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.

* 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!

So I’ve figured out a way around that, and maybe it’s not the best way, but it works. Definitely tell me if there’s a flaw to doing things this way. When I say it “works” I just mean I personally haven’t noticed any problems, but there may be some I don’t know about.

CSS Styles

The first thing I did the first time I lost CSS information in Textpattern was use “importto pull in a raw CSS file. I also prefer to use [Textmate][] to code, so this was a real treat instead of doing everything in atextarea` in the TXP admin area.

Inside the styles area, I create stylesheets as usual, attached to whichever sections I need them to be, and then in the style area, I import them: “import url(/css/style.php);`

You could also link them directly from the header area, but then you’d have to use <txp:if_section> to get it to work the same way.

Pages & Forms

To get markup into raw files is a little more tricky because you use a PHP include and PHP in TXP is a little tricky.

1. First, I make sureAllow Raw PHP* is turned OFF andAllow PHP in Pages* is ON.
2. Next, I create my raw files (txt, html, php, whatever) and put my TXP code in them just as I would in the admin fields.
   1. I create folders for pages and forms too, so I can keep them separate.
   2. These folders are in a parent folder called site_design, inside the textpattern directory. That way you can use txpath in a minute.
3. Then, I set up my include using Textpattern’s code for PHP.

<txp:php>
    include(txpath.'/site_design/pages/section.php');
</txp:php>

Now I can use TXP tags from these “remote” files instead of keeping everything in the database and accessing it only from the TXP admin area. I just wish I’d figured out this last part before I switched to Wordpress because I would have stayed with Textpattern!

Note: I don’t put all the forms in include files because there are so many of them, and many times they don’t have much in them, so I usually just do forms which tend to have a lot of code in them, like the header, footer and sidebar includes.

Using a custom field and a few short conditional statements you can set up your own automatic article image. Here’s How:

First, the easy part, setting up the image

1. When you click Save and Continue Editing Wordpress saves your post as a draft so you can keep writing. WP also assigns the post an ID number. If you look up in the address bar you’ll see the URL change from ...post-new.php to ...&post=123 and 123 is the post number. Remember that number.
2. Now save your image as 123.jpg (replacing 123 with your actual post number) and upload to your images folder.

Next, tell WP this post has an image associated

1. Scroll down to your “custom fields” area (you may not have used this before, but don’t be afraid). :)
2. Under KEY, type “Photo Credit” in the first field
   1. When you’ve done this once, you can from then on, choose it from the drop down list.
3. In the Photo Credit VALUE field, enter one of the following:
   1. Y for “yes there is a photo, but it’s my photo so no credit is given”
   2. <a href="http://linktophoto.com">Photographer Name</a>
   3. Photographer Name (no link)

Now set the image to display on your posts page

This you only have to do once

First, open index.php (or home, single, etc.) and figure out where you want your image to appear. I have mine appear only on single post pages and just inside the “post” div just above <?php the_content(); ?>. Now insert the following code:

<?php
    $photo = get_post_meta($post->ID, "Photo Credit", true);
    if($photo != ""|$photo == "Y") {
        echo '<img src="/files/images/';
        echo the_ID();
        echo '.jpg" alt="Article Image">';
    }
?>

1. The first part of this get’s the value of the “Photo Credit” field. You can make the name of that field anything you want as long as it matches this part.
2. The second part basically says “if there is a photo, do what comes next, otherwise, do nothing here.” It says “if the field is not empty OR if it says “Y”, then do this…
3. The “echo” part is what appears if you have a photo (Y or a credit). Change /files/images to the directory where your photos are located, and .jpg to .png or whatever you use most. You’ll need to make all of your images this file type. This tells WP to look for an image named after your post ID number.

Finally, display the credit

You can display the credit following the image; I have mine appear at the end of the post but you can do it however works best for you. If you’d like to do this to, place the following code just below <?php the_content(); ?>:

<?php
if($photo == ""|$photo == "Y") { } else {
    echo '<p>Main Photo: ';
    echo $photo;
    echo '</p>';
} 
?>

1. Note the first part from before is missing because you’ve gotten that information once, you don’t need to get it again. So now you’re just saying “if there’s a credit, show it”.
2. Here, the “if” statement is different because we only want to show the credit if there is actual credit given. So now it’s saying “if the field is empty or Y, do nothing, otherwise, do what comes next.”
3. Finally, echo a paragraph containing the contents of the “Photo Credit” VALUE field.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Of course you can customize it any number of ways, but that’s how I use it, hope that helps!

Now after all this, you may ask, why not just do <img src... manually at the beginning of each post and I have a rew reasons I don’t do this:

1. Now that I’ve set it up, it’s faster for me because all I have to do is rename the image to match the post ID and upload it and it automatically appears on the right post if I use the right post ID number.
2. It doesn’t appear in my excerpts, only on the post page.
3. I can now make this image appear anywhere dynamically. So later, if I rearrange my archives and want a thumbnail of each post next to them, I can use PHP/Wordpress to automatically call <img src="/files/images/<?php the_ID(); ?>.jpg" alt="article thumb" /> like this and it will grab all of the post images assigned. I can even use conditional statements to grab a generic thumb if there isn’t an image attached. There are a million possibilities now that my images are attached dynamically!

Anyway… the twins…

I’m sure you’re all just dying to know what’s up with the babies I was carrying. Some close to me got the news a month or so ago, but it’s been crazy around here so forgive me for neglecting you. It all happened the first week of November. The doctor induced labor in the evening and I went into the OR around noon the next day.

Everyone was prepping for a c-section but I had told my doctor I wanted to try to do it the old fashioned way. She advised against it, but I just don’t see volunteering for major surgery if there’s a way out of it. The anesthesiologist planted himself at my head, ready to administer the drugs at a moment’s notice, warning me, You know, if things go bad I’m going to have to knock you out. Already heavily drugged as one can be and still be alert, I replied, Well then, I’d better get pushing!

After about ten minutes of pushing, Olivia (Liv) came out, and barely four minutes later, Emma (M). It was all over by 12:45 and I was back in my room by 1:00. It was a better delivery than my first daughter all by her lonesome. It’s something I spent the last few months of my pregnancy praying about. I just really didn’t want to go through a c-section and there seemed to be no decent explanation as to why I had to. A week later I got a card from the hospital staff in which my doctor signed her congratulations for “sticking to my guns” as she put it.

Praise God, the girls were healthy enough to come home with me two days later. Most multiple babies are born premature and though M was technically in that boat at less than 5lbs, she was eating ok and all of her tests came back great so they let her come home with Liv.

They’re fraternal twins; they look nothing alike. Liv has dark skin, hair and eyes while M has red hair and green eyes, and really pale skin. They’re even 3lbs different in weight (which is a lot at this early age). It’s amazing to me but they’re actually two totally different kids who just happen to be born at the same time.

Going Forward

So what does this mean for Standards for Life, or my design career in general? My eight ball says, REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN. As of yet I have only had one solid night of sleep (more than 2 hours in a night) and that was when my groom was gracious enough to take M for me for a night. Liv is usually great, gets up just once between 4-5, but M is up every two hours at least and stays up for an hour, so by the time she gets back to sleep she’s up again in an hour. So when I’m alive at all these days I’m living on a combination of adrenaline and a caffeine stupor that might otherwise kill a horse. And don’t judge me with the caffeine and breast feeding issue – there are A LOT of things I wouldn’t do with one baby that are the only things keeping me sane with two!

Sadly (for some), this new lifestyle I’ve found myself in has forced me to realign my career a bit. Back in March I was looking at working full time as my daughter went off to preschool. I was going from part time freelance to full time employee with Monk Development. I almost made it. They had me on a contract basis for two weeks when I found out I was pregnant, and two weeks later I was in the hospital with hyperemesis and couldn’t work at all anymore. In fact, it was August before I looked at a computer all that closely.

Although my plan to be a full time web designer were squashed and I have a new life as a full time mom, I still love design and I’ll still be around to work on the side when I have free time, and I’ll write about it as much as the kids will allow me. My older daughter is home from preschool now because with the twins and me not designing, we can’t afford her tuition anymore, so though at five she can help warm a bottle or get fresh diapers for me, she’s a handful herself. This mom thing is going to be a big job for awhile!

Anyway, I need to get going now. It’s 3am and it looks like Liv is finally going to be getting to sleep for the first time (rough night of gassiness for her tonight). Thanks for hanging in there with me. I appreciate your readership and this isn’t me saying goodbye, it’s just me slowing down a bit. As a reward for the faithful, I’ll be posting my recipe for “Mexican Marinara” sauce soon! It’s a new favorite in this house.

P.S. This new design should last awhile. I won’t be able to throw new designs up all the time anymore. Although, I’m thinking about changing nataliejost.com since that one has been up over a year (a record for me)!

When it’s all up to me

In these last two years of working steadily on my own client work I’ve grown accustomed to certain luxuries like control, efficiency, and the freedom that those things bring. I’ve always done my own layouts, comps, and code and I’ve enjoyed many of the following benefits in each job:

Benefits of my handling all the pieces

**I can plan ahead* – knowing I’m going to be doing the CSS I can plan my markup to make my CSS coding easier later. Likewise, I can adjust my Photoshop layouts to make the HTML coding simpler. **Errors are fixed more expediently* – Since I’m the one handling each part of the project I typically know exactly where to go to fix a problem. **Sole responsibility lies with me* – on the surface this may not seem like a benefit, but when a client has a problem, there’s never moment where I have to say, Oh, it looks like that’s my CSS guy who did that, let me get him to fix it, or The person who does the code is out today. For the client this is a huge benefit. There’s never a slowing down of the project while I wait on someone else and I can get to it on my schedule, which really is all the client should need to know.

Downsides

There are of course downsides to keeping it all in house:

• Fewer clients I can take on
• It’s a lot of work on my shoulders alone
• Some days I just want to stay in Photoshop
• I (and the client) are limited to my own skills

Sharing the Load

When it comes to outsourcing, I have no actual experience with my own work because I’ve always taken on everything myself. I’ve purposely kept my clientèle low and the work simple and clean in part for this reason.

Lately, however, because I’ve been so up and down with my twin pregnancy, I’ve taken work from other designers and developers. I’ve been the one they outsource work to. I decided to do this partly because I didn’t want to be the sole contact for a client and one day end up “in the hospital again](/on-hiatus-indefinitely and be suddenly MIA(missing in action). I didn’t want to have to explain my situation to each new client and hope they still see me as a reliable professional. So I’ve chosen a couple of select friends/colleagues who I trust and who I know trust me and it’s been working great.

My first slice ‘n’ dice experience

Recently, however, I was working on a “Textpattern](http://textpattern.com site, configuring a template to work with the CMS(content management system). I took the work because I know and admire the guy and I’ve seen his work – it’s good stuff.

I was surprised to find, though, that the HTML he gave me was, well, messy, to say the least. I knew it couldn’t have been his work. There were unnecessary divs and classes everywhere and it was all relatively non-semantic, not to mention it didn’t wash with the CMS’s output. That last bit is totally understandable and would likely happen with any external person working on a project, but all the more reason to handle this part oneself, I say.

In the end, I was able to work around it, though I had to change the CSS in a few places to match what I had to put out in the TXP(Textpattern) interface.

The reasons for outsourcing

When I asked about the strange HTML/CSS situation, my friend admitted that he had used a company called “PSD2HTML](http://psd2html.com to do the code for him and that in general, the work in the past was decent, and fairly representative of what I was seeing in this case.

When he explained his reasons for outsourcing, it made perfect sense, based on my “downsides” above: he wants to expand his business and take on more clients and to do that means sharing the load with other professionals in the business.

In the end…

…it’s a toss-up, I suppose, to what you give up in keeping the work “in-house” or outsourcing to others. I know I would have no problem handing over something like javascript, php or Rails to a qualified developer if my work ever came across the need. I would do this simply because it’s something I know very little about and I’d want someone awesome at it to take on that part.

Still, if it’s something I typically do myself, like CSS/HTML, I’m not sure it’s worth the money to spend to have someone else do the work if there’s a chance I’ll have to “fix” things about their work to make it more efficient. In that way I’d be paying twice for the same service (rather the client would be, wouldn’t they).

What’s your experience?

So I’m curious, since I have -no- +very little+ experience with outsourcing, what’s yours? Which services have you used? Maybe you prefer to work with someone you know personally? This is just an unknown area for me, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. If you have horror stories tell me those too! :)

Related Links

The following links, though related to this post, are not necessarily recommended.

Use Photoshop notes to communicate

+(block)Something I forgot to mention which is an important tip… I often use notes in Photoshop while I’m laying out a design to place some CSS/HTML ideas so that later I have an idea of what I was planning in a particular place.

This would be really helpful to use for anyone else who might have to work with your PSD. Place a note over an element that might have any kind of specific need in the code and tell other people looking at the file what you have in mind for that piece.+