The Hickensian

24.06.08 Expression Engine vs Textpattern

83 comments
Tagged with: cms, expressionengine, textpattern

Once people got wind that I’d been trying out Expression Engine, I’ve been badgered with the question “Which one should I use: Textpattern or Expression Engine?”. This post is to try and answer that, but be warned it’s going to be a long one!

When choosing a CMS for a site, I would say that there are 2 main factors in the choice:

What you want to use it for
Personal feel

The latter can’t be argued. It’s a tool, and what feels right to me, won’t necessarily feel right for someone else, and this a very important point. The former is a bit more tangible however.

Just as I like to try out every browser to make sure I’m not missing anything, I feel the need to dabble in as many CMS’s as I can. I’ve flirted with Wordpress (loved the theme system, hated the template tags use of raw PHP), Pivot, MovableType (used on the first version of Hicksdesign), Sympony (burnt my fingers on the paid pre 1.0 beta), Tumblr and EE. I feel I should mention Chyrp here too, as I recently tried and loved it – logical layout, nimble and simple without being too simple.

However, each time, I come back to Textpattern.

My last date with EE was 2 years ago. I spent a few days getting used to it, and got into the idea of template groups and found it a really flexible CMS. However it didn’t offer me enough over Textpattern to make it feel worth the effort of converting my site over. Without a real life project to use it on, that EE knowledge faded away. In the meantime, every other designer on the planet has raved about EE. So much so that it was a bit of a turn off ;o)

Recently, I decided I needed to try EE again, so instead of replicating my site, where I couldn’t see any advantages, I picked on my wife Leigh’s site Hicksmade. So, after a week of re-acquainting myself with it, I can now see why EE is raved about so much, and where it would be useful. I was helped along by Ryan Irelan’s excellent EE Screencasts (very highly recommended!) and EE buddies Simon Clayson and Brian Warren.

Excuse the bullet list, but here is where EE shines:

The key thing about EE to me is more fine grain control over everything (with some exceptions!), right down to whether a page is cached or what fields are available when posting to certain weblogs. Everything can be tweaked to your personal preference. This level of control isn’t necessary all the time however, so that would be the first deciding factor in EE over TXP.
Members and member management is other main feature that would make me decide to use EE over TXP. I can think of 2 sites I’d created in TXP that would’ve benefited from this.
Custom Fields madness! Textpattern has a great plugin to provide similar functionality, but the level of control and ability to associate the fields with a certain section is great, and of course, built in.
It’s the same with categories. The rss_unlimited_categories plugin for TXP provides a lot of what EE does by default but not all. Categories are a weak area in TXP, only allowing a maximum of 2, without clean URLs.
The Multiple Site Manager is genius. Again, something that can kind of be replicated with a TXP plugin, but it feels like a hack in comparison.
You can edit the templates in a text editor, rather than via control panel. Lovely! (You still have to create the template in EE first, but hey.)

All good so far! But wait! Here come the rants!

My biggest beef with EE is the admin panel. I find it needlessly complicated, with options hidden behind many overly-wordy, illogical links and dropdowns. While a certain amount of this is inevitable with the level of control that it offers, it’s certainly more painful than it needs to be. The longer I have to look at it, the angrier I get!
EE promotes itself as a CMS, rather than blogging tool, yet out of the box it insists on referring to ‘weblogs’. This can be changed through one of many preferences to something more logical like ‘section’, but the template tags will still refer to weblogs. Harumph.
/index.php/ shouldn’t be in URLs by default, and it’s right pain to get rid of (but you can do it). Likewise, getting simple /section/title/ urls requires a lot of work. For something so flexible, getting the URLs I want is painful. With a new site this isn’t so bad, you can put up with the extra URL segment, but when converting a site from TXP, and not wanting to write large .htaccess redirections, it’s vital.
EE seems obsessed with statistics, time taken to render page etc. It’s all superflous fluff. Generally, I’m left with the feeling of “I wish I could just get rid of this bit here…”
A smaller rant, I’m none too keen on the tags: some require exp: at the start, some don’t.
File management is behind Textpattern, which has more control over uploaded images and files. This really surprised me! There is a good file manager plugin for EE, but this review is looking at built-in functionality.

The upshot is, that for a lot of client sites, EE is wonderful (if you can put up with the admin side) – especially sites that need members, forums and all that jazz. The thing is, if a site doesn’t need those things, it’s less pain and more pleasure to use TXP.

I keep coming back to TXP because:

I love the control panel. Clients love the control panel. When you first log in – it takes you to the write tab. It assumes the first thing you want to do is add content, not look at a dashboard with a load of statistics. It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it’s clear and laid out logically – Content, Presentation and Admin. It’s clear where you need to go to add new content, change layout and edit preferences
I love Textpattern’s XML style tag system. For someone like me who writes in HTML, it clicks instantly, and has a consistent structure that aids recollection.
TXP’s file management and automagic thumbnail creation/relation with it’s parent image
In general, I feel I can do a lot with Textpattern, and quickly.

So, in summary, I like both, and which one I use will depend on the job in hand. EE v2 will bring with it a redesigned admin panel, and seeing as that is my biggest complaint, I’m keen to see if it improves the situation. The wee preview that was given at SXSW looked a bit ‘created last minute’, but even that looked hopeful.

Comments | RSS

No.1

∞ Adam Wiggall said 595 days ago:

John,

Having never used TXP I can’t make comment on the comparisons you have made, but I can agree on some of the points you have raised about EE (removal of index.php, complicated control panel etc).

Having paid some attention to the preview at SXSW and what is being discussed on the ExpressionEngine site I think that a lot of your issues will be addressed in v2.0. And I think that is part and parcel of the key strength of EE, the creators listen, they are in the forums, they are accessible and (I think) they care.

Set a reminder for a year from now and I think that the EE world will be a very different place.

My biggest gripe, poorly written documentation that tells the how, rarely explains the why, and when examples are given miss the mark on relevance by a long shot.

Keep up the good work, and long live the ~~Queen~~, Rissington Podcast. (and the Queen too)

No.2

∞ Brian Warren said 595 days ago:

Well said! As someone who’s used Textpattern and EE quite a bit, I definitely agree with pretty much everything, though I know my “Personal feel” vibe is more heavily weighted to EE than Textpattern.

I know I need to give Textpattern another go since all these great plugins have come about over time.

No.3

∞ Nathaniel said 595 days ago:

Thanks, I’ve been wondering if you have newer impressions since your last review a couple years back. I love Textpattern, too, and it’s frustrating that no other CMS really seems to understand why it is so great. For me, 95% of the greatness is the XML-style tags.

I work with Drupal, Joomla, etc, and I just wonder why these people don’t just take a break from reinventing the wheel (yet again) and look at how easy working with XML style tags would be. I know very, very, very few web designers who want to work with PHP, but it seems like every CMS in existence thinks that PHP code is just the greatest thing ever and we should all be mixing it in with our HTML as much as possible.

I’m surprised to hear EE still has less powerful file management than TXP, considering TXP’s file management (particularly images) is the biggest complaint I have about the whole system. It’s just very clear that TXP was built with text in mind and images were sort of an afterthought, almost like it was developed as a GOPHER engine rather than a web tool.

It’s very frustrating, because I get the impression that designers really love TXP, while developers love monstrosities like Drupal, so we wind up with a situation where we’re constantly fighting each other on tools rather than trying to get a tool with a developer-friendly backend and a designer-friendly template/code system. If Drupal and TXP had a baby, it would be great.

No.4

∞ Erwin Heiser said 595 days ago:

Good review and spot on criticisms. As someone who’s familiar with both EE and Textpattern I agree EE’s control panel/file admin system could use a little love, especially for end users.
Having said that I almost exclusively use EE these days, it just feels like second nature to me :)
Do check back John when EE 2.0 swings around by august-september!

No.5

∞ Shane said 595 days ago:

I’m not sure I consider myself as advanced of a user as you are, but I’m a Textpattern fan too. Expression Engine scares the bejesus out of me and I think your assessment really sums up what I felt about it as well. I’ve been using Kevin Potts’ nice little admin mod, which has made the admin panel for Textpattern even better.

Now granted, I still use Wordpress for blogging (probably a no-no, but it’s the best out there), Textpattern is my go to CMS for clients. I love it.

No.6

∞ Josh Bryant said 595 days ago:

The URL thing is what has really always bothered me about EE. To me its the one glaring sign that the app was really created by developers with design as an afterthought, rather than the two going hand in hand.

I’m downright obsessive about my URL schemes. I want the home page to be /home, not just /, I hate uneccessary trailing slashes (a URL should always end in just a letter character), and the list goes on. There’s no reason for it, and in some cases its technically wrong, but at the end of the day, its pretty. And that is part of a design package … paying attention to the little details.

With most CMS I have to work a bit to get those things going. With EE, it’s incredible. I mean, who in the world thought putting ‘index.php” in every URL was a good thing. Downright WTF?

I did sit in on a new version showcase of EE at SXSW this year though, and with Veerle’s redesign of the admin I think its going to be even better than it is today.

But someone. Please. Fix those damn URLs.

No.7

∞ Matt Carey said 595 days ago:

I totally agree with your point about ‘personal feel’. If it feels right then a piece of software is a whole lot easier to use. It becomes second nature.

Which must be why I cannot shake using Movable Type (don’t laugh at the back!).

No.8

∞ Mike D. said 595 days ago:

Very good.

I will add CMS Polygamist to the list of titles I can lovingly refer to you with.

No.9

∞ Adrian said 595 days ago:

I almost feel bad when reading your site and listening to the podcast that I like wordpress so much (provided of course I ignore the underlying code…)

Been thinking about broadening my horizons in EE, so thanks for the article. Is it my imagination or did I read somewhere that the next version of EE will be built on code igniter, which is exciting for us php geeks!

No.10

∞ Malarkey said 595 days ago:

I wouldn’t implement a site in anything other than Expression Engine.

No.11

∞ Phil Norton said 595 days ago:

We’ve used EE on a few client sites and whilst you can knock a site out in super quick time, I find the Admin section far too quirky for clients to use. There are a few plugins that help make it a bit better, but for me, it needs to be much more user-friendly. EE 2 might, and hopefully will, alter this a bit, and with full CodeIgniter integration, those of us who fancy getting knee-deep in brackets and question marks can tweak it to our own liking…

No.12

∞ jon deal said 595 days ago:

I use EE on my personal site and I agree wholeheartedly that the admin UI needs some love. I have high hopes for version 2 which will also bring some much needed attention to file management.

No.13

∞ mike_drechsel said 595 days ago:

I’ve only used EE. I haven’t found the control panel to be THAT bad. It becomes pretty easy to navigate with time. It would be nice if the CP were more easily themed to match a client’s site, but that is my only gripe there.

As far as URLs are concerned, I really, really, really like how EE handles URLs. It is simple enough to remove index.php from the URL structure, so I’m not sure what the complaints about that are. The resulting URLs are clean and human-readable and very intuitive on multiple levels. I obviously lack experience with TXP or other CMS options, but I’ve always felt like EE handled URLs in a very user-friendly way.

No.14

∞ Atlanta Jones said 595 days ago:

I’ve built all my client sites the last few years with a home-rolled CMS. I’m looking for alternatives, and everything I’ve demoed really just feels like another “blog” management tool.

Does either EE or TextPattern allow a developer to create new types of content, like products, events, members, etc each with their custom fields, etc. If all these things can do are publish “articles”, I can’t really consider them a CMS.

No.15

∞ dRiZ said 595 days ago:

I’m really glad you wrote this article, because at this very moment I’m on the verge of choosing EE as my new CMS. I was using WordPress before, but I hate the the theme system, i just want templates, I also really hate you can only have one header etc, so it’s quite limited. On top of that the WYSIWIG thing just plain sucks.

I have used Txp before and I dunno I just don’t seem to like it, the whole section thing/articles/pages/forms thing just seems way too complicated for what it is, plus the fact that the articles is a big section, shows Txp is blog orientated, What if you didn’t want a blog? Just wanted to have pages of content!!!

I dunno I like Txp, but EE just seems so powerful, wish it wasn’t so dam expensive too. x

No.16

∞ dRiZ said 595 days ago:

Also the new File Manager in EE 2.0 looks pretty dam amazing: http://expressionengine.com/ee2_sneak_preview/file_manager_preview/

No.17

∞ Phil Leitch said 595 days ago:

I exclusively use EE for every site I build and found it took me a few weeks using it before I truly caught on to how it worked. Now that I have built 20+ sites using EE I am learning new and better ways to accomplish just about everything with EE on each project.

I’ve mostly had success with clients managing their content and the more recent that I’ve built their site, the less they seem to be confused by it. You can limit what clients can see and do via member groups and if you spend a little time thinking things through you can even make file management easy.

Eventually I found that using photo galleries to manage images and uploads works a lot better for the client than the poor file managment upload tool. Also check out Mark Huot’s excellent File extension that makes file management a breeze.

No.18

∞ Martin Walker said 595 days ago:

My first CMS love was txp. I’ve used EE for a couple of years now and I’m hooked. I tried going back to txp for a job recently and I’d forgotten all the work-arounds I had employ to get the same level of functionality. Almost the same problem you had in reverse.

For me I always ask the question: Can I put my clients in front of this admin screen and have them understand it in a short space of time? Yes. Being able to hide most of it from them is a bonus as are the custom fields, categories and editing templates as text files as you mentioned.

There is a lot of work to do in areas of image/file management but on the whole EE is a mighty system.

No.19

∞ Nathan Smith said 595 days ago:

I’m a big fan of Textpattern, having written the book on it (okay, co-wrote). Yet, I’m also interested to see what EE 2.0 will bring. I too have been familiarizing myself with EE, via Ryan Irelan’s video tutorials (and Mike Boyink’s book). One can do a lot with EE out of the box, and it has a great degree of flexibility, but with that comes a bit of complexity. Yet, I don’t see using TXP or EE as being mutually exclusive (one per site, obviously). I just see them as two viable options in a well-rounded set of tools/skills.

No.20

∞ Geof Harries said 594 days ago:

With some minor customization, you can turn the EE admin into something very client-friendly.

For instance, if you want to include graphics with your form field instructions (beyond the standard text) try Dulee Noted. If the default formatting tools are not intuitive enough, install LG TinyMCE and all of the WYSIWYG buttons show up. These two extensions are really just the beginning.

You can also, of course, configure a client-only account where minor portions of the admin display upon log-in, decreasing the cognitive load. EE can be tuned down considerably if you know where to look. Hope this helps.

No.21

∞ Allan Rojas said 594 days ago:

I keep constant arguments with my friends over WordPress and other CMSs being better than TP… and I win them all easily by pointing them to this site…

No.22

∞ Nathan Pitman said 594 days ago:

I was committed to Textpattern until I used EE in anger on a live project, since then I’ve not looked back. Sure it has it’s minus points but in general it’s an awesome CMS which can pretty much meet any requirement. If it doesn’t then just get one of the many talented folks on the forums to write you a bespoke module. :)

No.23

∞ Nils Hörrmann said 594 days ago:

Jon, have you once tried Symphony (which will soon be released under an open source license as version 2.0)? It has a clean interface that is completely based on custom sections and custom fields. The URL can be tailored exactly the way you want it: It’s possible to have an archive that uses different URL schemes based on a keyword; e. g. /archive/year/month/day/title and /archive/category/name/title. Symphony uses XML and XSL to transform the content into the layout of the site. Every template is stored as a file on the server that can be edited directly (which is really great in connection with programs like Coda). Furthermore the built in image functions are great: You can resize or crop images via the URL, e. g. /image/100/50/0/0/myphoto.jpg will return the image myphoto.jpg resized to 100 pixel width and 50 pixel height.

I was a Textpattern user for quite a while but since I know Symphony I never thought about using it again.

No.24

∞ Rob Bevan said 594 days ago:

What’s the ‘good file manager plugin for EE’ you mention Jon?

No.25

∞ Nathan Pitman said 594 days ago:

It’s the File Manager Module written by Lodewijk Schutte that Jon is referring to I think.

No.26

∞ Paul Lloyd said 594 days ago:

I’ve been doing a bit of research in this area also, although perhaps not as in depth as yours. I totally agree with your point about WordPress’s template system, and whilst the new admin in 2.5 is a massive improvement, I find myself always driven away by the PHP tag soup that is WordPress theming.

I tend to stick with Movable Type, and I recently learned that in 4.x, the template language is far more flexible, in that you can use a number syntax styles, yet get the same result. So <$MTEntry$> can be written <mt:entry /> or <!MTENTRY!> or however you please (within reason). I love this little detail!

No.27

∞ Owen Gregory said 594 days ago:

It’s been a while since I looked at Textpattern. I remember being impressed with it and wanting to use it for a personal project.

I don’t know why, but Textpattern strikes me as being best suited for small projects. I’m sure it’s fine for sites on a larger scale, but it ‘feels’ neat and tidy and small.

It was too challenging at the time to get my head round Textpattern’s structural model. Maybe the book would be helpful. I really should reconsider Textpattern. Hell, I still have some hosting with TextDrive (now part of Joyent).

Still, once I dived into ExpressionEngine (it’s written as one word, folks), I knew it was the CMS for me. It meets all my needs and those of my clients. Its flexibility and power, the tech support and community, plus the extensions and plugins all make it the tool that best fits my hand.

No.28

∞ Lodewijk Schutte said 594 days ago:

To each his own, that’s for sure. Different projects can require different solutions, so there’s no need to deploy only EE (or TXP, or any other CMS-like system).

It’s just that, for me, EE has done the job superbly on several occasions, that I haven’t found the need to dive into another system. Granted, a fair knowledge of PHP helps pushing it to it’s limits, but when you can, ExpressionEngine can be as quick as a CMS to set up, and as powerful as a framework to expand. Something that will only increase with the upcoming 2.0 version.

No.29

∞ Bastian said 594 days ago:

THX for this comparison.

I tried EE a while ago and right now I’m playing a lot with drupal. There are some features I’m still missing them in TXP, for example a granular and customizable permission system.

But for personal usage I love TXP.

As you said:
“I feel I can do a lot with Textpattern, and quickly.”

The combination of <txp:tag> and easy plugin creation allows to customize and enhance TXP.

No.30

∞ Stefan said 594 days ago:

What I do not like on either of these two CMSs is that they are rather blogging tools, able to publish only articles or whole pages. I am developing own content management system where I split web page into objects like title, text, article, picture etc. You can publish content on a single page by combining these objects. Try demo at demo.typevista.com. It gives you much more freedom and you can easily create new objects if you like and publish new type of content. I think this is the direction where the content management should head.

No.31

∞ dave said 594 days ago:

For posting images regularly or maintaining the likes of a simple gallery/portfolio or posting lots of images in posts I find Wordpress handles images uploads best. Maybe it has changed but last time I used TXP it had very poor image handling, with Id’s etc., and no decent image viewer. Wordpress is much more fluid.

With EE I still find it easier to upload all the images via FTP and then go in later and attach them.

No.32

∞ David Brooks said 594 days ago:

I really like Textpattern, I’ve been an advocate for a few years now. Recently though we started looking at EE for our academic institution and it just seemed to meet the need over anything else out there. For us it was mainly the multi-site manager and the ease of which I could permission things out for individual users in various departments. I have tossed around the idea of switching over my personal site to EE but most of the things you mentioned are exactly why I won’t make the switch.

No.33

∞ Anthony Baker said 594 days ago:

Jon Hicks using EE. Lordy. Looking forward to seeing how all of this develops — exciting indeed!

As a backgrounder, I’ve used EE on many a web development project and love the sucker to no end. One of the biggest draws was that it’s a customizable-as-hell CMS that’s not centered around blogging (other than the whole weblog/section admin nomenclature). Prior to that, I spent many a time trying to hack MT, WP or whatever else into a more generalized CMS.

I agree with most that the Admin can be a bit cumbersome and does take some thought to “simplify” things for a client, but from the development standpoint, once you grok EE, it’s absolutely brilliant.

Additionally, the community around the discussion boards on the EE site are amazing. Lots of knowledge, quick responses, and plenty of support. I’ve had many times where I was trying something a bit new (e.g., paid membership site using EE) and got loads of valuable assistance in no time at all.

Looking forward to the 2.0 release — and Veerle’s UX work. Am hoping it doesn’t hobble some of what I already love about the EE theme that Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain created, which I dig a lot.

Onwards and upwards…

No.34

∞ Mike Robinson said 594 days ago:

You hit the nail on the head for my thoughts on EE! Both pros and cons. I do think it’s a great system though, I just haven’t used it as much as I would like to. Looking forward to 2.0.

No.35

∞ Ryan Irelan said 594 days ago:

Very nice comparison, Jon. I’m definitely in the corner of “use what’s best for the project” and for me it’s usually (but not always) EE.

A smaller rant, I’m none too keen on the tags: some require exp: at the start, some don’t.

Yeah, this is kind of confusing at first, but if you dig into why it is like this, it’ll all make sense. Check out the tags explanation page in the docs for a rundown.

No.36

∞ Devlin said 594 days ago:

I’ve tried using both Textpattern and ExpressionEngine but I’ve always come back to WordPress. :)

No.37

∞ dRiZ said 594 days ago:

@Devlin,

WordPress sucks because when you type some text it messes up the formatting, Txp rules because it lets YOU choose how to format it. x

No.38

∞ Andrew Ingram said 594 days ago:

Over the years i’ve used everything from MovableType to Wordpress to Expression Engine to Textpattern.

I found that Textpattern had the most intuitive UI for content editors, but to be honest I spent bloody ages trying to understand the terminology and documentation, Expression Engine wasn’t much better. This is coming from someone who spends most working days trawling through pretty awful Java API documents.

I also hate XML templating, I like logic tags to be visually different from content tags so that I can scan the code quickly.

When I tried to use Textpattern I found I was using plugins almost immediately to achieve what should have been very basic functionality, I wasted so much time trying to do stuff that I expected to be dead easy given the amount of hype Textpattern gets.

I have to be honest here, I can build and deploy a site from scratch in Django a lot faster than I could achieve the same in any of the CMS’s mentioned on this page – and I’m by no means anything special when it comes to coding. I can also do it without feeling like i’m stretching limits of what the tool was designed to do (which I actually consider to be a major plus).

EE2 does look like a big improvement though.

No.39

∞ Kirk Franklin said 594 days ago:

What I do not like on either of these two CMSs is that they are rather blogging tools, able to publish only articles or whole pages.

This isn’t true for ExpressionEngine.

I am developing own content management system where I split web page into objects like title, text, article, picture etc.

ExpressionEngine has unlimited custom fields, and you can put the custom fields anywhere you want, so this would be no problem.

No.40

∞ Chris said 594 days ago:

I’m “the web guy” for my little company, mostly because I volunteered but for us it’s not a case of one or the other – we use TXP on the main, customer facing website because it’s light and nimble and EE for the intranet because it’s chock full of features. It’s early days but seems to be working out well so far.

There have been plenty of head scratching moments with EE and the admin panel is way to complex – from a usability standpoint it could use a complete re-think as setting up weblogs/sections requires multiple changes to multiple preference pages in many parts of the admin panel but that hasn’t stopped us using it to good effect. Cloning existing sections helps but I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve been unable to remember where the preference for this or that is located – it can be a bit of a time/energy sink.

Our users are locked out of the admin panel altogether and instead get stand alone edit/entry forms designed the way we want them to be – it’s not hard to do things this way and keeps the look/feel consistent.

TXP is a delight to set up and use, it’s quick and has the basics covered in a fresh install – EE is also delightful when you step back and see what you have been able to create but it’s a bit of a hard slog getting there. I think it ‘s worth the effort.

No.41

∞ Sean said 594 days ago:

I’m just moving into web design and my platform of choice is Expression Engine. I did find your comparison interesting and will eventually look at textpattern.

No.42

∞ Shawn Adrian said 593 days ago:

Wow, great detailed article.

I read it for inspiration on Viviti, the cms / blogging platform I’ve been designing on, and I’m totally going to share your likes & dislikes with the rest of the team.

Thanks again. I love reading your site, been at it for years.

No.43

∞ Jon Hicks said 593 days ago:

@stefan

“What I do not like on either of these two CMSs is that they are rather blogging tools, able to publish only articles or whole pages”

Hmm, you’ve not really looked into either have you? Both have their own setups that make any kind of content easy to add.

I had a look your “typevista” CMS demo, and I don’t think you’ve done any better than EE or TXP.

No.44

∞ Simon Clayson said 593 days ago:

Sometimes a lot comes down to the brief, and how confident your punters feel creating content. For me, EE is great because the admin panels – with all those custom fields and “weblogs” (I think this naming convention goes back to pMachine) you can create have so much scope for you to butcher how you wish.

I’m sure WordPress could do a lot for me but all the tagging is just slightly to much for me. Looking at EE 2.0 plans, some of the niggles I have look to be on their way to being “fixed”.

No.45

∞ Travis Schmeisser said 593 days ago:

I came to EE from being an avid Textpattern fan and at first I didn’t see the hoopla, but once i got through a few sites I felt like I didn’t know how I got along without it.

Textpattern is definitely great for smaller projects, but the more complex a site and the content you’re dealing with is EE’s custom fields shine. In Textpattern I always had clients confused as to which custom field went with what section. In EE, you only get the fields needed for that particular instance.

No.46

∞ Dave Hall said 593 days ago:

I agree completely with the aspects that you don’t like about EE. Some of the things should really be out of the box, like a proper file upload facility and the index.php in the url is annoying.

But overall, EE is definitely the CMS that will be growing even stronger over the next while. I find it indispensable and so easy to customise.

No.47

∞ David Hall said 593 days ago:

It was a great find to see this article, as I’ve just done the round of cms’s for myself and pretty much agree with all you say.

Yep, I keep on coming back to Textpattern – I love the flexibility, especially of combining txp:tags and the Custom fields with the ability to feed meta info through to the head of a document on a per article basis etc.

Maybe I wish it had better xmlrpc handling for MarsEdit/Ecto (even with this WordPress security scare) but it does what it says on the can and seems just – logical.

ExpressionEngine is certainly pushing it in my view though, neck and neck with Synphony which in essence, I really like. WP can be made to work cms style, but it’s not as intuitive and that wysiwyg editor drives me mad, and to my mind is plugin crazy – too much fluff!

(Sitting quietly watching xPattern grow…)

No.48

∞ MODx Convert said 593 days ago:

It is not too late to try MODx.

It is an up and coming CMF (Content Management Framework)

No.49

∞ Nick Caldwell said 593 days ago:

Just a quick note for David Hall — the Textpattern-to-Marsedit issue is pretty much solved now. You’ll need to dig around on the Textpattern forums for the full skinny, but basically you just have to update your xmlrpc files to some new versions posted on the forum by one of the TXP devs and it’s all sweet.

No.50

∞ Alex Suraci said 593 days ago:

Thanks for the mention, glad you like Chyrp. :)

No.51

∞ MODx Convert said 592 days ago:

If you don’t need the Multi Site Manager in EE, try MODx. It is dead simple to use. A very flexible CMF. If the a snippet doesn’t behave like you you want, just change it. MooTools already included.

No.52

∞ vanni said 592 days ago:

I have used pM and EE for sometime and I am a fan. I have used TxP on one site (personal) and I also like it, but i would not think of using it for a site where others need to manage sections. In this area EE is better in my opinion.

But I do have major gripes with E’s URL structure, mainly in trying to remove the index.php from the URL. I’m not totally clueless but I have been trying for over a year on three EE sites and I have not managed this. And I totally disagree with whoever says this is easily accomplished. And the wiki article on the procedure will give you one big headache. and you’ll still remain none the wiser.

The CP could use some improvement, not so much for the admin person but for other users. Why for example is the Photo Gallery Module under Modules? For clients this should be part of the other sections. I know it’s a module but you don’t want clients messing around in that panel/section.

But overall I remain a big fan of EE.

Hopefully v2 will be an improvement and will come with better documentation and real world examples.

<Rant>: Awhile back I purchased the TextPatternsolutons Book hoping that with some good documentation and a COMPLETE example I would be able to use it for a client who could not afford EE. But alas this book has a major flaw: some bad editing allowed it to be published with flaws that leaves out crucial bits of information AND the example for designing a non-blog site ( Fora rock band?) was left UNFINISHED. The user is supposed to figure it out. Which begs the question…why bother writing a book where you leave the full blown example UNFINISHED? </rant>

No.53

∞ Mangus said 592 days ago:

I want to second ModX. It doesn’t get nearly the mention it deserves in these circles. The current 0.9.6 release is fantastic. 0.9.7 is in alpha, with some extremely promising advances and a ground-up rewrite. I’ve dabbled in TextPattern and EE and WordPress, but continue to return to ModX. The reason: it has the best balance between php coding and UI-based content management. So, on the one hand, I can easily add custom php code, perfectly separate presentation, logic and content, while on the other hand the tagging system, templating system, modularity and backend are super intuitive.

I think ModX uses the logic of presentation/content separation and standards compliant web development, and applies it to a CMS, better than any other offering out there.

No.54

∞ Ryan Irelan said 592 days ago:

I don’t think you’ll see a change in the URL containing <code>index.php</code> with EE 2.0 since it will be based on CodeIgniter and if you’ve used CI you know it does the same exact thing. I find it a nuisance, yes, but it’s a nuisance I can get rid of in about 2 minutes.

As far EE being a blogging tool, I’d also completely disagree with that. In fact, that’s the very reason I built a newspaper website in the EE screencasts; I wanted to show that EE is a CMS, not a just blogging tool.

I think I’ve only ever built one blog (my own) using EE. The rest have been “regular” websites and many of those fairly complex.

No.55

∞ PXLated said 592 days ago:

I’m with Ryan, have only just recently used EE for a blog, all the rest have been general corporate sites. I chose it because the templating system lets me build any type of site (except a blogger type community site) the client needs. It’s a designers dream.

No.56

∞ Luke Stevens said 592 days ago:

Horses for courses as always, though I use EE exclusively for the projects I do and am looking forward to EE 2.0

Where’s development with TXP at though? It seemed a bit like abandonware with a split dev community for a while there – are things improving?

I don’t think EE 2.0 will be a huge revolution at launch, just a nice evolution of what we know and love (but hey I could be wrong), however the fact it will be built on CI should really see the developer community around it go kinda nuts, which means lots of goodies for us designers ;) That’s what I’m really looking forward to!

No.57

∞ Andrew E said 592 days ago:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our content management system. It’s more generalized – built for many different kinds of sites. It’s been around and commercial since 2003 but we’ve just recently open sourced it: Concrete5.

http://www.concrete5.org

It’s got fine-grained permissions, custom fields for pages AND users, an extensible content type system that lets you add blocks of content to page areas; in-context editing (roll over and click to edit) is hella slick; pages are versioned; and there’s even a pretty strong MVC-style syntax that can make it suitable for web applications.

Documentation is pretty young and we’re still in beta but I’d love to get feedback.

Oh, and to all the people crowing about putting “index.php” in the URLs by default. I guarantee I know the reason to this: to be able and install the framework WITHOUT having mod_rewrite or some other URL rewriting module installed. We got tons of support request by people unable to install Concrete because they’d get a 404 error when “/install” got posted to – even though mod_rewrite was specifically listed as a requirement, along w/htaccess support.

However, that’s no excuse for not making it easy to “prettify” the URLs by turning on a setting and copying some simple lines of code into your site’s .htaccess file.

No.58

∞ Henrik Sjökvist said 592 days ago:

I only use Drupal. It has something of a learning curve, but it’s insanely powerful and has a very strong community around it.

No.59

∞ Per T said 592 days ago:

I once used TXP but since I found Symphony and started using it around version 1.5 I’ll never go back.

And Symphony 2 rocks everything else I’ve used in that category, but it might be because I’m in love with XSLT since thats kinda what I do all day long…

No.60

∞ Sven said 592 days ago:

A few weeks ago, I’ve asked in the Textpattern forums whether someone has an idea to come up with something similiar to EE’s flat file editing thing. Christian Nowak had a shot at it and two days later the most underrated plugin in the history of Textpattern, ever — was released. cnk_versioning is somehow slept on by the community, yet it radically improves Textpattern’s development workflow. It’s called cnk_*versioning* because that was my main concern: apart from being able to directly edit everything with my favorite editor, I wanted a flat file structure to be able to use svn, git, etc for this. Make sure to check it out, it’s completely fascinating. :)

No.61

∞ Jon Hicks said 592 days ago:

plus the fact that the articles is a big section, shows Txp is blog orientated, What if you didn’t want a blog? Just wanted to have pages of content!!!

That doesn’t make sense. Article != Blog. I think ‘article’ is a very generic term for content. It doesn’t show that TXP is blog-orientated at all.

cnk_versioning is somehow slept on by the community, yet it radically improves Textpattern’s development workflow.

Wowser! Great one, thanks for bringing that to my attention!

Also – to those pimping their own CMS’s – please don’t.

No.62

∞ Morgan Aldridge said 592 days ago:

I moved from pMachine to Textpattern back in 2003—I think. Has it really been 5 years?!—after seeing what you had been able to do with it. I had looked at ExpressionEngine shortly thereafter (2004?) as that was the successor to pMachine, but wasn’t too impressed.

Many thanks for this quick review as it gives me a good idea of how far EE has really come, but I do keep coming back around to Textpatter just as you do. There truly is something about having an HTML/XML-based template system that works well for HTML developers.

The general flexibility of Textpattern is always surprising (esp. while still remaining light weight). Writing my own plug-ins has not been too difficult when needed (which is extremely rare, considering the number of plug-ins out there).

The new tag parser changes will help make it even more flexible.

No.63

∞ Clark said 592 days ago:

I’ll stick with Movbletype but you have given me the impetus to finally try textpattern.

No.64

∞ Kenn said 592 days ago:

Interesting. Just the other day I switched my single remaining EE site back to Wordpress, wrapping up a series of switches I started last December.

I’ve written up some of my issues with EE, but the main ones for me are its restrictive licensing, having to learn yet another proprietary templating language, and the horribly non-semantic URLs (seriously, a new template group for every top-level URL segment? wtf?).

No.65

∞ Raymond Brigleb said 592 days ago:

Great writeup. I couldn’t agree more.

No.66

∞ Josh Nichols said 592 days ago:

I’ve used both EE and TP and I found big flaws with both. Actually, I’ve tried a TON of different CMS platforms and none ever seemed right to me until I came across Symphony.

It takes some time to understand how the system and how the templates (XSLT) work. It’s different than other CMS options out there. Once you get over that initial hurdle, it’s one of the most powerful CMS I ever tried (that’s free or relatively inexpensive).

Version 2 is in beta right now and I’m really liking it. I recently built my personal site with it.

There’s some screencasts of some of Symphony 2’s features available too.

It’s my favorite CMS by far. It’s powerful and the admin interface is beautiful. I recommend giving it a try.

No.67

∞ Jon Hicks said 592 days ago:

Re: Symphony

Yeah, I’ve avoided Symphony recently. I was involved in the pre 1.0 beta, you know, back then when you had to PAY for the privilege? Development was tortuously slow and seemingly aimless, and I was left feeling mightily unimpressed.

It may have improved since then, but I kind of got my fingers burnt!

No.68

∞ Michael K Pate said 592 days ago:

I have been using textpattern pretty much exclusively for the last few years even though I hated giving up some of the features of Movable Type, having a lighter, faster system made it worth working out most of my issues. But I have been really heavily thinking about moving my pure blog sites over to WordPress. And I have been preparing a site re-launch for the last couple of months with the new MT Open Source. I don’t think there is a perfect solution that will work well for everyone. It is all a matter of preference and style.

No.69

∞ vanni said 592 days ago:

@ryan who said “ I find it a nuisance, yes, but it’s a nuisance I can get rid of in about 2 minutes…”

I have tried numerous times on my EE various sites and have never managed to do this… would love to have an easy-to-follow-guide on how this can be done.

cheers

No.70

∞ matthew Smith said 592 days ago:

Jon,
Thank you for writing this. Even though it adds to a long debate its nice to get your perspective. I actually felt like it was my perspective to a near T. In the redesign of Squared Eye (currently underway), I’ve been scouring Google to find a better CMS, asking a lot of folks at TXP and elsewhere if they are using anything else, but I come back to TXP for the same reasons you write here.

For client projects I’ve used Expression Engine. Its a great fit for churches, although Monk makes a better fit for ministry specific sites.

I should say that the EE and TXP forums are the only two forums I’ve ever been invested in where I can speak highly for both of them. I’ve always had answered questions, and be treated with respect from the time I was a wee designer/coder to being a bit more grown up now. In my mind, the quality of a user base is a HUGE factor in deciding on a CMS.

No.71

∞ trif3cta said 592 days ago:

Something that hasn’t been mentioned much that swayed me from TXP:

Customer support.

I like knowing that a spat between developers isn’t going to lead to a fork.

No.72

∞ James Hull said 592 days ago:

Completely agree with all the people who commented positively about EE.

I moved from TypePad to Wordpress to EE and I can’t believe how incredibly powerful it is. There is a learning curve that took a couple of weeks to figure it out, but once you do — man, the possibilities are endless.

And I’d also be remiss if I didn’t talk about how incredibly wonderful the support is for EE. Rarely did I have to wait more than an hour for some kind of reply in the forums – if not from another user, than from EE support itself.

I can’t imagine using anything else.

No.73

∞ Martin Rio said 591 days ago:

I only use drupal.

If you take the time to understand it, it will be the last content platform you may need.

It allows as much control over the front-end code as you wish to specify. It let’s you use any PHP templating language, if for some reason you have a problem with PHP short tags. It has a huge community with lots of modules. It’s easy to create new modules. It has a wide open API.

In my experience a lot of new CMSs attract people because of their polished default skin (user and admin). Drupal has a more generic default skin that you need to see past. Other CMSs will get you started faster with a flashier front end, but you’ll start noticing their limitations soon after. You’d be hard pressed to find something (reasonable :) you simply cannot do with Drupal.

End of rant.

No.74

∞ Andreas L said 591 days ago:

This time I’ve really been trying to work with Wordpress. And although my website works, and I did plugins and stuff too, I would still go with Textpattern any day. But I can’t be arsed moving back to Textpattern again. Maybe on a rainy day.

No.75

∞ dRiZ said 591 days ago:

However, that’s no excuse for not making it easy to “prettify” the URLs by turning on a setting and copying some simple lines of code into your site’s .htaccess file.

//////////////\

Your dam right thats not an excuse :S

What should that matter, mebbe your CMS shouldn’t be so in zealous of index.php ?????

No.76

∞ Phoenix said 590 days ago:

I have used textpattern, MT, EE, and Wordpress. The usual gripe designers have about Wordpress having PHP embedded is silly. You can design a theme that has none of that drivel, and that calculates every displayable value beforehand, in the “Header”. When you sort that out, and have a functional theme, the availability of plugins and support for WP is bar none.

I have tried several times to move to EE and have always left it due to many of the issues mentioned here. WP’s custom fields management and more important variety of content management (videos, RSS pull-ins from twitter or tumblr, photos, etc) makes it unmatched.

Txp is way too simple for me.

No.77

∞ Rowan Lewis said 589 days ago:

Re: Symphony

Just wanted to add that Symphony 2 is great, and many miles ahead of what you would have used. Give it a shot when RC1 comes out (soon…). It has literally changed the way I build websites.

And besides, you can always annoy the Symphony team on irc.freenode.net in #symphony.

No.78

∞ Nick Shaff said 588 days ago:

Great information Jon. My site has been stagnating since my college graduation and I’ve been recently researching a new CMS for myself and have pretty much been leaning the EE/MTOS direction while trying to consider Wordpress. I think Im definately going to have to give Textpattern (and Symphony) at least a peak. I’m really looking for something fairly simple that will allow me to work my own code or projects into it or at least along side it.

The biggest turn off for me on the EE end is the cost. Not that it’s “too much” as much as it actually costing something with everyone else having free or free alternatives. Now I haven’t tried it yet to say anything on the complexity, but this is for my personal blog/site. Given at the moment Im not in a design/web development job, this is having more sway for me. If it was for client projects it probably would much less so, so Im giving it a chance.

No.79

∞ dRiZ said 587 days ago:

For those complaining about the Textpattern UI, you might want to take a look at this http://simplecandy.deviantart.com/art/The-Future-of-Txp-90490572

No.80

∞ Sergio MORA said 585 days ago:

I’m a little new to this. However, I’ve ever appreciated TXP over other small CMS mostly based on Jon Hicks arguments. I’ve been surprised to read this article, where Jon almost made the switch to other platform, but I think it was understandable. I think the biggest drawback of TXP is its lack of news and improvements. We are certainly stuck into a version with no real new features and innovation over recent years. And most other CMS systems have evolved and showed new versions (WP, Drupal, EE, Symphony…). Anyone has news about future real new versions of TXP?

Thanks.

No.81

∞ Jon Hicks said 585 days ago:

I disagree about the lack of updates to TXP – there has been quite a few, especially new tags that make plugins reduntant. The team are also blogging about the new tag features, such as being able to parse tags within tags – all great stuff. I don’t think lack of new features is necessarily a bad thing too – stability, and performance improvements are just as important.

No.82

∞ Beckley Roberts said 582 days ago:

The reason I like WordPress is because of the “raw PHP”. I find I can make it do whatever I want. I can understand how one would be put off by that if they didn’t have any PHP experience. My girlfriend has no PHP knowledge though and she seems happy with multiple WordPress sites.

@dRiZ: What you said about being limited to one header file in WordPress templates is wrong. You can have as many headers, sidebars, footers, etc. as you want. My blog uses four different header files.

No.83

∞ Jon Hicks said 582 days ago:

OK, I think it’s time to close comments on this one!