Personal weblog of Danny Tam Hong Khai

TXP magazine recently published an article which compares the relative strengths of Textpattern and Wordpress. Apparently the article was triggered by the release of Wordpress 2.0 late last year and also by defections of a few high profile Textpattern sites to the Wordpress camp. After reading the article I thought that now would be a good idea to share my own 2 cents pertaining to the issue.

Personally I began using Wordpress around 2 years ago when I first started blogging. Wordpress was a real boon at that time after a not so fruitful experience that I had with Blogger. The software was designed for easy installation and I had a blog up and running in no time, and the five minutes installation really lived up to the hype. The user interface was friendly and easy to learn. Even in those early days there were quite a number of pre-fabricated templates available.

After a while I needed to build a site which does not have the blog as its central feature but rather as a side feature. I tried Wordpress but soon ran into its limitations.

I decided to explore other options and soon discovered Etomite which is usually labelled as CMS lite. Etomite turned out to be a very capable tool for building small sites. Unfortunately the original authors of Etomite decided to start a commercial CMS project and handed over the reins to another team. The development effort slowed down tremendously after that. I was forced to look for an alternative.

I had heard of Textpattern before Etomite but at that time I was apprehensive of the so called learning curve associated with Textpattern. However with Etomite’s future development hanging in the balance I decided to give Textpattern a second look. It turned out to be a timely decision because of the release of Textpattern 4.0.XX not too long ago. With Textpattern out of beta and with a higher version number than Wordpress I was really interested to give it a test drive.

To my pleasant surprise the community had done a really splendid job with the documentation. I found the Textbook and forum really handy as I was setting up the site. Naturally the learning process took a bit of effort with lots of time spent on the wiki and the forum but it was all worth the while. I have come to appreciate Textpattern’s strengths as a CMS first and a blogging tool second and I have learnt to accept its shortcomings which I believe will be shortlived.

Here’s my take on the strengths and weaknesses of Textpattern as compared to Wordpress.

What I really like about Textpattern:

1. Unlike Wordpress which is blog-centric, Textpattern is designed to be a light weight Content Management System which makes it easy to build web sites and blogging can be integrated into the site easily as required. The new user may find Textpattern’s metaphor of sections, pages, articles and forms to be a bit daunting initially but once the user masters these features he will be on the way to designing well structured standards compliant web sites with Textpattern.
2. Textpattern comes complete with its own template tags, which are well documented and easily implemented in a web site. No prior knowledge of PHP is required on the part of the user. On the other hand the Wordpress templating system utilizes PHP code, in lieu of template tags, which can be intimidating for non-technical users.
3. Textpattern comes equipped with a handy file manager which makes file uploading and management a breeze. The same feature is also available for uploading and browsing images.
4. When it comes to template design and customization, Textpattern has a built in template editing feature which is able to generate the appropriate template tags based on user settings. Also the built in CSS editor has an automatic editing mode which really simplifies the task of customizing style sheets.

Wordpress features which I miss in Textpattern:

1. As of version 4.0.3, Textpattern does not have xml-rpc support out of the box, although this feature is available as a plug-in. However the development team has announced their intention to release this feature to the public in the near future.
2. Wordpress 1.5 introduced a nice theming feature which is sorely missed in Textpattern. The feature makes it really easy to create customised themes for Wordpress and is intrumental in increasing the popularity of Wordpress within the blogging community.
3. On the whole I find that Wordpress still has a more intuitive user interface compared to Textpattern.
4. In terms of documentation, the Wordpress Codex is more comprehensive compared to TextBook.

In summary I suspect that we may be comparing oranges to apples because on the one hand Textpattern is a lightweight Content Management System with blogging as one of its features while Wordpress is definitely designed to be a blogging tool. So the new user contemplating a decision between the two will be well advised to analyze the kind of web site to be built. If the user requires a pure blog then Wordpress may be the better choice out of the box. However if a non blog-centric website is required then it may be worthwhile to spend some time learning Textpattern to take advantage of its more powerful content management features.