Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at
7:05 am
Tagged with: Content... • easy • Made • Management • PHPBased • Solutions • Textpattern
Filed under: PHP
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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.
Rating: 2 / 5
After buying this book I ran across the following post from Drew Mclellan:
http://allinthehead.com/retro/310/the-state-of-textpattern
Rating: 3 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
Most computer books are out of date before they can be purchased in stores.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!
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 2 / 5