I have also discovered (sadly) that the things I want to do with it, for this site, are beyond the abilities of the ‘Core’ (free) version that I’ve been practising on! In other words: in order to do what I want to do with it, I would have to be using the ‘all singing, all dancing’ paid-for ‘Commercial’ version.

It is worth the money (over twice my annual hosting bill for the initial purchase though!)…but not for something I’m still learning, and, not for something that is about to have a totally new version (2.0) launched sometime this Summer! …I can wait for that as it does look very, very good indeed! ;)

So, in the meantime, I’ll be staying put with Textpattern for the site CMS, and this means I am turning my attention back to the long-overdue redesign as well (and more regular content updates!)

Before doing anything else on a redesign though, it makes sense to bring my own install of Textpattern up to date…so, last night, I backed-up everything (twice!) and did a LIVE upgrade from version 4.0.4. to version 4.0.6. (the latest release).

It went seamlessly and only took about 30 minutes to do – I am slightly impressed with that.

Now, back to that redesign…. ;)

Hope it makes you smile/laugh or both!

Extra Notes:

The Pink Panda was previously used by me for images to support ‘Pink for October’. The original photo of the panda is called ‘Asia’ by Mantomalac, available freely under-license, and the artist’s permission was given for the original use of the photo.

I wonder if this has replaced his other site ‘Avalonstar’ or if the updated Avalonstar will look as great as this one does?

Bryan: I think the Revyver update is awesome! :)

Thanks for the ‘heads-up’ Marko!

This comes as quite a surprise really and I’m pleased to see the site featured among some other really good sites that promote the use of Textpattern.

Cheers! :)

For Reference too: We Love TXP Archive

Well, apart from a general slow-start to the year, almost overwhelmed by catching-up on blog-posts about the latest misadventures of Internet Explorer 8 (No – I still haven’t written up anything on it yet!), and my own side interests in broadening my web-dev skills, I’ve also strongly considered switching to a new Content Management System (CMS) for my site as well!

As previously noted in this article: New Textpattern – Textpattern is the CMS that have used on mattrobin.com so far. While it is good enough for most aspects of the site, I’ve now reached a point where I want to do more than Textpattern is comfortably capable of doing…and I’ve ran in to trouble with it’s privacy/test settings lately – which even the Textpattern Gurus on the TXP Forum haven’t been able to resolve…it’s time for a change, it’s time for something better!

Enter Expression Engine….CMS Superstar!

Many good things have been said on the Web about Expression Engine for awhile now, and over the past year or so there has been a notable shift by some of the Web Design A-List to embrace it. I’m not someone who instantly jumps at trends, and Expression Engine’s recent popularity appeared to be mostly trend-setting, so I hesitated about even approaching it for awhile, but now that I’ve taken a closer inspection – it really does start to make a lot of good sense!

So, I’ve checked the suitability with my current web hosts (Dreamhost) and I’ve now successfully installed a test-only version of Expression Engine Core (Core is the free version that actually does everything that Textpattern could do!)

My plan is to test it some more and get used to it over the next week or two, and then hopefully roll-out my Version 4.0 design after that. If my experience with Expression Engine (or ‘EE’ as it’s known for short) is satisfactory and I feel I know it well enough, I’ll definitely recommend it as the CMS of choice for some, possible web design projects in future.

Expression Engine and Dreamhost – a Geeky side-note…

Dreamhost (my web hosts) DO support Expression Engine, but they also run PHP code as CGI...which won’t work too well with Expression Engine at all! So, if you want to do the same thing as me and want to avoid a bundle of frustration, make sure you read this useful page about what to do before you run the EE install process!

Not as easy as it first looks…but I did get it working on just my second attempt! :D