Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /home/phildyer/public_html/textpattern/lib/constants.php on line 136
https://textpattern.com/?v=4.7.3 Phil Dyer - Textpattern http://phildyer.co.uk/ The Real Phil Dyer Fri, 19 Jan 2024 17:03:11 GMT Updating Textpattern default theme to Four Point Seven I have been taking time off from writing my Beginners Guide to actually work on my own theme especially my About Page which I had cobbled together when I first started using Textpattern.

It was just a section with an article using the default page and default article and looked a bit of a mess. It was while doing some research into how to do it properly that I came across this post.

Have section list page show a single article?

The only problem was that I was being told to replace something with somethingelse and I didn’t even have the something.

My default theme is out of date somehow. But How? I have been doing all the updates. Have I been doing something wrong?

OK. I do some more research and find this.

Update 4.6.2 to 4.7.0 missing four-point-zero

Which gives the reason and the solution without having to do a complete re-install. Result.

It is kind of comforting to know I am not the only one, but I may be the last and I feel really foolish that It took me so long to realise. Maybe I should make a new category “I am an Idiot”.

]]>
http://phildyer.co.uk/updating-textpattern-default-theme-to-four-point-seven Sun, 02 Jun 2019 14:28:51 GMT Phil Dyer tag:phildyer.co.uk,2019-06-02:4d98f6284eb2d692b02f1c8d178013f5/14621d6b14299858c4896adec48e2d6b
Theming With Textpattern - A Beginners Guide Want to make some changes to the design of your new Textpattern website?
The best way is not to directly change the default files but to start a new theme.

Using a theme has two main advantages: First you have the original to fall back on if something goes drastically wrong and second, until you are ready, only you can see the changes made – it doesn’t affect the live site.

Preparation

A few steps to do before you start.
  1. Go to the root of your Textpattern installation and if not there add a folder/directory themes.
  2. Login to Textpattern go to Admin > Preferences > Admin. If not already done add themes to Theme directory go further down the page and at Enable development theme preview? select Yes.
  3. Now Save Preferences.

There is a much quicker and easier way to create a new theme, which I shall reveal later. But I think it is worth at least trying to do it the hard way to get a better insight in to the way theming in Textpattern works.

Creating a new theme

A theme in Textpattern is a collection of Pages, Forms and Styles.

  1. Go to Presentation > Themes.
  2. Click on New theme which will bring up a new panel – Edit Theme.
  3. Only the first two fields are necessary.
    • Theme name: Used by system so it shouldn’t contain any special characters or spaces.
    • Theme title: How it looks to users and can contain special characters and spaces.
  4. Click on save. This will return you to the Themes panel and you can now see your new theme added to the list.

Clicking on Theme Name will take you the panel where you can edit the theme information.
Clicking on Preview will take you to the Sections panel for that theme.

Working with a new theme

The Sections panel

The Sections panel lists the sections with their associated pages and properties.

In a new installation there will be just two sections; default and articles.

Under Theme you will see two entries. The first, with a strike-through, is the theme your website is showing and the second is the name of your new theme, that only you will see while logged in.

As we haven’t made any changes yet we have an empty theme so let’s test this out.
  1. View your website now and you will see a blank page.
  2. Either use another browser or log out and view your website again – yep all safe and sound.

Now we need to populate the theme.
So first go to Presentation > Pages.

The Pages Panel

In the Pages Panel we can create new pages, duplicate pages and edit them. Using the drop-down menu we can also navigate between available themes.

With the new theme selected we can now see why previously all that was seen when viewing the website while logged in was a blank page. There may be two pages listed but empty and a completely missing page which we will have to remedy.
  1. If not listed create and save new pages default, error_default and archive.
  2. Use the drop-down list to go to the Default theme, select the archive page and copy all the content.
  3. Return to the new theme select the archive page, paste the content and save.
  4. Rinse and repeat for the default and error_default pages.

Viewing your site will now show a functioning if rather empty and ugly looking website.
Now we need to show some content.
Go to Presentation > Forms

The Forms Panel

A form is a snippet or chunk of text, HTML, and Textpattern tags that is used to display content.
In the Forms Panel we can create new forms, duplicate forms and edit them. It also contains a drop-down menu which enables us to navigate between available themes.

As in the Pages Panel there are listed items that are empty and some completely missing. There are also a lot more of them and they are organized into categories – hence a new drop-down menu Form type.

Apart from the slight increase in complexity though all you need to do is the same as in the Pages Panel.
The only thing that may need mentioning is that you do not need to make a Miscellaneous category. It will show up as soon as a form is assigned to it.

Once this has been completed take look and see.
All we have to do now is deal with the ugly.

Go to Presentation > Styles

The Styles Panel

The Styles panel is used to add, duplicate and edit CSS files.
As in the previous panels this has a drop-down menu to navigate between themes.
The list column will contain all style sheets that can be used with the theme.

There is only one empty style sheet listed here and the only one needed for now.

Change the name to avoid confusion by entering it in Style name and save. And then it’s the final copy and paste.

And that is it. Your new theme is now complete.

Of course it looks exactly like the original but you can now make and review changes without worry.

Creating a new theme – the easy way

As promised earlier and something that is going to be very handy later on. Here is the easy way to create a new theme that saves a lot of copying and pasting.

  1. Go to Presentation > Themes.
  2. Tick the checkbox next to default theme.
  3. Go below to the drop-down menu and select Duplicate.
    You will now see a new theme named default_copy.
  4. Click on default_copy to edit theme.
  5. Change Theme name and Theme title then Save

And that’s it. The Themes panel will now show your new theme.

Coming soon:

Deploying your new theme.

Further Reading:

Textpattern CMS gains Themes support

]]>
http://phildyer.co.uk/theming-with-textpattern-a-beginners-guide Thu, 30 May 2019 09:52:26 GMT Phil Dyer tag:phildyer.co.uk,2019-05-30:4d98f6284eb2d692b02f1c8d178013f5/8a71d0d536074394a8c44a5a305489b9
Updating Textpattern 4.6.2 to Textpattern 4.7.1 I am back again – in more ways than one.

It had been so long since doing anything with this site that I had not realised that the latest version of PHP broke my Textpattern 4.6.2 and visitors could only see a couple of lines of error codes.

My first port of call was the Installatron Applications Installer, but it’s latest version was still 4.6.2 , so I had to do it the hard way.

After backing up my data I first tried following the upgrade path but I couldn’t get it to work. Most probably because I think on the previous major upgrade I had to move a couple of files to make it work.

Anyway every cloud … For some reason my Textpattern was in the directory textpattern/textpattern/ and to me it looked untidy so at least I had the chance to amend this and have all the files in the right place.

]]>
http://phildyer.co.uk/updating-textpattern-462-to-textpattern-471 Sun, 16 Sep 2018 16:55:31 GMT Phil Dyer tag:phildyer.co.uk,2018-09-19:4d98f6284eb2d692b02f1c8d178013f5/4cb9dce4b6ee5436bb94090508f167d7
Textpattern error on update from 4.5.7 to 4.6.2 Today I decided to upgrade Textpattern to its latest iteration using Installatron Applications Installer.

At first everything seemed to go OK – the blog loaded well but when I tried to log in as Admin to write a post I got this error.

config.php is missing or corrupt. To install Textpattern, visit setup.

There is,of course, no setup for the link to go to, so I go in search of config.php. I find it on the top level directory textpattern/ and seeing a sub directory also called textpattern decide to move the file there.

I try logging in again. This time I have lost the error and now get a 404 Not Found page. So, as I have moved the config.php down a level, I try pointing my login link to here also.

Et voila!
Back in business.

]]>
http://phildyer.co.uk/textpattern-error-on-update-from-457-to-462 Fri, 05 May 2017 17:31:13 GMT Phil Dyer tag:phildyer.co.uk,2017-05-05:4d98f6284eb2d692b02f1c8d178013f5/5c388e31cc02eb66391e1605d00049ba
Textpattern My Thoughts So Far Installation and setup of Textpattern was nice and easy.

Kind of cheated here though. I installed it through Softaculous.

The only hiccup was when I ran the Diagnostics I got this message under Pre-flight check:
“The following PHP functions (which may be necessary to run Textpattern) are disabled on your server: proc_nice”
But after a quick search I found out that this is not needed by Textpattern 4.0.x releases. so this can be ignored.

The user interface is reasonably easy to get used to.

Textpattern uses the Textile markup language to convert plain text to valid XHTML rather than a WYSIWYG editor. The upside of this is, once learnt the speed of writing is much faster.

Using images.
This to me was very counter intuitive. I uploaded the image easily but when I linked it in my post it didn’t show up. First I checked my link to it and it was correct. After rooting around a bit I found out that Textpattern had removed my image name and changed it to a number for some, maybe very valid reason.

But that is the beauty of Textpattern is that someone has written a plugin for this.
That is what makes it so fast and configurable. You get the basics enough to make it work and then you can customise it any way you need with plugins.

Look and Feel.
The same philosophy works here. Straight out of the box it is really ugly and clunky looking. But there is help at hand. Head down towards TextGarden where there of downloadable “front-of-site” and “administration” themes designed by other users of this, what I’m beginning to think of as a little gem of a CMS

]]>
http://phildyer.co.uk/textpattern-my-thoughts-so-far Thu, 19 Dec 2013 15:49:12 GMT Phil Dyer tag:phildyer.co.uk,2014-03-22:4d98f6284eb2d692b02f1c8d178013f5/528424b58cea15e03f718f80eafcb891
Using Textpattern Rather than starting from scratch for this site I have decided that as a front end I shall go the pre-built CMS route. Joomla and Drupal seem a bit like overkill for what I need here so I have chosen to try Textpattern.

Textpattern is a free open source content management system. Light (the download weighs in at only 1.00 MB) but not lightweight, it is very flexible and the addition of extra features is easy using the robust plugin architecture.

Now to see how easy it is to use.

]]>
http://phildyer.co.uk/using-textpattern Sun, 15 Dec 2013 18:26:03 GMT Phil Dyer tag:phildyer.co.uk,2014-03-22:4d98f6284eb2d692b02f1c8d178013f5/89740b34b69b691fb4f5f596d93d264d