a nightmare with its admin interface integrated into the site, but EE and TP have great template systems for people comfortable with HTML/CSS.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:48 am
free wordpress themes…
I found some real nice homepage templates for my wordpress blog. After moving from joomla to wordpress I am really happy with all this service for free!…
November 4th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Re: cutecms, maybe he’s referring to cutenews.
I’m trying out also textpattern in some projects. Hope I’ll enjoy the experience.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Nice article. If I only had time, I’d go trough all the major CMSs. I’m stuck with Joomla, and it’s not always that functional…
November 11th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Interesting article. As a Txp user you ain’t telling me anything I haven’t figured out already. You might be surprised at just how complex a website Txp can handle with ease. I am sure that I am not the only one reading this who has tweaked it just a little and built an E-commerce site with it.
CuteNews is as basic a blogging tool as you can get but it does the job when the situation arises. I used multiple installs on a single site for a church when they refused to pay extra, $10 per month, for their host to add 1 database!
November 27th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
It’s a terrific article that sums up textpattern nicely. For a lot of the work I do txp fits the bill really well. And with a few plugins thrown in it can do a lot more. I’ve come back to using it after a long absence. With a fresh mind and approach, some of the things I found frustrating with txp now make sense to me.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:32 am
@Martin
That’s good to know. I’ve strayed from it since the writing of this article. Maybe it’s time to come back.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:19 am
@Mike: To a new CMS mistress? Who?
November 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Yes…I’m ashamed.
I’ve been spending some time with concrete5 lately. It’s awesome for your basic “bunch of editable” pages site. And of course there’s always ExpressionEngine, my main squeeze.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I’m an EE user too for the bigger (and charity) sites I put together. I’ve tried C5 an couldn’t get my head around getting the look I want. I might take another look.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Really? I’ve found c5 to be one of the most easily themed CMS’s (if you can even call it theming when all you’re doing is adding a few lines of PHP). Were you going for something complicated? If so, let me know and maybe I can write a how to blog about it or something (if I can figure it out myself, that is).