Thread

I am looking at transitioning away from Textpattern to EE. I really love building with TXP but it is showing some real limitations with the work I need to do.

I need to create custom content types and be able to associate them with each other. It would be nice to be able to nest these content types too. I even co-founded a group to address these needs called xPattern. This never quite gained momentum and it would entail a major rewrite of TXP, so perhaps EE is a better place to start.

Q1. I understand that EE handles custom content types, how does the stock EE install’s handling of custom content types compare to the spec’s described here.

Q2. How easy is it to set up a front-side editing capability for registered users?

Q3. TXP uses forms which are like includes, what is the EE equivalent?

Q4. Anyone else transitioned from TXP? chime in on the experience +pros/cons

Hi, I can answer a couple of your questions, but not all as I don’t have the experience with them. I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to as far as “custom content types?”

Anyway, here goes:

Q3: Textpattern uses Forms. EE uses templates in which you embed into other templates. If you want to use one of the templates over and over again, you simply embed it into you main template. For example. I’ve created a “template group” called “includes.” I have then created some “templates” inside of this “template group” for my header, each sidebar, and footer. Once those templates are created, I simply embed them into my main template using something like this: {embed="includes/header"}. That way, if I make a change to my header, the changes are site wide.

Q4: I used TextPattern for about a year but I never really got the hang of it. I found it to be very difficult to do seemingly simple tasks. With EE, from day one I’ve found it to be much more intuitive in that everything seems to fall into place and I just understand it. After about month of using EE, I was at the same point where I finally stopped using TXP as far as what I could do with the software. IMO, EE blows TXP away, hands down.

Thanks for the response.

I thought of another question…

Q5. It is possible in TXP to feed attributes into tags based on the output of another tag. Is this something EE can handle? eg.

{EEtag attribute="{anotherEEtag attribute="something"/}"/}

Thanks again

I’m a long time Textpattern user who needed EE for a few recent projects that required greater scope. I have enjoyed many of the features EE offers. There is a piece of mind that comes with knowing you can take a site a lot further and many of the features you rely on are official supported and well built.

However I do prefer working with Textpattern if I know the site won’t need more then it can give. With EE there is so much to keep track of that you can spend ages just getting everything setup. It makes Textpattern look very light and nibble in comparison.

However scope for the future is playing a bigger part in all my projects and I find myself draw to EE because it is a safe choice.