What Makes This Go?

27 March 2004 • code | PHP • PermaLink

Blogging Software

The site is powered by Textpattern.

I wanted to use something written in PHP (so I could hack at it), something that respected XHTML standards (so I could hack at CSS and the design) and something OpenSource. I started off by trying Serendipty. There were a few features that I wished it had, including support for Humane Web Text Markup , a.k.a. Textile.

I came across Textile a few months previous because of the promise of a new blogging program called Textpattern that seemed pretty full-featured. The most powerful part of it is the templating/styling system it incorporates. Instead of building template files and uploading them to my server, I can simply access the files and CSS stylesheets directly through the administrative interface. Add to this the ability to easily upload PHP functions that react to custom XML tags, and you’ve got a tool that can do pretty much anything you ask it to.

Anyway, Textpattern is now in gamma release, and seems pretty stable (only a few bugs so far).

Photos

The photos part of the website is powered by Gallery.

It’s fairly intuitive to use, integrates with iPhoto quite nicely, and is actively developed.

However, the code is (in my opinion) butt-ugly. All layout is done using nested tables, 1×1 pixel spacers, and
tags, which makes it much harder to skin. I spent at least 4 hours hacking at it to get it to “integrate” into the design of the Textpattern-powered pages.

Apparently, version 2.0 is being redesigned to address some of these issues. Let’s hope the upgrade is painless.

Comments

  1. I’m suprised I never heard of Textpattern before. Thanks for the link :-)
    — Nick
    3 April 2004, 22:35 • PermaLink
  2. Maybe you want to give s9y another go sometime; it supports Textile (and Wiki and BBCode and HTML and pretty anything) since some time now. It now has a nifty event plugin system with which you can hook in the system anyplace you want and modify core things easily.

    However I agree that templating is harder in Serendipity, even though personally I prefer to edit CSS within the EditCSS plugin from Firefox and copy code to the .css file immediately. :-)

    Apart from that: [x] Subscribed to your blog. :)
    — Garvin
    5 April 2004, 05:00 • PermaLink

  3. I was reading about how to set up the file server to be noticed by OSX and really like the style of your site. I was thinking “gee, i wonder what he’s using to host this …?” Lo and behold, you have this helpful entry that describes just what I wanted to know. Thanks!

    — Steve
    9 December 2005, 15:45 • PermaLink