Journal.
Textpattern and WordPress take two very different routes to a release
It’s not been a good week for WordPress. A major vulnerability has preceded a firestorm of tweets, blog posts and some high profile victims. WordPress has responded with typical speed, and 2.8.4 addresses the issues.
Meanwhile, over at Textpattern, the mood has been considerably better as version 4.2 was quietly unveiled, the latest in a tradition of seemingly innocuous updates that hide a number of significant improvements.
At Byekick, WordPress is part of what we do alongside ExpressionEngine and – our particular favourite – Textpattern. So, this isn’t the place to come for an anti-WordPress rant, but rather tea and sympathy.
It’s clear from reading some of the sprawling coverage of the WordPress incident that amongst the biggest reasons for sites not upgrading WordPress automatically is a a fear of plugins breaking – although plugins weren’t the reason for the security issue itself. It highlights the true role of plugins in many content management systems. Like Drupal and others, WordPress and Textpattern rely on plugins to deliver much of what its users consider essential functionality. They aren’t a nice to have, they are a part of the CMS from the end-user’s perspective.
As such, the code quality of a CMS isn’t in reality judged by its fiercely protected core, but by its more widely used plugins. The more popular the CMS, the more plugins available, the more variable the code quality would appear to be, the harder the path to upgrade becomes. If you are WordPress, with a huge amateur user base out there, that’s not a particularly comfortable place to be.
John Oxton in a Rissington Podcast some time ago talked about how he only tended to use plugins by particular developers (I’m the same), but finding that out is too hard at the moment, regardless of your preferred CMS. CMS’s need a means of helping users differentiate between ‘the good’ and ‘good luck’.
Speaking of good, Textpattern has plenty to get excited about. The admin-end of Textpattern has long been in need of a little love, and admin theming now makes that a reality and I’m particularly pleased to see AIR (or Admin Interface Restyled as it’s known) previously available as a mod now there as an admin skin – to my mind it’s the standout theme, the base of every client project I do.
If I had a minor quibble it’s that the ‘classic’ theme has been retained as the default – I think it should be there, but would like one of the alternatives shown by default: that first impression for new Textpattern users really counts.
The tag changes to handling output forms are going to change what’s possible with Textpattern and I’m really looking forward to exploring.
Multi-site support from a single installation is a big step-forward too, and is indicative of the Textpattern team really getting to grips with understanding who Textpattern is – and isn’t – for.
I love the distinction that Stef Dawson draws in his write up of what’s new between Textpattern and some of its competitors, describing it as ‘the best choice CMS for site designers’ (my emphasis). Interesting choice of words that.
Leave a comment
Commenting is closed for this article.