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Updates aplenty

Sunday April 3, 2005

A couple of people have pointed out that I am going mad on the updates; some have even dared to ask if I am actually doing any work, or am I just pissing around with my blog? Let me explain...

Most importantly, I am having a bout of insomnia (it's 4.30am, for the fourth day, as I write) this is nothing unusual, it happens to me all the time. You can pretty much guarantee that if my site goes quiet, the insomnia has passed and I am sleeping for the week; trying very hard to look less like I had my eyes replaced for those of a stoned Panda.

New gig

Secondly, I am gearing up towards building my first paid website using Textpattern. Up until now I have been using Macromedia Contribute with a heavy dollop of PHP to provide clients with the ability to update. And I have to say it's a bloody good and inexpensive way of doing it. This latest project however, needs something a little bit more but the budget is, shall we say, a little on the slim side for the size of the website. Do I want to give all my money to my PHP programmer for all the extra work that would be needed to do it the Contribute way? Well he's a very nice guy and all that, but no, not really, I have a conference to save up for don't ya know!

There are a few new plug-ins showing up that are only compatible with later releases of RC3 and some of them are of particular interest for said pending project. So I have been hitting the old subversion quite heavily and updating this site frequently [note to self: update comments form]. I figure this is the best place to try out new stuff to see how well it works in a, and I use the term liberally, real world situation. So that's part of the reason why I have been fiddling here quite a lot.

More lovin' for Textpattern

Whilst we are on the subject of Textpattern for clients, there are two simple reasons I have chosen it over all else, Textile and the admin interface. Textile because I think I can easily teach it to someone who is smart but doesn't know, or want to know, HTML and you can do pretty much everything you need to for the everyday running of a site using just Textile. The admin interface because it is so clean, welcoming and simple, you just wanna give it a hug it's so lovely. Even my butt hole starts twitching when I log-on to another CMS admin and compare, so imagine how a client might feel. Plus it has more help buttons than an old people's home and that means less phone calls in the long run.

To summarise

The other thing about all this is that the project I am about to start is kinda being watched over by another, bigger, web development company; who, in not so many words, told me they think web standards pretty much suck (politics, ya gotta love 'em). I guess they have absolutely every right not to like me very much because I nicked their client. They weren't impolite when we first met but I don't think I'll be getting a dinner invite any time soon. Couple this with the fact that this is, as I said, the first Textpattern project I will be delivering to a non-geek client who wants to update themselves and you get nerves, plenty of them too, which is probably why I can't sleep, which is why I am updating so frequently -- that and the fact that I really don't think I can face watching another episode of Futurama, for the 100th time. So there ya go... Life is full of these little joys!

  1. Anatoly Papirovsky

    1375 days ago

    There’s always room for more Futurama…

    Anyways, I have to agree on Textpattern. I used to love Wordpress, somewhere up to 1.2 or so, until they adopted the new templating system and now I just can’t wrap my mind around it, just too damn complicated and that is coming from someone who’s creating all kind of applications in PHP… :-/ But from now on it will always be Textpattern, plus it has much better code than Wordpress.. I can’t imagine changing so much code in Wordpress as I did in Textpattern…

  2. Jon Hicks

    1375 days ago

    Google Ads eh John? Sold your soul so soon?

  3. Tom Werner

    1375 days ago

    I find John Gruber’s markdown to be much simpler and more intuitive to use than textile.

    Once TextPattern actually goes 1.0, I’ll be taking another good look at it. I love my WordPress, but it seems like TxP might be a good fit for some projects.

    Also, Futurama is the greatest show that ever was or ever will be. Damn you Fox for cancelling it before it’s time!

  4. Kev

    1375 days ago

    “The other thing about all this is that the project I am about to start is kinda being watched over by another, bigger, web development company; who, in not so many words, told me they think web standards pretty much suck.”

    A disappointingly common attitude amongst web dev companies of a certain size and one of the reasons I like being an in-house designer – I get to make those kind of policy decisions re: our in house sites.

    I share your pain re: insomnia. I go through patterns of non-sleep that last a few weeks then sleep well for a week, lather, rinse, repeat. I’ve been that way since I was a teen.

  5. Rob Mientjes

    1375 days ago

    Anatoly, that might just be right. However, I, like John, don’t have the money for a coder, and I also have the added bonus that I’m lazy.

    John, sometimes companies don’t need to understand.

  6. seba

    1375 days ago

    I never used textpattern or wordpress before. What I do know is that those programs are still not as good as coding by a good developer. You’ll always know where it’s buggy and where it’s not and if you have good developer the code will be reduced to the absolute minimum. After me it’s always good to consider working with a developer even if it costs a lot.

  7. Schultzy

    1375 days ago

    Dont you love ignorance of big companies.
    Sold his soul to Budda.

  8. Thom

    1375 days ago

    Didn’t buddha run out of money when he proclaimed abstinance! John, i think its funny you got to explain your sleep…....clinically i think its called a ‘creative spell’ or somethin! now stop snortin that fuckin red bull stuff! Anyway lets just hope that via the small addition of an inoffensive google ad here and there the brit pack indies can remain so.

  9. Martin W

    1375 days ago

    Not to be overly selfish but I’m glad we’re getting the benefits of your insomnia in these posts…sleep deprivation and liberal use of swearing is clearly the key to a good blog. :O)

  10. Dave

    1375 days ago

    I will properly stay away for Textpattern for client use until it goes into version 1, but I do agree with you, Textile is easy to pick up for non-html people to pick up and is ideal for certain projects.

  11. cboone

    1375 days ago

    Good luck with your project.

    I’ve been happily using Textpattern on client projects left and right—no matter the version—and everything’s been going well, everyone’s happy. And there’s nary a geek to be seen….

    So don’t worry. It’ll work out well.

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