Textpattern CMS 4.8.0 | Hacker News Reader

Textpattern CMS 4.8.0

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49 pointsTomte24 comments

Textpattern is a bit like "everything that's modern and hip right now, like SSG, let's do the opposite".

It got a lot of attention and love back in the day, because everything is in the database. No template files or anything. You just backup your database.

(It would be great if SQLite was officially supported, or anything but MySQL)

It has a large (for the time) ecosystem of plugins. Which are base64-encoded strings that you upload in a web form in the admin interface. The horror, I know! But back then it was seriously cool.

All templates, forms etc in the database also means you don't have a file lying around. Which means you cannot point your favorite text editor you it. You either use the builtin "editor" (just a form field) or copy and paste it into your editor and back, if you need syntax highlighting, validation or whatever.

Textpattern was pretty much dead a few years ago, but then development picked up again, and now you get a new release every now and then. The development team finally made XHTML optional and HTML5 possible (already quite some time ago), they expanded the builtin template language with new tags. It's tasteful development, not hectic.

Textpattern is great! I'm thinking about using it for a new project as a quasi-SSG, building my site and then wgetting it into static files.

>I'm thinking about using it for a new project as a quasi-SSG, building my site and then wgetting it into static files.

This is an interesting idea - presumably a sitemap-esque file could be generated for an SSG to parse and then bulk download. I've never thought of that. Thanks for the tip!

There are sitemap plugins, using those will be my first step. We'll see how far it takes me.

Edit: Turns out, you can do sitemaps natively, like that: https://github.com/colak/neme/blob/master/pages/sitemap.tpl

> All templates, forms etc in the database also means you don't have a file lying around. Which means you cannot point your favorite text editor you it.

That was indeed true, but no more. With the advent of themes from v4.7.0, you can export template files and CSS to the filesystem for version control or whatever purposes you require.

Textpattern still reads all its template/tag data from the database by default, but you can import/export the files however you see fit to suit your workflow, or bundle them up to share/reuse.

Auto-sync of files<->database during development is supported by a plugin. The reason it's not a core feature is because we've separated the live/dev workflow in the latest version so you can iterate/revamp/update/overhaul your sites on the live server without needing to do the separate staging server dance. See:

https://textpattern.com/weblog/424/the-end-of-the-web-develo...

There are so many ways this could be utilised, we felt it better to leave workflow decisions to the site admin.

> It would be great if SQLite was officially supported, or anything but MySQL

We support MySQL clones such as MariaDB and Percona. Not tried any others yet. PDO support is on the list, but it requires some refactorisation internally so we've been putting it off!

>All templates, forms etc in the database also means you don't have a file lying around.

This has changed a bit. From Textpattern 4.7, there is support for front-side theming in externally-editable files. Although the markup, styling, and other text components are stored in the database, they can be imported from (and exported to) theme files. These theme files can be edited outside of Textpattern, and then ingested into the database. Made changes in Textpattern. Export the current version to the theme files, and you're all synced up.

Textpattern is sort of a forgotten CMS, and that's a shame; it's got a powerful template language, a good extension system, and a tiny but very enthusiastic community. It's often easier to set up a custom site in TXP than it is in a lot of other systems, in my admittedly now out-of-date experience.

Textpattern was created by the late Dean Allen, a great early web designer and typographer -- and creator of the also somewhat forgotten Textile, an early markup system that's somewhat like a more complete Markdown.

Wasn't it somehow linked to Joyent? If not involved with development, they certainly helped popularise it, at least back in their freebsd/virtualmin/RoR days.

My memories about it are plenty vague now though...

Joyent merged with TextDrive, a hosting company by Textpattern's creator.

They got bad press years later when they didn't honor TextDrive's "lifetime account" anymore, which TextDrive had used to get early funding.

And bad press again when Dean Allen popped out of nowhere to save the day with continuing the lifetime hosting (but shared.) I don't quite remember what happened as I don't use shared hosting. I believe people actually got their shared hosting but it didn't last long. Dean Allen disappeared again and the service went away.

I think you're talking about Kaizen Garden. They came and went, though it was a galant effort.

http://web.archive.org/web/20140810052728/http://kaizengarde...

Edit: though I do have a vague memory of Dean wanting to resurrect TextDrive and not getting very far:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4455896

Nice detective work. What I'm referring to is the subject of the second link, "TextDrive is back."

You're right, yes. I was an original TextDrive customer and had the "lifetime hosting" plan, although I'd moved off of it well before Joyent shut it down -- it was clear that Joyent didn't have any real interest in keeping that promise. I think I got into an argument with a Joyent person or two by phrasing it similarly bluntly, but Joyent went through several pivots in their lifetime -- their original pitch was SaaS, providing "simple, powerful, web-based software that provides small teams with email, calendars, contacts, and shared applications" (quoting from their web site circa 2005 courtesy of archive.org) -- and when they pivoted into Serious Big Iron Enterprise Hosting (tm) it was clear fairly quickly that not only was shared hosting on borrowed time, but that they had no real interest in "low end" hosting of any sort.

I suspect we'll never know the true story of what happened with Dean Allen; looking back, there were definite signs even from as far removed as I am of him battling with depression, but of course, I'm writing this now with hindsight. At the time I'm pretty sure I just felt mildly annoyed that he seemed to have vanished from both TextDrive and Textpattern.

> I suspect we'll never know the true story of what happened with Dean Allen; looking back, there were definite signs even from as far removed as I am of him battling with depression, but of course, I'm writing this now with hindsight.

Or he just liked to drink. Have you seen this piece from Om Malik?

https://om.co/2018/01/18/dean-allen-rest-in-peace/

There's a story in there about Dean Allen getting drunk and locking Om Malik out of the apartment. ;)

Heh. I did see it, but that's also the piece with the line "I think I heard Jason say that Dean gave up on the struggle," which sure seems suggestive.

Ouch, I forgot about that part. That's sobering.

I remember the drinking part of the story, but as with any story, there's more to it than we'll know.

I suppose this is a good moment to say, RIP Dean Allen. This is another moment where we remember you at HN.

Regardless of the history of Textpattern and all that followed (including the hosting) - I spent many hours happily hacking on tools provided from that shared journey. It was a great ecosystem, or we wouldn't still be talking about it.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

I ran my first blog way back when it was in the pre-1.0 stages. Worked quite wonderfully, Textile was a joy to work with and I had a lot of fun delving into the referer log page, wondering at how others found my posts through seemingly random searches...

I don't know anything about Textpattern but I love that the homepage of the project has a picture of a Commodore PET on it. That's going back a long ways.

Textpattern web ops guy here.

Thanks for giving our server a good workout today!

Textpattern was the first CMS I ever used, and purchasing its custom fields plugin was perhaps my first online transaction. It was very pleasant to use.

>purchasing its custom fields plugin was perhaps my first online transaction.

Wow. That was a long time ago! Custom fields are standard these days, albeit limited to articles and 10 maximum, though there are plans to extend to unlimited custom fields in core.

Are there plans to give them some type? As of now they are simply strings, as far as I understand. Having a date picker for date customs fields etc. would be great.

Of course, if you give us that, we will always ask for more, until you have implemented half of Kirby (https://getkirby.com/docs/guide/blueprints/introduction). :-)

>Are there plans to give them some type? As of now they are simply strings, as far as I understand.

They are strings. I don't know of any plans to extend the core beyond that, though speaking for myself it sounds like plugin territory.

>Having a date picker for date customs fields etc. would be great.

A valid case. The argument for x feature is sometimes a tricky one, as a lot of things fall into plugin territory until a critical mass of people want it, and then it's considered for core. Unfortunately, many Textpattern plugin authors have moved on to other projects, and some often-used plugins end up being orphaned, adopted and repurposed for current releases.

It's a somewhat tricky situation – have a feature spun out to a plugin, sites become reliant on said plugin, plugin author moves on, and the community ends up fixing the plugin for current versions. There's no animosity at all, as far as I know, it's just not an ideal scenario. Thankfully many (most?) plugins are open sourced with appropriate licences.

> Are there plans to give them some type?

Yes! The next custom fields implementation is, as far as I'm aware, one of a kind in that it a) uses the 'best' field type to store the data under the hood in the database (int for numerical data, datetime for dates, and so forth), and b) will permit you to output any html component to support that data type at input time. So, yes, a date picker for dates if you like.

All the built-in data wrangling is customisable by plugins so they can override/extend data storage and offer different input methods as needed. Though we do have to finish that bit of code yet! The branch is still lurking in our repo, awaiting final tweaks for prime time.

Github stuff if you're curious:

https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern (CMS)

https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern.github.io (docs)

https://github.com/textpattern/ (project)

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