Wordpress vs. Textpattern 2008

Written on March 12, 2008 // Design 22 Comments

2008-03-27T12:31:44+00:00 Added custom fields to the table

A couple of years ago I was forced to move to Textpattern by a smooth move on my part in accidentally deleting the database for my Wordpress-powered blog. I had 20+ databases going at the time and since most of them were auto-installs by Fantastico, there wasn’t a clear naming convention, so I deleted the wrong one and lost my entire blog.

Technically I didn’t have to move to Textpattern, but I had been saying I wanted to for months and just kept putting it off. This was a do or die kind of thing. It was 9pm or so and I knew it would be a good time to do this, so my goal was to get my site back up and running by morning… and I did!

Of course, it wasn’t easy. Textpattern runs things very differently from Wordpress and in fact, I wouldn’t recommend someone switching from WP to TXP unless they have lots of time and patience to deal with those changes. I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time, since my original post on the subject is way out-dated now.

At the time I had only been using TXP for a few weeks, and it was two years ago, so not only were some things unfair at the time, they’re in many cases irrelevant today because things have changed on both systems, and in my own blogging/designing workflow.

The Comparison

Keep in mind, this is all from the perspective of a front end designer and not a technical person who knows about the inner workings of the code. I have no authority to talk about the details of how the systems are run on the back end; and, this is all in relation to my personal experience and not a professional recommendation one way or the other.

Textpattern is a strong and dependable guy friend I can call to lift something heavy for me, even though he doesn’t always understand me. Wordpress is my gal pal I can do everthing with; she gets me, but she’s a little flaky sometimes.

First and foremost…

The primary difference I’ve seen between Wordpress and Textpattern is that TXP houses all of its code in the database, whereas WP contains everything in hard files. I’m sure there are various benefits and pitfalls to either method, but for me personally I found great benefit in having the physical files, for a few reasons:

  1. The main hardship for me with TXP was the CSS being in the database. I couldn’t use Textmate to edit my CSS anymore, not to mention all the rest of the code.
  2. With WP when my database was deleted, I still had all my layout and design in hard files so I didn’t lose the site design.

So this is ultimately what drove me back to Wordpress after two years with Textpattern. UPDATE: See Hacking Textpattern to use raw files for the design for a solution to this.

Nit-picking the details

These aren’t all important things, just a few details I’ve noticed. Whichever is best for you is for you to decide. Note that nothing I mention here involves plugins at all. A lot may be possible with either platform with the use of plugins, but I’ve tried to show basic things that can be done out of the box.

Wordpress vs. Textpattern
Wordpress Textpattern
Templates hard physical (PHP) files on the server, manageable with FTP everything is in the database, within fields in the admin area
Images limited image support, from within posts Set up just like articles, plus thumbnail size and other details can all be specified in admin
Files No file support within WP without a plugin* As images and articles, plus stats
Plugins there seems to be more plugins available for WP and they’re easier to install TXP has a growing set of plugins as well, plus, there’s a “help” page for each plugin in the admin area
Template Code Support Codex searching is difficult but support forums are a wealth of information. (tip: search Google for “codex.wordpress.org …”) I’ve found the forums difficult, but the wiki is easy to navigate, plus TXP has built in code support within the admin area of your site. You choose from some options and it outputs the tag you need.
Pages & Posts Two sections: Posts or Pages, not interchangeable, unlimited hierarchy, specifying “parent page”. Unlimited sections, each using the same type of “page” so all pages, posts, articles, etc. are all interchangeable, no hierarchy.
Customizing the Admin Area Easier to customize because the code is more “standards-friendly”, and there are admin themes available as well. Table-based back end makes customization difficult, but there is a plugin I know of that helps some.
Custom Feeds One thing I definitely miss here… omitting a section from the feed In TXP you can “push a button” and turn off a section from reaching the main feed.
Import & Export WP has definitely improved this since ‘06. Plus, they’ve added an export option. I’ve not had any difficulty with this yet.** I haven’t had to do any import or export with TXP in a long time, but as far as I can tell, it’s the same as before (very basic).
Users Lots more you can do with users, including profile pages, author rss feeds, and more. Basic users with login info and permissions, some author-specific settings.*
Links More information can be attributed to links (XFN, etc) but I’ve never used it. Minimal customization of link list output. More customization of link list output (you aren’t limited to <ul> and you can use only the link data you want to use, wrapped in any html tag you like
Text Editing WYSIWYG, HTML (rich text editor mangles your html output a bit)* Textile, HTML (textile isn’t as nice as Markdown, but better than html)*
Organization Unlimited categories assignable to posts and links, none to pages Two assignable categories* for posts and pages, one for images, files, and links
Comments & Trackbacks No preview*, trackbacks standard, comes with Akismet for blocking spam. No trackbacks*, preview standard, admin option to turn off comments after X weeks, built in spam blocker.
Custom Fields Unlimited custom fields, requires PHP experience to use them beyond the wordpress model (automatically outputs as a list of fields, can’t use them separately or conditionally) 10 custom fields*, better template tags for custom fields with the ability to use them anywhere, anyhow, conditionally, etc.

* A lot of things can be done with a plugin, so before you write off either platform, look into the option of adding a plugin for what you want to do.

** I have run into an issue where WP changes the password of all the users, locking me out of the system before the import finishes. This may be an older version of WP that does this, but when it happens, the password is just “password”. You can log in and finish, OR… what I do is this: before getting to that step (I think it’s step 2), just after the first step, I go up to the address bar and change the 1 to 3 to bypass step 2 where it changes the password.

There’s more…

I’m sure there’s more, and I may get to it later and add it to the list. And of course, if you know of some major differences in the two CMS’ please share.

I’ve heard of a lot of people moving away from Wordpress these days for various reasons, moving to Expression Engine and Moveable Type as well, so if you have thoughts on specifically what makes those better, I’d love to hear it. I’m always curious about–and fascinated by–various ways code can arrange/rearrange information on the web!

In regards to plugins

I’m not against plugins, but as a bit of a control freak, I don’t like to put code on my site that I didn’t write when possible. Although most plugin developers are not malicious, it makes me feel better to do things without a plugin whenever I can.

However, I do have a few that I use a lot and I’ll be posting my list of favorite TXP and WP plugins very soon, so if you have some I should check out, particularly in regards to making WP and TXP more comparable, let me know!


Natalie Jost
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22 Comments

  1. Travis Isaacs March 12, 2008 | 10:29am

    Fantastic comparison. You’ve managed to say what I’ve experienced. I started blogging MovableType a few years ago. I love the syntax, but hated rebuilding my posts every time I published.

    After a while I switched to TextPattern. I loved it’s speed and simplicity, but felt that I didn’t get the joke. I simply couldn’t get my ahead around the model that TextPattern was built around.

    So, I came crawling back to MT. But since have switched back to TxP, then finally after rolling out WordPress for a client I decided to take the plunge. The “migration” was painful, but worth it. The fact that WP stores things in physical files makes life so much easier.


  2. Sam Brown March 12, 2008 | 10:45am

    Interesting post Natalie full of great information. I have used WordPress in the past along with many other CMS’ but none have compared to Textpattern for ease of use, templating and customisation. I really think its a great all round CMS.

    The problem I find with WordPress is that it seems to be great at doing blogs, but not much else. I find the sectioning and categories in Textpattern to be a lot more friendly toward creating an actual full blown site.

    You fail to mention which you are using unless I mis-read, but I’m pretty sure its WP! Good read. :)


  3. Natalie March 12, 2008 | 10:51am

    Well, that’s one rocky road, Travis! :) I started out on Typepad, so if it’s anything like its parent, I’m wary of using it, especially if I have to pay for it, but apparently you don’t now?

    BTW, I’ve decided I’m making it my goal this year to learn one new CMS, so which one should it be? Anyone? EE, MT, anything else I don’t know about but should?


  4. Jacob Johnson March 12, 2008 | 10:51am

    Have you considered using Symphony21, which stores it’s data (posts, pages, etc…) in xml files, and it’s css in literal .css files?

    Symphony has many times the extensibility of textpattern and has a fantastic admin interface.


  5. Natalie March 12, 2008 | 11:01am

    Hey there, Sam!

    You fail to mention which you are using unless I mis-read, but I’m pretty sure its WP!

    I didn’t fail to mention, but I did fail to be clear! :)

    So this is ultimately what drove me back to Wordpress after two years with Textpattern.

    And yep, you’re right, Wordpress. About your other comment though:

    The problem I find with WordPress is that it seems to be great at doing blogs, but not much else.

    I thought so at first too, but I’ve done a number of web sites (with and without blogs attached) using Wordpress. Most of the time, basic “static” pages don’t need to be categorized like blog posts do, so I just leave “posts” as the blog section and use pages throughout the rest of the site.

    Although, it’s easy enough to “query” posts from different categories and call those (in your mind) “sections”. So you could have a “blog” category with all your blog categories as sub-categories, but that gets cumbersome to set up when you could just use TXP, so I only do that when someone really needs/wants WP.

    However, you’re right about a large scale site. Anything that requires defined sections as opposed to simple pages, will need something more like what Textpattern can do, which is why I still prefer Textpattern for a lot of things.


  6. Jared March 12, 2008 | 11:02am

    It should be mentioned that it’s the user’s choice to keep the CSS in the TXP database. You can easily link to it from anywhere, which is what I do.

    Losing your files, layout or otherwise, in a DB crash or accidental deletion is bad, to be sure, but most webhosts offer ways to get in and regularly back up your database (PHPMyAdmin comes to mind). Heck, TXP even has a plugin to make it dead easy. Backups are critical for everything, not just your home PC.

    That said, I do find TXP’s small textareas a real pain to work in. My #1 wish is that TXP would make its admin area standards-compliant so I could style, resize and adjust it to my own needs.


  7. Natalie March 12, 2008 | 11:21am

    Jacob I’m glad you brought that up, and yes, I have considered Symphony. It looked great on the surface, and I still may try it out, but what I don’t like is having to learn a whole new language to get it running. I’m just not well versed any kind of versed in XML yet. :)

    It’s a similar predicament with Django. Though they both have alluring qualities, they (like TXP did in the beginning) are much too intimidating at the moment, but I may also be over-dramatizing them in my head!

    Jared I agree and I’ve always used @import for my styles, since I figured out that bit early on, but then I recently figured out how to include the TXP/HTML code using PHP. See Hacking Textpattern to use raw files for the design.

    And I totally agree about the small textareas. But I did find a plugin last year that simply gives you an admin screen to specify the size of various textareas: rss_admin_resize.

    screenshot of resize option

    Then there’s hpw_admincss which works great as long as you can be tricky enough with CSS to get around the yucky markup. Sadly, not only does TXP use tables but they also don’t put classes/IDs on a lot of things so you can’t fix everything with CSS, but this plugin helps me a bunch.


  8. Geof Harries March 12, 2008 | 11:27am

    I’m biased, but ExpressionEngine is the CMS to learn. The learning curve is a little steep at first, but once it clicks, you’re sold. Dare I also say EE is the “designers choice” given that folks like Happy Cog, Airbag, Mark Boulton, Veerle, 31Three, Erskine and more choose it over everything else.


  9. Natalie March 12, 2008 | 10:05pm

    Thanks, Geof, EE is definitely high on my list. I’ve heard good things from lots of good people.


  10. Adrian3 March 13, 2008 | 8:45pm

    I was thinking about learning a new CMS, too. But after some hard research I decided to stick with Wordpress. I also use Movable Type and recommend that one very highly. The most recent MT version is a little clunky in my opinion, though. I was looking at Ruby on Rails powered CMS (Radiant and Mephisto) thinking that would be an easy way to learn ROR. It turned out to be harder than I expected and they seemed to be underdeveloped compared with the vast Wordpress knowledge base. I was thinking about learning TextPattern, but your comparison makes me think Wordpress is still the right choice for me. Do you use MarsEdit? Check it out if you haven’t. It is a standalone app that lets you post to your blog. I absolutely love it and rarely make a post from a web interface anymore!

    Oh, and I use Wordpress regularly for commercial sites and would argue with the commenter that doesn’t think it does much more than blog. It is very versatile, especially when paired with the right plugins.


  11. Natalie March 14, 2008 | 1:36pm

    Hi, Adrian, thanks for your comment. I’ve seen Radiant and Mephisto too. In some ways comparing these CMS’s is like apples and oranges because it does depend so much on what you intend to use a CMS for and what your particular needs are, as well as your skill with a particular language the CMS was built upon.

    And yes, I do use MarsEdit

    Actually, I gave up on it awhile back because the value I was getting from it wasn’t as high as the cost to purchase it, so after the trial period, I put it aside. Then, a friend told me how much he LOVES it and I took a second look.

    What impressed me and, made me buy it, was the custom preview option. I can make my preview look exactly like my blog, which means I never have to log in to my blog admin to post anymore, or even edit an existing post. Since I know what it’s going to look like, I don’t need to even go to my blog once it’s published because I know what it looks like in MarsEdit already.

    You may have noticed I’m posting more often and this is why. :)


  12. AJP March 18, 2008 | 8:26am

    EE is your new bicycle. No questions asked.

    Though, I am quite biased.


  13. Kameko Rouge March 19, 2008 | 2:44pm

    Ahh yes. I do love it when a post about cms’s/blogging engines go up and the slew of random EE fanatics come rushing in to recommend their engine ‘no questions asked’ without any regard to what the post is even about. That’s the only problem I have with EE. The actual cms is great, but the fanboys are probably the most annoying to deal with. They seem to be convinced that EE is a complete and unique experience even though building sites with EE is very similar to Textpattern.

    As for Wordpress vs Textpattern, honestly as much as I’d like to vote for the underdog, I think it’d be a better idea to stick with Wordpress. The backend of TXP is severely outdated (the design, the markup, the fact that once javascript is disabled you can’t even use it!) and this fact will NOT change any time soon. TXP development time is extremely slow and at times doesn’t even feel like anyone is manning the steers at all. Something must be amiss when the lead developer of TXP at the time (Alex) left the project to work for Wordpress a little less than a year ago.

    Meanwhile, as much as I don’t even like Wordpress, it as least has a solid, stable future with very active development, financial backing, has an actual business plan, roadmaps, an exponentially larger community for support and plugins, etc etc while TXP developers seem to be just fumbling along with no real goals, ideas, roadmaps, or anything that would lead you to believe that TXP is actually being developed/improved/etc etc. Fundamentally, the latest stable release of TXP has not changed in over five years!

    TXP users and developers will tell you nothing has changed because they believe its better to have a ’stable’ version of TXP. They claim that major improvements are to be set in a new version named Crockery.

    Ahh yes the subject of Crockery. Supposedly “Crockery” (aka TXP 4.1) is the version where the markup for the backend is updated, subsections and unlimited categories will be implemented etc etc but don’t hold your breath. It is pure and complete vaporware thats been ‘worked on’ for years upon years with no signs of progress. You can check this yourself by looking at svn (dev.textpattern.com) except of course thats been down for weeks upon weeks as well.

    As for Symphony cms? Don’t even bother. It’s a developers platform that has a stylish backend, but takes a ton of more work to actually get anything done with it. To date, I still haven’t seen any Symphony-powered sites that go beyond brochure-level that could easily be built using TXP, EE, or Wordpress in a cinch. Symphony users keep claiming that XSLT is the language recommended by W3C, but the reality is its just far too abstract to bother with for 99% of users out there. Especially for front-end designers!

    So, people in the end, do yourselves a favour and just stick with EE or Wordpress or some other major player in the game. TXP is a dead/dying platform that has no means of improvement, funding, goals, or even a respectable size of a community to live for much longer.

    Personally I would go with something like EE. It’s very similar to Textpattern but much more powerful, is manned by people who can code AND do business to insure their stability and place in the CMS world, has an actual decent backend, and with the imminent release of EE 2.0, it will continue to gain in popularity (not that popularity has any connection with quality, as can be seen with bloatware Joomla! but it does give you a good indication of whether a platform is worth learning). Meanwhile TXP users have been dwindling more and more and are moving on to other places where their respective futures are much brighter.


  14. Natalie March 19, 2008 | 3:13pm

    Well, Kameko, thanks for the rant. It’s a little misplaced since this was just a simple comparison, not a bash TXP post, but I appreciate your opinion, however long-winded.

    Although you could afford to be much more respectful, of EE users and TXP developers, I do agree that no CMS is just right for everyone. You don’t like TXP (clearly), but for someone else, with different needs than yours (they’re out there, trust me), it may just be the perfect solution.


  15. Jon-Michael March 19, 2008 | 5:16pm

    Sidenote: Author profiles are dead simple in TXP – just create a section and post bios as articles with the author’s full name as the title. With profiles as articles, you can reap the benefits of custom fields, article images, and body and excerpt fields. In an article form, use something like this:

    By <a href="<txp:site_url/><txp:section name="staff"/>/<txp:jmd_author lowercase="1" real_name="1" separator="-"/>"><txp:author/></a>
<txp:hide>
    Title: "Joe Schmoe"
    URI: http://example.com/staff/joe-schmoe
</txp:hide>

  16. Reese March 19, 2008 | 9:12pm

    I’m going to wave a flag for EE, too. If you need help with the learning curve of it, give a shout–I’m happy to lend a hand.


  17. Vinh Le March 20, 2008 | 5:11pm

    God, your blog designs are simply amazing. I haven’t visited in a while and I was just floored when I saw the new design. You keep coming up with new ones and they keep impressing me.

    On a more related note to your post, I found the side by side comparison very useful. I have used textpattern for a few sites and wordpress for a few others in the past. I even read that textpattern book, wow, was it long, but very helpful. Lately, I have been using wordpress almost exclusively just because it has a lot of plugin support, but some of the limitations on outputting code that I want irritates me a bit when I try to do things wordpress isn’t used to doing.

    I thought about trying expression engine, but I don’t think I have the time to learn a new cms so I am going to take a look at textpattern again. It has been about 6 months since I used it.


  18. Natalie March 20, 2008 | 9:11pm

    God, your blog designs are simply amazing.

    God designs blogs now? Wait, are you calling me God? :) Thanks though, I appreciate the feedback.

    The Textpattern book is fantastic! I refer back to it over and over again, and even more now that I’m not using TXP for my own blog anymore.

    …some of the limitations on outputting code that I want irritates me a bit when I try to do things wordpress isn’t used to doing.

    I hear ya, definitely. Links are the worst for me. I can’t do much of anything with a link list. I can’t reorder the description and link, can’t separate the url and name of the link, can’t add my own title text, can’t even show other information about the links like notes, a date the link was posted, etc. Well, I can but it takes hacking the bookmarks-template.php file in wp-includes and that stinks.


  19. Zoltán March 27, 2008 | 6:45am

    Well, first of all, WordPress does have a momentum right now. Everyone is crazy about the next release, new improvements, etc. I love WP for what it is, and if a site is not far too complicated, I’d recommend it for novices as well, although the php templating language might be a bit scary first.

    There are a couple of things one CMS does (or at least seem to do) better than the other, and I think it’s always the goal of the site that should decide which to use. There is one thing you did not mention in your absolutely great article, Natalie, and that is the use of custom fields. WP users don’t really bother much about it, many of them do not even realize what that is, and why it sits there on the “Write” page. What TXP offers here is unbelievable: there is a site I have done that’s using 10 custom fields to input different data which are then styled very differently when it comes to displaying the data. Without this solution, it would be almost impossible to do that particular job.

    Anyway, it’s just an addition – I don’t think TXP is dying, or that the quality of a CMS depends on the frequency of new versions. Different goals – different CMSs, that’s the motto.


  20. Ben Gray March 31, 2008 | 5:22pm

    Excellent write-up. Very fair and balanced. Interestingly, as a front-end designer (not nearly as good as you, but still) I find Textpattern to be much easier to design with and for than WordPress except for what you mentioned about not being able to use Text Mate.


  21. Ryan May 14, 2008 | 8:58pm

    Textpattern is still very much active and the SVN has not been down. It was moved to Google Code.

    http://code.google.com/p/textpattern/

    and here is a list of the recent changes

    http://code.google.com/p/textpattern/source/list


  22. Alex Blundell June 24, 2008 | 6:55am

    Im currently using TXP but am in the “which to use” state at the moment and im finding it a lot harder after looking at the latest version of wordpress, really impressed so far!

    I find that the templating system is a breeze in TXP, I can design Using dreamweaver, panic, wordpad or whatever I decide to use and when i’m done with exactly how I want it I just paste it in and add a few tags, it seems (to me) one of the easiest precesses, and I link to an external css file for easy updating too.

    BUT as mentioned above, textpattern development has slowed and i’m finding that certain things I think should be included in TXP just arent (Sub sections being one).

    The main problem though (and I cant stress this enough) is that I dont feel confident enough with the TXP admin area to give it to my client, they just dont seem to “get it”. WP is much clearer and I know that with WP I can log them in and they seem quite happy with whats going on.

    The reason this give me such a headache is for some reason, despite all the bad press about TXP at the moment, I cant seem to put it down. There are still so many people using it out there, on sites that I visit all the time , I’m conviced its still the platform to use. (Big up to Sam Brown – yes its your fault!)

    However just for info, i am keeping an eye on the TXP fork “Xpattern”

    I quote

    xPattern is an open source fork based upon the 4.0 dev branch of Textpattern. It’s goal is to improve the application to better fit the needs and desires of the community at large. The biggest change you will notice in the initial release of xPattern will be a redesigned admin interface and the loss of a few letters.

    So it sounds hugely promising.. just need to hurry up and get a beta out for testing :)

    My next step is to look at EE (despite all the costly addons which are free elsewhere). I skimmed over the admin area for a few minutes and found it a bit confusing to say the least so I left it, im sure like TXP once I get past its lurning curve it’ll be a great system to use.