Textpattern is an open source content management system developed by Dean Allen. Textpattern emerged from the personal website of Allen, Textism. It is built with PHP/MySQL and evergrowing list of fully documented plugins offers a flexible usage. Although, it is often listed and labelled as a weblogging tool, but it aims to be a general purpose CMS. However, many feel that it is a good lightweight alternative for good old WordPress itself.
Going deep into the front-end and admin interfaces, one realises that the in-built tag based retrieving of content is designed to give control over content and presentation. The flexible and customizable admin interface can be used to generate custom levels of user permissions to completly control sections and categories of any website.
Some of the common features of Textpattern are:
- A Text-to-HTMLÂ converter, Textile, which allows user to publish HTML content without having to learn HTML.A tag-based template system allowing the creation of reusable blocks of content and code.
- The in-built tag-builder automates content creation.A privilege-based user hierarchy to provide an organized structure of writers, editors and publishers.
- A commenting system with strong privileges to counter spamming.
- Syndication of content via RSS and Atom.
- A robust plugin architecture to allow extension of features.
- A built-in CSS editor, integrated link, image and file management systems provide a simple yet effective functionality.
The free plugins are available at http://textpattern.org/plugins
A gallery of Textpattern sites is displayed on the WeLoveTxp website.
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