Why I chose Textpattern · Nov 18, 11:11 AM
My good friend Jeff asked me in an email how I had settled on Textpattern as my websites content management system. I thought my answer would be boring and long so why not use it as content for a post? So here it is Jeff (and anyone else who reads my stuff)[1].
First, a little background: I have had this website for a little over 3 years. I started it for two main reasons:
- The technical knowledge gained from having one (I am in the IT business after all).
- The upgrade in my geekness by not only being able to say, “I have my own website”, but “I maintain my own webserver” (I am in the IT business after all).
Soon after getting things up and running I came to the conclusion that posting HTML wasn’t going to be fun, so I started searching for a content management system. A few that I looked at in the beginning were: greymatter, MovableType, phpNuke, and pMachine. I settled down on pMachine for no particular reason and eventually upgraded to their commercial version which became Expression Engine. I actually paid for it—a lot2.
After 3 years of using Expression Engine I started thinking to myself, “it’s gotta be easier than this”. I didn’t need most of what EE was offering and it was a real chore to post something. I began to think of what I really wanted to accomplish on my site and whether I was using the right tools. Here’s my criteria:
- First and foremost, I just want to post some thoughts and ideas and let people comment on them if they feel so inclined. I want it to be as easy as typing an email or even a text message.
- Occasionally I like to post a few pictures.
- I like to be able to change the look and feel of the page easily.
- I want to spend less time maintaining the installation and more time adding content.
Now that I knew what I wanted to do I just had to find the right software to fit those needs. I typed “blogging software review” into google and came up with quite a few good articles. The common denominators were MovableType, Textpattern, and Wordpress. Technologically speaking I had a few more criteria:
- Opensource
- PHP and MySQL (I have both already setup on my server and I understand the technology).
- Good documentation and an active user community.
So that narrowed down my choices: Movabletype is not opensource (free, but not opensource). So it was down to Textpattern and Wordpress. Some of the articles I read lead me to believe that maintaining a Texpattern installation was easier than maintaining a Wordpress installation. It might me nominally so, but it was enough to push me towards Textpattern first.
Now that I’ve installed it, I am really beginnning to enjoy posting for the first time. I have to say that I absolutely love Textile. It’s like using a wordprocessor to post. It’s not a chore to type and format a post and since I already have a hard enough time remembering to post anything on my site, the fact that Textile has almost made it fun to post, I think I’ll be using this one for a while.
Hope that answers the question.
1 I seriously think that Jeff is, indeed, my only reader. Hard to believe in the vastness of the internet, but it may actually be true. Thanks Jeff.
2 When I say “a lot” I guess I have to put that into some sort of perspective: 79 cents for a McD’s cheeseburger is reasonable; $3 for a gallon of gas is expensive; $150 for something that is based off of opensource code is a lot.
— Steve Harward
Comment
Hey, I’m proud to be your only reader!
And, $150 for something based off open source makes me shake my head with a wakka-wakka-wakka sound-effect to show my horror. If I were writing this as a screenplay, I’d have the actor do a spit-take.
As far as TXP vs WP goes, I think I really decided on TXP because it feels like it’s my software once I install it. With WP, there’s that whole dashboard, which makes me feel like I’m using something that belongs to someone else. Which is fine, but just not as satisfying as saying, “This is mine.”
Commenting is closed for this article.