Rubenerd: Revisiting Textpattern

I discussed final week that I still host WordPress and Textpattern sites for numerous folks and orgs. Everybody is aware of WordPress, however it generated a couple of feedback asking about what Textpattern is, my expertise internet hosting and writing with it, and why somebody would possibly wish to run it as a substitute of WordPress.

Textpattern is my favorite server-side weblog software program, should you can work inside a few its limitations. You recognize their priorities are proper once you log in, and it instantly directs you to the Writing web page. No dashboard, no information feed, no notification bubbles, simply write!

The default editor makes use of Textile, a light-weight markup language that even non-technical individuals are capable of decide up. A charity I used to host had a small staff of writers of their seventies that liked Textile, and would inform me they missed it once they went again to Microsoft Phrase and e mail. Consider Markdown, solely extra logical.

You too can write HTML, although there’s no built-in alternative for WordPress’s Basic Editor should you’re after one thing WYSIWYG. There’s additionally no Gutenberg to get in the best way of writing although, in order that’s a professional.

Textpattern is organised across the idea of sections, which you need to use to divvy up a website past easy classes and key phrases (we’ll get again to that in a second). Consider a technical website with documentation, blogs, service bulletins, and static pages, all rendered in another way. This extra taxonomy makes writing themes a lot simpler for classy buildings. I’ve achieved one thing related in WordPress by abusing classes, however that introduces different issues.

On the server facet, I really like Textpattern as a result of its not a transferring goal. It doesn’t chase the shiny, as evidenced by the relative stability of its installer dimension, and its rare updates. It principally simply works, and has proved through the years to be simpler to take care of than WordPress for broadly equivilent websites. FreeBSD, nginx, php-fpm, MariaDB, accomplished.

There are a couple of limitations to remember nonetheless.

Textile has the idea of publish key phrases, however it lacks a complete tag system with archives and hyperlinks. I’ve used tru_tags for years to attain this, however it’s one thing to remember. The smaller set up base additionally means fewer extensions, themes, {and professional} help can be found, which can be a deal breaker. WordPress can also be on the forefront of rising tech like ActivityPub that Textpattern isn’t.

Textpattern’s database schema can also be a bit much less versatile/normalised than WordPress. Whereas key phrases are comma separated in a single attribute, classes are outlined in two, limiting your posts to that quantity. I solely assign posts to a single class anyway, however you’d must see if that matches with the way you construction your metadata.

I’m not a PHP developer, however I’d be tempted to study simply so I can contribute again in a significant method. Textpattern is actually fairly good.