Textpattern Defaults
Via Peter : 14 May 08 : coding, design, textpattern, txp
This design critique of blog platforms caused plenty of interest in this Textpattern forum thread and looks likely to result in a redesigned Textpattern.com. Textpattern.com pretty well uses the default Textpattern installation which is currently available as the Textpattern 4.0.6 download.
New Defaults Needed
The default pages, forms and styles have changed little over the years making txp.com look a bit dated in some people's eyes. Personally I don't think it looks bad, but I agree with the critique and feel it can be improved. First of all, however, I think the default pages, forms and styles in the download for 4.0.7 should be updated for usability, accessibility and semantic reasons. I think this is more important right now than restyling txp.com.
With this in mind, I've created a tryout site to present different versions of some defaults. I've put my idea (and the code) of a new default page template, archive page template, default style and comment form on there, but ideally I would like to find a way for people to also put their ideas up there too. I'm not quite sure of the best way to do this, so any suggestions are very welcome!
Like Zen Garden
If we can put together really good but simple default pages, then designers could apply different styles to them, similar to Zen Garden, and make these available for new users. Although there are themes on Textgarden, their basic defaults have been changed so it can get confusing for new users (I am thinking of new users with very basic or no html/css knowledge). With solid page templates and comments forms, it will be possible to create many interesting and practical variations on the basic Textpattern theme just by changing the stylesheet. Just look how varied Zen Garden is. A new user could just change their stylesheet and get a completely different look.
So what makes up a solid page template? Well, imho, it should be semantically correct, put main content first and secondary content later. I've done that with the tryout pages. All the code is there in separate articles so you can see what I mean. My pages aren't a lot different than the present defaults and can easily be styled to look the same as the present output. But I've changed the column order mainly because of an article by Andy Rutledge about bad layout conventions which made a lot of sense to me.
But those are just my opinions and although I am happy with them at present, I feel sure they can be improved. So if you'd like to use this site to display your ideas about the perfect txp page templates and forms, then get in touch. When we've come up with something really cool, restyling textpattern.com will be so much easier.
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