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My default theme is out of date somehow.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”.
]]>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.
themes
.themes
to Theme directory go further down the page and at Enable development theme preview? select Yes.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.
A theme in Textpattern is a collection of Pages, Forms and Styles.
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.
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.
Now we need to populate the theme.
So first go to Presentation > Pages.
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.default
, error_default
and archive
.archive
page and copy all the content.archive
page, paste the content and save.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
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 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.
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.
default theme
.default_copy
.default_copy
to edit theme.Theme name
and Theme title
then SaveAnd that’s it. The Themes panel will now show your new theme.
Coming soon:
Deploying your new theme.
Further Reading:
]]>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.
]]>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.
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
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.
]]>