Stap isi

21 January 2009

The other great open-source publishing tool

Wordpress gets lots of mentions. I think it’s great, although I’ve never used it. (I will find a use for CommentPress one day.)

But there’s another excellent open-source publishing tool out there, called Textpattern.

I’m told it is more flexible than Wordpress but I won’t argue that point – a tool should be selected for its task and both Wordpress and Textpattern are used in all sorts of ways. I will say that Textpattern is more for the designer or developer who is comfortable with HTML and CSS. You won’t find a hosted solution or easily installed themes, for example. You will find that it’s a matter of minutes to get yourself a blank canvas from which to work.

Textpattern is small, clean and elegant. Not adjectives you’d immediately associate with its six foot three creator – the great Dean Allen – but Textpattern continues to benefit from his rigorous application of typographic practice and web standards. Webcock he is not. The current devs have maintained the line.

The Textpattern community itself is a significant asset, contributing plugins to extend core functionality and very helpful in the support forum. You can see how people are using Textpattern at welovetxp.com.

Give it a try. Sometimes being second is best.

— b3rn   cms, tools   Jan 21, 09:41 PM   #   Comment