Textpattern is a powerful, PHP-based content management system that allows you to build pretty much any kind of data-driven website quickly and easily. It is very popular among designers and developers alike, and has an active community of users. Sound good? Well, you’re in luck—the book you’re holding now shows you how to use every aspect of Textpattern to a professional standard. Textpattern (and this book) appeals to two main groups of people: Firstly, the web designer who has mastered the fundamentals of XHTML and CSS and wants to create sites that have fresh and dynamically changing information, but is not familiar with server-side coding and databases. Never fear—Textpattern enables you to integrate your XHTML knowledge, inserting dynamic aspects into your already solid site design. Secondly, PHP developers who are looking for a content management system upon which to build additional functionality and want a hand with the design aspects of their site. Again, Textpattern fills in those holes. The book leaves no stone unturned. It starts by introducing you to Textpattern and guiding you through its very simple installation process. After the core features of the administrative interface are explored, the book dives into building sites with TXP, using CSS, articles, forms, pages, and more to create fully customized templates. Development follows next, looking at installing plugins and building your own custom plugins to further enhance your Textpattern-based site. The book concludes with several case studies to provide ideas and inspiration, including a weblog, an e-commerce site, and an online review directory.

In this book you will:

• Learn to develop websites quickly using Textpattern’s intuitive templating language.
• Learn to use Textpattern to build e-commerce websites, including customer feedback and reviews.
• Learn to use Textpattern and web standards to create blogs and community sites with dynamically driven content.
• Learn how to integrate your own style of coding and design with a content management system that catalyses, rather than hinders, your creativity.
• Learn how to use PHP to create Textpattern plugins, adding custom functionality and features to uniquely suit the needs of your website.

Summary of Contents

• PART ONE: GETTING STARTED
  • Chapter 1: Setting the Stage
  • Chapter 2: Installing Textpattern
• PART TWO: THE TEXTPATTERN INTERFACE
  • Chapter 3: Site Administration
  • Chapter 4: Basic Content Manipulation
  • Chapter 5: Presentation
• PART THREE: CUSTOMIZING TEXTPATTERN
  • Chapter 6: The Textpattern Model
  • Chapter 7: Creating the Content: Categories and Articles
  • Chapter 8: Customizing the Presentation: Sections, Pages, Forms, and Style
  • Chapter 9: Tying Content and Structure Together
  • Chapter 10: Comments
  • Chapter 11: Beyond the Basics
• PART FOUR: EXTENDING TEXTPATTERN
  • Chapter 12: Custom Fields
  • Chapter 13: Using Plugins
  • Chapter 14: Writing Plugins
• PART FIVE: TEXTPATTERN SITE EXAMPLES
  • Chapter 15: Multiauthor Weblog
  • Chapter 16: Case Study: PopularWeddingFavors.com
  • Chapter 17: Case Study: BoiseCityEats.com
• PART SIX: APPENDIXES
  • Appendix A: Tag Reference
  • Appendix B: Plugin Developer Resources

If you want to develop a professional dynamic web site, without the hassle of coding it from scratch, then Textpattern could be just the solution you’re looking for. A rich content management system built on top of PHP and MySQL (or other databases if you wish,) it allows you to very quickly and easily build a standards-compliant blog, e-commerce site, online magazine, or pretty much any other kind of site. It’s also open source, so free to use.

And this is just the book to teach you how to use it, written by five Textpattern experts. It starts you off at an easy pace, showing how to install, configure, and publish a basic site. Then it’s all about customization--no stone is left unturned, and you are taken through every facet of Textpattern development, including administrating categories, articles and users, customizing the look of your site with CSS, using and writing plugins, and much more.

The book includes many case studies showing how different professional sites were built up using Textpattern, and a glossary and tag reference is included at the end to look up syntax and terminology easily and quickly.

This book will take you as deep into Textpattern as you want to go.

Great Book on Textpattern
Extremely easy to follow and well written. My only problem was a lot of the times the illustrations or images weren’t on the same page as their textual reference. Not a big deal, but I lost my place a lot while flipping back and forth through pages.

This book is really aimed at beginners. Luckily for me, I was one. Since I purchased this book a few months ago, I’ve made three sites using Textpattern and they’ve all been a hit with my clients. The admin interface is superbly easy to use and I love the clean XHTML.

So, in conclusion, buy this book if you’re wanting a beginner’s guide to Textpattern, but do not buy if you already know your way around as a lot of this content may be redundant for you.

Good for beginners? For me, disappointing
I’d have liked to give this book more stars, because I do love Textpattern, but I just didn’t get enough out of it. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I’ve been using Textpattern for a couple of years. I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but mostly what I got was a validation that Yes, I’m doing this-or-that correctly or the most efficient way. I didn’t gain a lot of new knowledge or tricks, except for the (small) section on plugins.
So this book might be good for Textpattern beginners, but even then most of the information presented is in the very complete Textpattern wiki, or elsewhere online.
So I’m glad this book was published, to promote Textpattern, but for me it was a slight disappointment.

Great resource
Textpattern solutions is a great resource for those looking to learn how to use this excellent Open Source CMS. The example site (Buzzbomb) is not quite as linear as I would have hoped and doesn’t quite function like you would expect a tutorial to, but I was able to follow along with a little help from the TXP forums. Regardless, the book serves as a great launching pad to get into the nuts and bolts of the cms and begin creating your own sites using TXP. It is also the only book out there on the subject, so the choice is either to use this book, or to muddle through the online resources (which you will need anyway). The book certainly cuts down the learning curve (which isn’t that steep, really) and gives you the tools you need to start using the cms with more confidence.

Poorly written book
I have been reading the e-book version and I am very dissapointed with this book. I needed a simple CMS for a 3 page site, and wanted an alternative to Jooma! which seemed overkill for this.
After doing some research I decided to use Texpattern due to its simple core, with this book as a guide. What can I say? The book is so poorly written that I am seriously considering to just use Joomla!
The authors use a sample site approach to illustrate how to use Textpattern. This usually is a great approach to learning, except they do an aweful job of it. The illustrations are never on the same page as the explanations. And instead of a clear and concise step by step approach (install this file here, modify it there...), authors dwell into lengthy passages including jokes and useless analogies, that by the time you wake up, you realized you missed some vital step which always seem to get lost in this verbosity. Usually actual instruction is merely mentioned or not clearly indicated.
In comparison, Building Websites with Joomla, is a much better text that makes Joomla! (a far more complex CMS than Texpattern) easy to understand.
If anything, "Textpattern Solutions" has made a potentially easy CMS become a nuisance to learn. You will be better off reading the online documentation.

Great (the only) resource in book format on a great little CMS
The only reason I did not give this book a 5 star rating is that I am used to learn as you do it yourself approach from Friends of Ed books such as those for Flash. This book says it a do and learn book but not quite of the same mould at the Flash Ed books.

I bought this book to understand more about the Textpattern CMS before deciding on it as a solution for a few web sites. The most important material for me (i.e. is Textpattern the right CMS solution for our needs), how Textpattern is different and powerful comes from about page 100 onwards with loads of technical tag info before that. Don’t think that this book is going to hold your hand as you learn Textpattern yourself - that’s up to you to do with the download files in your own time. Still a great detailed book.

Great (the only) resource in book format on a great little CMS
* UPDATE **** I am actually downgrading my rating of this book to 3 out 5 stars. I like Textpattern from what I have seen but from going through this book I am still unable to build a complete, simple, fully operational custom web site from it. I don’t rate myself as an amateur (having built web sites in html, css, xml, php, flash, actionscript and using other CMSs). This book is just not practical enough for my liking, too busy showing how amazing things are rather than how to actually doing things from start to finish, in a consistent manner, without missing out steps by giving strategic instructions. Looked around online there are now updated or working links to tutorials even on the Textpattern web sites. I really wanted to like Textpattern but I think I will have to give it a miss now - wasted too much time already. This book is definitely not of the calibre I usually expect from Friend of Ed. ***

** OLD REVIEW **
The only reason I did not give this book a 5 star rating is that I am used to learn as you do it yourself approach from Friends of Ed books such as those for Flash. This book says it a do and learn book but not quite of the same mould at the Flash Ed books.

I bought this book to understand more about the Textpattern CMS before deciding on it as a solution for a few web sites. The most important material for me (i.e. is Textpattern the right CMS solution for our needs), how Textpattern is different and powerful comes from about page 100 onwards with loads of technical tag info before that. Don’t think that this book is going to hold your hand as you learn Textpattern yourself - that’s up to you to do with the download files in your own time. Still a great detailed book.

Excellent Book for a Wonderful CMS
Despite using Textpattern (TXP) since I started my own website I knew there was still a lot for me to learn and also a few things that could be improved with the way I setup my site. Needless to say when I got wind of this book there was no doubt in my mind that it would help me to be a better TXP user.

The book is well-written and takes you through every aspect of TXP. Everything and I mean everything about TXP is covered in this book. You’ll learn the ins and outs of installation, navigating and accomplishing various tasks in the administrative interface, go through the process of building a complete site covering articles, forms and pages, and even learn how to build you’re own plugins. There are also 3 case studies that help to further demonstrate just how flexible TXP can be. What more could you ask for?

This book was a great read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is new to TXP, thinking about using it or who currently uses it and would like to learn more about this wonderful CMS.

Do your homework before you buy this book
After buying this book I ran across the following post from Drew Mclellan:

http://allinthehead.com/retro/310/the-state-of-textpattern

Great reference manual for Textpattern
I have fiddled with Textpattern since early 2006. Since I had no server configuration experience, I was leary about venturing into the world of content management systems. I checked-out the textpattern.com website, downloaded the files and gave it a shot. The simplicity is almost scary! Within an hour I was up and running with Textpattern. Simply awesome!

The book. Exactly as advertised. It helps explain the hierarchy (articles, categories, forms, etc.), which can be confusing to the server-side programming beginner. Everything is well explained with current, live examples. My only wish is that I would have had this when I first discovered Textpattern.

A cohesive primer to the Textpattern CMS
Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy by Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, and Nathan Smith (with Mary Fredborg and Cody Lindley, foreword by Jon Hicks) is a cohesive primer to getting started, working in, and managing the Textpattern CMS. If you are a PHP beginner and are looking for a CMS solution, then this is a great start. If you are an advanced PHP developer, then this is an excellent choice for a CMS. No matter what the skill level, Textpattern allows you to take full control of your website, whether it is a simple blog or an e-commerce application. Getting started with a CMS is never easy. You have to learn the CMS interface and it’s nuances including such things as templating and plugins. This book will walk you through all the steps necessary to effectively manage your site with the Textpattern CMS.

This book is broken down into 6 parts and 17 chapters. Let’s take a look at each part.

Part 1 sets the foundation in getting started with Textpattern. This section will give you the basics and walk you through installing a local server using the popular XAMPP setup. They run through the process on both Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OSX platforms. After XAMPP is installed, you are walked through connecting the pieces to get Textpattern up and running. This includes downloading and installing the CMS and connecting it to your MySQL database.

Part 2 continues with setting the foundation and introduces you to the Textpattern interface. Each chapter walks you through the administration panels and breaks down all of your options. These chapters are extremely thorough and leave no gaps in the administration panel and your available options. From site administration, basic content creation, and altering the look and feel--this chapter covers all of the bases necessary to work within the CMS.

Now that a strong foundation has been set, it is time to dive in deeper and customize our installation of Textpattern to our needs. No two websites are the same, and each website has different needs and goals. Textpattern has a flexible setup that allows you to define the content areas, what they include, and where they should be included. A simple templating system that gives you the necessary defaults, but also allows you to extend beyond those defaults when necessary. These chapters also introduce you to the Textpattern Model which adds a content layer to the already known structural, presentational, and behavioural layers.

Here is where we dive in and start getting our hands dirty. We start by creating the content needed for the site. This includes such things as categories, articles, and then comments. We step back and look at the big picture, then break each of these things into their own forms. This give us the freedom to re-use chunks of code throughout the rest of our site. We start putting the pieces of the puzzle together and connecting the content to our site structure. It is important to mention that each step of the process is covered extensively and the template tags are broken down to let you know all of your options.

Moving to part four we get to take an in-depth look at the Textpattern plugin architecture. Sometimes we need to achieve custom tasks but don’t want to manipulate the core code. Plugins allow you to extend the Textpattern CMS and build in your own tags and functionality. We are first introduced to custom fields and how we can utilize them in our site. This extends the flexibility even further, as you are allowed to define the context through the use of these custom fields. For instance, if I were doing a website that focused on books I could create custom fields for author, price, publisher, and anything else related to the book. With just a few clicks you can utilize an array of plugins already available to the community or you can build your own. This section walks you through the process of doing both tasks. We get to see an in-depth tutorial on creating your own plugins from Rob Sable who is very experienced at creating plugins. Now that we have seen how to add custom fields, how to implement already existing plugins, and how to write our own plugins, it is time to put this all into practice.

At this point you have covered virtually every aspect of Textpattern. Now it is time to take a look at some case studies. The first example is one of a multi-author website, Godbit.com. This is a website run by Nathan Smith, and has contributions of many others. Nathan walks you through the structure of the Godbit website, and how it allows multiple authors to add content and achieve only the tasks necessary to their role.

Next we are presented with two different case studies: PopularWeddingFavors.com and Boise City Eats. The first is an e-commerce site and the second is a place to review local restaurants. It is important to note that each of these sites has a unique context and structure. These chapters show the true power of Textpattern: getting out of the way and giving you the control. You are not confined to specific types, nor do you have to shoehorn your content into something that it isn’t. You are in full control of developing your application no matter what the need.

The last part of this book makes this a valuable desk reference: appendixes that walk you through a complete tag reference and plugin developer resource. This includes full coverage of all available tags and options, and some of the core code and functions that will allow you to effectively build your plugins. Both of these are invaluable as you work within the Textpattern CMS and should be an arms length away as you are developing.

Conclusion:
If you are looking for a PHP-based CMS and don’t know where to get started, then Textpattern is worth a serious look and this book will guide you in the process. I have played with several other CMS’s that seemingly lock you into their context and options. Textpattern is more of a blend of a framework and CMS, allowing you to have full control as your website scales--no matter what the need.

What a Great Resource
Textpattern is a great free CMS that can fulfill most requirements for dynamic sites, but not all of us think the same way as the designers of this excellent program.

There are lots of resources on the web, but for getting down with a wet towel over your head and making serious websites, this is a fantastic book for understanding how it all fits together. The concepts and the techniques are explained in detail, and it’s not a bad read either.

Highly recommended.

A Must-Have for anyone interested in textpattern
I have been using textpattern for over a year now, and due to the somewhat sparse online documentation, I never really had a good 50,000 feet view of how textpattern actually works. The way forms, articles, pages, sections work together was confusing to me for awhile, and most of the people i’ve seen who try textpattern and give up is because of confusion.

This book is a priceless resource, because it explains how all of the components work together, using diagrams and real site examples to show you. Textpattern by far is the most flexible yet lightweight CMS that I have ever used, and when you actually understand how all the parts work, it is also the easiest to develop a custom site with.

If you are considering textpattern as a CMS, or currently use it but are still a little bit confused by everything, do your self a favor and buy this book!

Great book for starting out with Textpattern
Having tried to use Textpattern a fair while ago and finding it fairly complex and obtuse I was pleased to see this book arrive. After having read it I can confirm that if you are in any way interested in using Textpattern (TXP) to build websites then this book is an essential read. Textpattern solutions opens up and renders clear what on the surface is a very complicated looking CMS, just going through the chapters explaining the vast list of preferences and the semantic structure of TXP elicited a resounding ’ahh, I see’. The book works through building several sites and very clearly explains whats going on from initial preference settings and template building through to the CSS used to style them. The book is worth having to hand when working with TXP for the tag reference alone. The book details the installation and setup of XAMP and MAMP so you can install TXP on your own computer without the need for a live hosting server and even goes as far as explaining the plugin framework for the budding coders out there. TXP Solutions explains the structure, basics of entering content and using textile so well that I’ll be supplying a copy of it to every client I build a TXP website for.

If i was to pick one fault (and its difficult because this is a very good book) it would be the chapter on using TXP as an e-commerce site. Whilst the author explains how he built the site and what plugins he used he then has this to say "I adapted the cart class to work within textpattern and implemented some special rules" etc etc but doesnt explain how! This chapter pretty much assumes that the reader would know how to do this (I’m sure its second nature to the author) though as this is a ’start to finish’ book this is possibly not a good assumption to make. I personally would have no idea how to hack the PHP of a shopping cart to work with Textpattern.

That said, its only one chapter and although possible, given the number of dedicated e-commerce systems already available such as Shopify, I doubt its worth messing with TXP for this purpose and as such this is definitely not a reason to skip this book hence I’ve not let it reduce my 5 star rating.

Get It
There are only three reasons not to get this book:

1) You are legally blind
2) You don’t use Textpattern and never plan to
3) You wrote it

Otherwise, don’t waste your time wondering if you should get it, just get it. I’ve had the book for about 30 minutes, and I’ve already gotten my money’s worth even if I never pick it up again. But I will pick it up again, probably on a daily basis. Thanks to the authors and editors for doing an excellent job.

An Excellent Resource
Most computer books are out of date before they can be purchased in stores. This one is NOT! If you want to use Textpattern, but haven’t been able to gain all the knowledge you want from the support forum, this is the book for you. It clearly explains the details associated with getting started, but goes beyond mere installation issues to include instructions for localhosting. Field by field the screens of Textpattern are explained and there is an outstanding tag reference. This is the best book I’ve seen which is focused on a specific content management system and covers everything one needs to actually be productive with that system. The authors have done a great job!

The missing user manual for my favorite CMS
I’ve been building Textpattern based sites for about three years. It’s become the CMS of choice for most projects in my studio due to it’s elegance, flexibility and ease-of-use. Textpattern allows me complete control over all the mark-up I use, great if you develop web standards based sites like we do. The vast array of plugin developers and excellent community have always made my Textpattern based sites the most fun to work on.

This 450 page book explores Textpattern in-depth, the first chapters cover different areas and options, I considered skipping this part of the book as I feel I’ve been using Textpattern long enough to know all they would cover. I’m glad I didn’t as it was full of useful snippets I’d missed after all these years.

The second half provides several real world site examples; a dynamic site for a band, Multi-author blog, e-commerce site and restaurant review site. Each site explores a different set of requirements and the best solutions to meeting them. The chapter on writing plugins is a highlight and the reference manuals at the back are indispensable.

My one gripe with this book is the e-commerce chapter which refers to a shopping cart plugin that hasn’t yet been released, which is very frustrating as it looks excellent. I decided to give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume it will be out by the time you read this, so I give this book five stars. It’s the perfect companion for anyone wishing to learn or extend their knowledge of Textpattern.

A good book on new and amazing technology called "Textpattern"



"Textpattern" is the name of some amazing new technology code which is extendable by plugins and is so flexible that calling it a "CMS" is a pure understatement.

With 260 -300 KB of code Textpattern code is not only at least 3-4 times smaller than its "competitors" (Wordpress etc.), but also includes features which you wont find in any other "CMS".

I put "competitors" and "CMS" in brackets because Textpattern really is a complete different breed of software.

The Textpattern software package is what the Germans would call a "Eierlegende Wollmilchsau - a sheep that gives also milk, eggs and meat". It seems like you can make it do almost anything you can come up with. Calling it a CMS does NOT describe anymore adequately its capabilities.

Textpattern has its own little environment for developing and compiling plugins + pages (Variables, functions, macros, may I even dare to say language ?)

Textpattern is not only a blog focused CMS but rather a mixture of a web based IDE, compiler and web environment.

For potential system admins its not enough anymore to upload the core software package itself or a plugin for it. While that would work it wouldnt even explore 5% of the possibilities the textpattern system provides.


The book "Textpattern Solutions" is an attempt to cover the sheer wide range of possibilities you will have at your fingertips.

Not only is it the first book describing Textpattern in such detail it is also quite likely that it will stay this way during 2007 as I am not aware of other publishers that are preparing a book on Textpattern. So Friends of ED has a real edge here with a book written from the people that should know their stuff.

This makes your choice an easy one ;-)
In 2007 this is THE book for all things with Textpattern.

So in short: If you are into Textpattern, for now at least, this is your book to get !!


Got it ? - Good.

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I would also like to point out that I would have LOVED to give the book 5 stars, but I did expect better presentation skills and not just f.e. (Chapters 3-5 ) listing up some 80 pages of GUI options with some screenshots and explaining those individually.
I assume a few more diagrams would have worked wonders.

Regardless, systemadmins, developers and designers will find this book to be a worthwile investment.

Excellent CMS; Excellent Book
I’ve been waiting a long time for this book.

Textpattern is a free, open-source content management system that is lean, flexible and powerful. Until now, the only resources for learning to use it were the various web pages: FAQs, reference wiki, the forum, etc. They are all valuable and responsive (the forum is very active, and I’ve seen a new answer to my question posted on the FAQ page the next day), but we "book learners" needed, well, a book.

That book is here, and it is excellent. At almost 400 pages plus a 100-page tag reference, there is plenty of material. It’s very well-written and easy to read (if you’re interested in using, learning or trying Textpattern).

Sections 3 and 5, with the conceptual understanding and the three website examples, are probably my favorites. Since I’m not a programmer, the chapter on writing plugins seems a bit over my head.

The only change I’d suggest would have been to move chapter 6, "The Textpattern Model," up front as the second chapter. This conceptual overview would help to understand "what" and "why," and some of the software’s capabilities, before diving into the installation and setup process.

I wholeheartedly endorse this book as an essential introduction, manual and deskside reference for Textpattern in particular, and building dynamic database-driven websites in general.