Philocrites asks “Is Textpattern the CMS solution for Coffee Hour?” in the Miscellany section of his blog.
Uh, no, I don’t think so.
Textpattern, in my experience, was by its eccentricities more trouble to learn than it was worth. Each time — and there were several, as it promised to be the solution to several projects — I found the learning curve high, and the community support and results dim.
Everything I hoped to do with Textpattern I accomplished with WordPress. Chutney was the first UU blogger I know of who adopted WordPress, but others (myself included) have been converting over at a reliable rate. The free wordpress.com beats the pants off of Blogger, and makes migration easy by the way.
Drupal would be a better option for heavy-duty portal or community development portals. Perhaps that would be a better option for Coffee Hour. But I’d stay away from Textpattern which suffers from being good for some, but not good enough.
Thanks! Good to know. Have you ever worked with Scoop?
Scoop? No.
What’s the link for the page on Philocrites? Can’t seem to find the post…
Nevermind, googled it.
The choice of CMS is so much harder than choice of blogging software. With blogging, you’ve got the big three: WordPress, MovableType/TypePad, and Blogger.
But there are so many CMS systems out there, with no clear indication of who is in the elite club. Drupal looks nice and reliable, but limited in function by intent and lack of plugins. Textpattern, agreed, seem quite a learning curve for a risky pay off.
I’ve used Mambo/Joomla for one site and was happy with it. Lots of plugins. As with WordPress, there is no ranking system for these, and support is spotty at best. Because the community is so much smaller, you’re pretty much on your own with the plugins. Which is a shame, since you need those plugins if you’re going to do anything besides basic portal function.
Philocrites, we’ve talked about this off and on in the past, ever since I goaded you into hosting Coffee Hour. ;-) I think the best way to approach this is to figure out what the community needs (not wants—that’s a rabbit hole). Maybe it’s time to revive the discussion from a few month’s back?