The development of CMS Textpattern and who needs it
It just so happened that every sandpiper praises its swamp. So today I would like to praise my favorite Textpattern content management system, which I have not been able to part with for 6 years now.
It all began, as with most, with a web hobby. In the late 90s there was no normal system with which it would be easy and easy to harbor a site or a client. More precisely, but some unfinished and raw. The market has developed.
Having tried about a hundred of such systems, PHP-Nuke left a bright memory of itself - at that time it was good, but, unable to withstand the pressure of younger systems, it went into the shadows, moved to Joomla and Drupal - they seemed somewhat complicated ... There were many more systems and setting the frameworks that they lived on the localhost for no more than a couple of days.
As a result, he settled on the popular and now Wordpress. We managed to make a couple of serious projects with him, but failed to get this monster to be at least somehow fast without a very long process of optimizing the code, checking each plug-in, and putting things in order.
Around the same time as disappointment in Wordpress, I discovered Textpattern. Then I was looking for a system with which the creation of a typical site would take two or three days with a ready layout. I tried it. The first impressions of Textpattern are asceticism and simplicity of the admin panel, but at the same time, everything is logical and sufficient for work. The first site I did on it, of course, not two days. But the process started, I got involved. And hooked! My personal record - I managed to raise the site on it in 2 hours! Plus, four regional portals are currently working on it (one of them previously worked on Wordpress).
The Internet has grown. I grew up professionally. Grew and developed Textpattern.
Over the years, he retained all his advantages, covering all his weaknesses along the way. Textpattern has a lot of delights:
- due to the fact that it is all written in functions, it is extremely fast and easy. From my experience with Wordpress, I remember that it eats up about 60 meters without page caching to generate a page, and with a cache about 30-40 meters. Textpattern takes 5-10 megabytes of memory (!) On itself without any cache. This allows you to deliver content faster and not load hosting on a loaded project.
- ease of customization of design and structure. Textpattern went on its own path of development - this is both its strength and its weakness. The code of the site’s pages is not stored in separate files, such as in Wordpress or Smarty, but is edited in the admin panel and stored in the database. This at first glance complicates the uplift of the finished template (in the same Wordpress, you can simply copy the template to the hosting), but in practice it greatly simplifies editing and debugging. Which saves a lot of time and effort in the end.
- Textpattern supports ALL existing languages out of the box! No need to rename anything - everything already works in the language you speak.
- Naturally there is a CNC and it works well
- a large number of plug-ins and an active community. For Textpattern, more than one hundred serious plugins have been developed that extend its functionality in one way or another.
- distribution of roles and user rights.
- serious burglar resistance, stability and reliability. If your server does not have holes, or a malicious virus on a working computer, then hacking your site will be almost impossible! Textpattern itself is superbly protected.
- ease of development and maintenance of the site. I have several projects that support real, classic blondes. Even with them, the flight is normal.
- simple spelling plugins. With normal knowledge of php, learning to write good plugins for Textpattern takes 1-2 months. Having understood the internal logic and structure of the Textpattern, everything becomes simple and elegant. Textpattern's code is beautiful, logical, and easy to understand. The more you delve into the logic of developers, the more you dive into Zen PHP.
- own markup language - Textile. Personally, the familiar html is convenient for me. The developers decided differently, which scares off a lot of users from the CMS. But there is a simple way out - there is a plugin that allows you to switch work to the classic WYSIWYG editor (hak_tinymce plugin).
- out of the box, inserting an image or gallery into the article makes you work with copy paste (solved by plugins, for example ku_image_uploader).
- poor functionality for working with site users. There is no normal plugin for registration / personal account.
- It is difficult to make an online store.
If your project is primarily informational and you at least know what html tags are, then Textpattern is for you a Klondike of possibilities!
For freelancers - a way to quickly and easily develop a project.
For fans - the opportunity to make a resource yourself, which is easy to configure and difficult to crack.
I’ll add on my own that I finally decided to upload my own developments to the network and make an assembly in the near future, making the Textpattern simple for the teapot out of the box. Requests for specific improvements are also accepted.
It all began, as with most, with a web hobby. In the late 90s there was no normal system with which it would be easy and easy to harbor a site or a client. More precisely, but some unfinished and raw. The market has developed.
Having tried about a hundred of such systems, PHP-Nuke left a bright memory of itself - at that time it was good, but, unable to withstand the pressure of younger systems, it went into the shadows, moved to Joomla and Drupal - they seemed somewhat complicated ... There were many more systems and setting the frameworks that they lived on the localhost for no more than a couple of days.
As a result, he settled on the popular and now Wordpress. We managed to make a couple of serious projects with him, but failed to get this monster to be at least somehow fast without a very long process of optimizing the code, checking each plug-in, and putting things in order.
Around the same time as disappointment in Wordpress, I discovered Textpattern. Then I was looking for a system with which the creation of a typical site would take two or three days with a ready layout. I tried it. The first impressions of Textpattern are asceticism and simplicity of the admin panel, but at the same time, everything is logical and sufficient for work. The first site I did on it, of course, not two days. But the process started, I got involved. And hooked! My personal record - I managed to raise the site on it in 2 hours! Plus, four regional portals are currently working on it (one of them previously worked on Wordpress).
The Internet has grown. I grew up professionally. Grew and developed Textpattern.
Over the years, he retained all his advantages, covering all his weaknesses along the way. Textpattern has a lot of delights:
- due to the fact that it is all written in functions, it is extremely fast and easy. From my experience with Wordpress, I remember that it eats up about 60 meters without page caching to generate a page, and with a cache about 30-40 meters. Textpattern takes 5-10 megabytes of memory (!) On itself without any cache. This allows you to deliver content faster and not load hosting on a loaded project.
- ease of customization of design and structure. Textpattern went on its own path of development - this is both its strength and its weakness. The code of the site’s pages is not stored in separate files, such as in Wordpress or Smarty, but is edited in the admin panel and stored in the database. This at first glance complicates the uplift of the finished template (in the same Wordpress, you can simply copy the template to the hosting), but in practice it greatly simplifies editing and debugging. Which saves a lot of time and effort in the end.
Advantages of Textpattern:
- Textpattern supports ALL existing languages out of the box! No need to rename anything - everything already works in the language you speak.
- Naturally there is a CNC and it works well
- a large number of plug-ins and an active community. For Textpattern, more than one hundred serious plugins have been developed that extend its functionality in one way or another.
- distribution of roles and user rights.
- serious burglar resistance, stability and reliability. If your server does not have holes, or a malicious virus on a working computer, then hacking your site will be almost impossible! Textpattern itself is superbly protected.
- ease of development and maintenance of the site. I have several projects that support real, classic blondes. Even with them, the flight is normal.
- simple spelling plugins. With normal knowledge of php, learning to write good plugins for Textpattern takes 1-2 months. Having understood the internal logic and structure of the Textpattern, everything becomes simple and elegant. Textpattern's code is beautiful, logical, and easy to understand. The more you delve into the logic of developers, the more you dive into Zen PHP.
Cons too:
- own markup language - Textile. Personally, the familiar html is convenient for me. The developers decided differently, which scares off a lot of users from the CMS. But there is a simple way out - there is a plugin that allows you to switch work to the classic WYSIWYG editor (hak_tinymce plugin).
- out of the box, inserting an image or gallery into the article makes you work with copy paste (solved by plugins, for example ku_image_uploader).
- poor functionality for working with site users. There is no normal plugin for registration / personal account.
- It is difficult to make an online store.
So who is Textpattern suitable for?
If your project is primarily informational and you at least know what html tags are, then Textpattern is for you a Klondike of possibilities!
For freelancers - a way to quickly and easily develop a project.
For fans - the opportunity to make a resource yourself, which is easy to configure and difficult to crack.
I’ll add on my own that I finally decided to upload my own developments to the network and make an assembly in the near future, making the Textpattern simple for the teapot out of the box. Requests for specific improvements are also accepted.