Want to choose an open source CMS for your website? Know HTML and CSS? Like designing and doing things differently to the one-click crowd? Try Textpattern.
In the open source CMS battlefield, everyone has their favourites; the market leader is currently WordPress. In the supermarket wars, the current UK market leader is Tescos. That doesn’t mean either are necessarily the best in terms of quality or features, just that they’re the lowest common denominator that suit the majority of people who don’t have the time or inclination to explore further afield.
So why do I stick with Textpattern — the perceived underdog — when surely WordPress or Joomla or Movable Type or Drupal are “better” (=more popular) according to the press? Here’s why, in no particular order:
- It is stable. Updates are few and far between for a good reason: security is paramount so there’s no rush to release a bug fix which could introduce more bugs.
- It is secure. By default there is no PHP in templates so injecting malicious code into your sites is tricky.
- It is lightweight. Everything is stripped back and bare so it does only what is necessary to get the job of rendering a page done. For everything else there are a wealth of plugins or admin side themes.
- It uses tag-based rendering so pages can remain small, allowing the tags to handle the complexity that other publishing systems require you to code in PHP. Great for designers and non-coders alike.
- It is fast due to its lightweight nature.
- It is insanely flexible. I have not yet come across a situation in which I cannot bend Txp into the shape I want. There is nearly always a plugin or a way of tweaking tags-in-tags to reach the end goal. Failing that, there is always the fallback of using a line or two of PHP if absolutely necessary.
- The community spirit on the forum simply rocks. I have never — ever — encountered such a bunch of helpful, level-headed, clever, helpful, polite, helpful and downright decent folk in all my 17 years of webbing. And whether you’re learning the ropes or looking for advanced tips to make your site stand out, that’s the sort of group you need. Did I mention they’re helpful?
Sure, as a one-click blogging tool or those that want a super-crunjo-whizbang shiny admin interface out of the box, Txp may be deemed far from perfect. And where it has shortcomings I aim to help improve it as the product evolves. But currently Textpattern’s sheer unassuming character offers everything I — and thousands of others — need to make unique and cutting edge websites.
It has power, it has flexibility, it has a tiny footprint and it does what I need with no fuss, no superfluous frills and little bloat.
In short, for designers who wish to make beautiful, maintainable websites, Textpattern can be as individual as you or your client are, and a niche tour-de-force worthy of serious consideration. Those who don’t have the desire to learn the considerable craft of HTML or CSS — or are content with upgrading their sites monthly to fix security flaws — can follow the crowd to the market leader.
I prefer quality. I prefer the design process. I prefer Textpattern.
Hear, hear!
Great post Stef, and you are one of the reasons that Textpattern is so good. Thanks!
And the community does rock – its incredible how polite and helpful it is. Rock on!
I fell in love with Txp back in 2006 and it’s still my preferred CMS for the freelance work I do.
As a designed with zero programming skills Textpattern allows me to include behaviours I need that go beyond the typical blog or website functions. Conditional tags are VERY useful.
Every article template can hold different types of information and display things differently, if necessary.
The way I see it, textpattern allows templates within templates — giving the designer the opportunity to get the detail 100% right.
Flexibility with navigation means that I can design the information architectures that best suit the scope of the site. This benefits usability and SEO a GREAT deal.
Great post Stef.
Great read,
I pulling my hair, hoping for your opinions.
I’m a designer, developer part-time since 2005, I’ve designed custom joomla! & now WP3 sites in the past. I’m bashing my head not knowing what to do w/current client. i built a joomla! Custom site for them but I’ve tried everything to educate them (complete emailers only tech IQ) and they just don’t grasp. I wanted to redevelop there site in a different more user friendly CMS so they can maintain there personal (church) site on there own.
My goal was to find a Open-Source version of Adobe’s CQ5 (previously DAY owned) only cause it seems perfect for my client being a drag & drop easy to maintain your website type of CMS.
Your opinions are greatly appreciated
Thanks a million,
DoozieWD
Thanks for getting in touch.
Choosing a CMS for non-tech people is always a challenge. The good thing about Textpattern is that if you set it up so all they need to do is login and type to add blog articles, there’s not much else they need to learn as long as they can type and click. The other great thing is that if it doesn’t do what you want immediately there are plugins that can help. For example:
* If Textile’s markup is too tricky to master, you can install a more WYSIWYG formatting tool (e.g. rah_textile_bar).
* You can limit other things they see by setting an appropriate role for the users or by using the smd_user_manager plugin to tailor what interface tabs they can see.
* Another plugin (bot_write_tab_customise) allows you to completely re-layout the Write tab, turning things on/off or moving things around to make the flow fit the user experience.
* The place where Textpattern really falls down at the moment (at least by default) is image handling. If you want visitors to associate images to articles you either need to show them how to visit the Images tab, upload the image, make a note of the ID and then put that in the Article Image field of the Write tab, or install a plugin that allows people to choose an image graphically from the pool. The downside here is that there are currently (at least that I know of) no plugins that allow you to upload AND assign multiple images to an article in one step. I do, however, have plans to write one; I’m partway there.
* Alternatively, since you’re a developer, you can use a plugin like smd_tabber to create a new ‘dashboard’ tab and then create a custom workflow that suits your user base. I know people who have done that very succesfully.
The bottom line is that I’m confident Textpattern can meet your needs. It is ideal for designers such as yourself because you can set up the HTML and CSS templates then leave the client to maintain the content. How smart you want to be about it depends on your imagination and design skills alone because there are plenty of plugins available that can make things simpler for people to use the CMS.
Hope that helps. The fab community are here to help if you need any guidance.
Stef,
Your response is much appreciated & much respected, thanks a mill. For your advice will definitely take it into consideration.
Cheers