Posted by Doan Noahlot on 09/24/07 22:46

lawrence k wrote:
> I've never worked with Textpattern before. I've been asked to transfer
> it to a new server. I moved the files and the database but I'm still
> getting an error message:
>
> http://thesecondroad.org/old_site/
>
> I've looked through the code and I found that this error message is
> stored in the database. I found the function which calls this message
> out of database. However, I have not yet found why this function is
> being called. Does anyone happen to know?
>
> WordPress has active forums where anyone can post a question. Does
> TextPattern have anything similar?
>

I rebuilt a site (with code of my own) that once ran on Textpattern.
The original motivation for using Textpattern in the first place was
to make it possible for office staff (who don't know how to write html)
to update the newsy-change-every-two-or-three-days pages of busy
University research department.

But the staff found Textpattern intimidating and hard to use.
To find a page (in order to edit it) they had to negotiate a series
of query forms. And then they had to know something about Textile, which
is supposed to be an easy-to-use markup replacement for HTML.
But the end result was bad: pages seldom got updated.

I wrote a replacement that uses css, Smarty Template and the Fckeditor.
The staff loves it. To edit a page you follow the normal navigation
to get to that page (not a forms system) and then you log in as user
admin. Once logged in as admin, each div in the page has an edit link,
that jumps out to fckeditor. fck edits an include file, pushed into that
part of that page by Smarty Template. Because fck looks like a generic
word processor, anybody can use it. Because they only get to edit the
contents of pre-defined divs, the users cannot so easily change (ruin)
the consistent look and feel of the website.

In other words, to change background colors and reposition divs....for
that you do need get the developer to do some work. But that much is
true for Textpattern too, I think (I never actually used Textpattern,
I'm just parroting what I was told, by unhappy users).

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