* company: partly

h4. Summary

* personal: quite-well
* community: quite-well
* news: quite-well
* shop: partly
: company: partly

h2. Details

h1. Evaluation of the Textpattern CMS

Back to EvalCMS
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Evaluated version: gamma 1.18a (April 2004)

:''Size'' OK : unzipped size [0.5MB], plug-in architecture [yes], coverage of items below [most].
:''Platform'' OK: structured PHP [yes], MySQL [yes]
:''Install and setup'' OK: time to go operational [5min], web-based config [all], multiple sites in one CMS instance [yes]
:''Plain text edit'' OK: wiki-like input [no], textile [yes] (textile native, same author ;-)
:''WYSIWYG editing'' KO: wysiwyg [no], configurable [n/a] -- maybe could hack txp core.
:''Generated HTML'' OK: valid XHTML [yes] (partly depends on template used).
:''Templating'' OK: user control [variable-template], website section differentiation [yes], snippet templates [yes].
:''Domain-specific applications'' OK: mechanism for app inclusion [both].
:''User management'' OK: users and roles [roles], user groups with privileges [no].
:''Content structuring'' OK: hierarchical content [multilevel], hierarchical URL [complex-rewrite], hierarchical presentation [blog/tweaks].
:''Localization'' OK: L10N and I18N issues separate in implementation [yes].
:''Metadata'' OK: can set metadata [page], metadata supported [keywords] -- but see grumbles.
:''URL features'' OK: link contents [id/titles] (can choose in setup), search-engine friendly URLs [tweaks] -- via .htaccess content type forcing.
:''Archiving'' KO: supports archiving (rather than deleting) old content [no], content is versioned [no].
:''Statistics'' so-so: usage stats gathered [yes], can create polls [no].
:''Documentation'' so-so: templating manual [rough], programming manual [rough].

h4. Praises:

* installation -- web wizard, up and running in 3 minutes
* content structuring -- easy to understand, hierarchical categories, menu definition based on them: it's a snap! where is the catch? read the grumbles...
* localisation -- easy, just edit lang file; however...
* templating -- page/section templates defined within the CMS itself => easy to custom-develop; templates can include PHP code => easy to wrap current apps
* plug-ins easy to develop and plug in ;-)

h4. Grumbles:

* localisation -- charsets seems conflicting: pages generated use UTF-8, but UTF-based lang file displays rubbish
* templates -- difficult to export/share; would benefit from user params on forms, and txp: tags in stylesheet def.
* ''content structuring'' -- hierarchical categories, but these can't be used to hierarchically structure the content presentation... so one must hack with sections, via name conventions to express hierarchy...
* WYSIWYG editing -- I have not tried to put @@htmlarea@@ as the article editor, as it would mean changing @@txp@@ core.
* applications -- very few plug-ins (at the time of writing) for common things (polls, mailing, calendars, events)