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My Textpattern wishlist

As of 10/2007 and version 4.0.5, this is what I wish Textpattern could do. That is, how to make it Even Better than it is now, from my point of view.

The list is split into categories and these into severity groups, which convey my estimate of implementation ease. Some of the desiderata are currently covered by plugins, but I think they should make it into the core and distro, due to their universal usefulness.

Part of the desired things is driven by the need to run “static”, i.e. non-blog, websites off Textpattern.

Functionality

Big things

• Hierarchical sections (subsections). Please please I have a mod for 4.0.3 that does this but it is not portable for downstream versions of Txp.
• File-based CSS in addition to the database-based, see below.
• Simple way to augment lang strings, primarily for plugin use – from a file or from an URL so that plugin author/translators can publish lang strings online.
• Unlimited categories instead of the two.
• Option to upload images and files into database, instead to filesystem, for hostings which restrict PHP’s privileges.
• Clean up the db tables/schema, mainly what things are used as IDs. The current use of text fields for keys seems to me, well, primitive (section name is the best example).

Small things

• txp:updated tag – add the timestamp which is stored in the textpattern table in the $thisarticle data; I have a small plugin for this.
• Dirty URL scheme “?s=section[&c=category]&t=title[&id=id]”, in addition to the plain “?id=id” – this should care for some SEO without clean URLs; I use a source mod at this site for this effect.
• Ability to edit access rights from admin backend (not in the admin-config.php).
• View count for images, articles similarly to files (downloads) – directly in db table, updated by txp tags.
• Config (in Admin > Preferences) to choose which parts of Write tab to have hidden/collapsed/open – e.g. I need Adv opts but usually not Status.

Usability of admin backend

Big things

• Uniform way of creating new things – pages vs forms vs styles vs sections – the Create new seems a bit better to me than Copy as
• Section editing a la pages/forms/… – ie. list of sections, select one shows its data, edit -> save;
• and/or, leave current section editing page but allow mass-editing, i.e. changing values for various sections and have one Save button at bottom to save all.

Small things

• List plugins loaded from files (as per plugin cache directory in Admin > Prefs) in the plugin list.
• Better Textile Help in Write tab – primarily for beginngers, pop-up with example-driven explanation (eg. table |textile|rendered HTML|), plus link to thresholdstate web for advanced.
• Ability to select which langs I want to see in Admin > Prefs > Language (I usually care for 1-3 langs, not for all 20 or so).

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File-based CSS and more

This means to allow to reference a ftp-ed .css file (stored under .../files or similar) in Presentation > Style. The same holds for Pages and maybe Forms as well — that is, everything that changes only seldom. It seems much better to me to edit such things in Vim/PsPad/Notepad/… and upload, than to edit in the TEXTAREA.

The key problem with TEXTAREA is that on Save, position in file/text is lost which makes it very tedious when debugging/polishing things (eg. stylesheet). Even though ftp looks cumbersome, I can leave the editor open, save, upload, reload in browser, repeat.

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Actually, some of the most itching things went into this mod: txp-4.0.5-pfb revision 267

new Nov 1, 17:06 / edit Jan 1, 01:33 / link

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