Textpattern · 7 January 2003
Okay. The CMS I’ve been alluding to, the one that runs this site, is very nearly ready for public release. A year and a half late but hey, I moved to France and lots of other things besides. Je ne regrette rien.
Textpattern is a publishing system designed for those who want to write for the web. Its bells and whistles are many, but it is above all very simple to use. Little knowledge of internet technology is required to install and use it; the production of valid, standards-compliant web pages is basic to its operation.
A quick tour.
- Setting preferences and text output for a site is done through a web browser. Many design templates are provided, all of which are easily edited and previewed via browser.
- Once a site is up and running, at login the writer is presented with a simple article creation form. All that’s required here is text. Before an article is published it is optionally converted with a great deal of automated pickiness to HTML using Textile, then previewed using the site’s designated stylesheet and output template. If Textile formatting is turned on, all sorts of typographic nicey-nice is taken care of, but writers may still use their own HTML.
- Unlimited categories and sections for articles and links can be created; these are edited at will.
- Listing current articles is easy, as is finding old articles to edit using keyword searches.
- Writers can solicit comments for articles and easily customize their display, as well as stay on top of comments in one place.
- Up-to-the-minute visitor logs are included, as are most of the goofy widgets used on this site, such as referrer logging, Google Hilite and zip page compression.
- Lists of links are easily maintained and automatically generated; categorization and custom sorting (e.g., by last name) of link lists is a no-brainer.
- Pages are dynamically generated from a database, so site updates and changes to design templates are rendered to the site the instant they are saved.
- Uploading and linking images: easy as pie.
- Pinging and ponging and automatic RSS generation of course.
In the next couple weeks I’ll be looking for volunteers willing to let me install and set up a site for them. If this is of interest, let me know. I’ll be soliciting hardcore testers afterward, but first I want to try to see if it’s really as simple to use as I hope.
This is white space:
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