Categories and Sections

Haha, i just gave you an extra “b”! I think it is how you name looks, because there are repeating “S”s, “U”s and “H”s, that confuses average brains. I must have thought, “hm, maybe i need to repeat the B”. (sorry for that!)
Yes, 124KB is impressive. I prefer WP’s way of doing things, with PHP shown upfront, rather than TXP’s tags. Take a look here for an interesting dicussion about Sections and Categories (hierarchy and semantics).

You are getting dead links because clean urls are on by default and you obviously don’t have the appropriate mod_rewrite rules in your .htaccess file.
Default template is just that … an uber simple 3 column layout with space left for a header image etc.
Categories/Sections distinction is absolutely great in TXP, plus I want to be able to have an individual entry “template” in WP … the easy way.
TXP’s backend looks very slick.
I posted a small blurb a few days … “Screw MT look at TXP”, which wasn’t very well received, but I think WP would really benefit from adopting a few ideas from TXP.

I’m sure you’ll get a quick answer at txp support forums. Allusion drops in sometimes. :o)
I like both – depends on the requirements of the site. I find nice features in both that are missing from the other. TXP uses ‘tags’ unique to TXP. That and the slightly bent way of doing things gives a steeper learning curve than WP. Looking at the requests in the WP forums it does seem that many are looking to twist WP into more of a CMS than a blog and that may the way to go in development. TXP may go the MT route in its final release -free for non-commercial use only.

Looking at the requests in the WP forums it does seem that many are looking to twist WP into more of a CMS than a blog and that may the way to go in development

I’d vote against this. There are a number of very well developed CMS packages. The capabilities and learning curve are both more extreme than what a good weblog package requires.
WP is a good weblog package; simple to install, having most features already built-in, simple to customize. There is still plenty of room for improvement in WP; places where features could be tightened up and added.
Why turn WP into something else? Users asking that WP become something else proably are doing so because they are familiar with WP, when perhaps – if their needs really dictate – they should be considering another package.
Remember: one of open source’s downfalls is “feature-itus”. Trying to be all things to all people has ruined other open source packages.
IMHO
<rb>

WP shouldn’t turn into a full blown CMS but many want their blog to look less bloggie – a simple CMS. David Chait has done a fantastic job showing what WP can do (with major hacks) & https://www.cantboilwater.com is another example done by turning off features & hard coding. Using “sections & categories” as decribed in the opening post
doesn’t make WP too CMSessy just easier for the end user to customize.

Ok, I just want to retract my rant about individual entry template. It is easily done, although somewhat non-obvious due to lacking WP documentation and messy because several “tags”, and .htaccess mod_rewrite rules must be changed.

anon: thanks for the plug (the site is https://www.chait.net ;)). The ‘major hacks’ are getting more and more localized to stylings and plugins, well and the index page.
@anatman-
If you check out my site, this can be introduced into WP pretty easily. I bit the bullet and had it working across the board within a couple of days. The top-bar of my site lists the “post type” groupings, though a limited set of them (that’d be your ‘Sections’). Then I use WP’s multi-cat feature to specifically subdomain the given article. Some are in a single cat, some span three.
-d

But, respectfully, https://www.chait.net is not a weblog. It’s format is more of a traditional CMS. There are a dozen CMS packages that could represent that look-n-feel pretty much right out of the box (with obvious customization). The https://www.chait.net look is probably not what most here are looking for in a weblog.
I’m not against improving WP; far from it. I just hope the developers do not get swayed into featureitus-bloat. Improve the core.
<rb>

I agree with the sections idea. I think the key to avoiding “featuritis” is to lay the groundwork (in functional flexibility) while leaving the actual feature implementation to plugins and hacks. After all, that’s what meta data is supposed to do, right? If WordPress built in every function that people asked for (think “what song I’m listening to now, my mood, etc.), we’d have horrible featuritis. But by laying the groundwork to make the addition easy, then making it easy to create plugins and hacks, we get a better and more flexible system. The same thing goes for sections. All that would be necessary for sections to exist would be an extra dropdown box in the advanced post editor, an extra option on the menu, and some straightforward changes to the way that index.php is set up. However, the amount of flexibility it would provide when appropriately harnessed would be great. I fail to see the problem with adding features to WordPress, as long as they are done in the most flexible and easily extensible ways possible.

hmmm textpattern sure looks very spiffy. i’ll have to investigate further.

Is it me or is TXP just 10 times more complicated than WP ?

I think it IS more complicated than WP for some reasons:
It doesn’t come with a really working default template and acompaining CSS, so you have to built your front page nearly from scratch;
It uses it’s own language (TXP tags), which you must learn to built anything – using plain PHP seems a much easier concept to grasp, at least it was for me;
Documentation is lacking (but they say it is “gamma” software, whatever that be);
And of course the backend in unfamiliar – but it seems for example easier to use images than in WP, you don’t need to install a hack for that (tough i haven’t played with that feature).
The Sections/Categories distinction is a bit surprising at first, but after you read this it gets pretty clear.
Sushubh: you probably didn’t upload the .htaccess file that came in your package, some FTP programs don’t see it. I had this problem. Or your host doesn’t allow the ForceType directive, which is essential for the clean URLs to work – in this case someone has made a mod_rewrite rule available in TXP forums. If that’s to much work just for checking the software out, turn the clean URLs off and it should work.
(again, i am not promoting TXP here, far from that, i am only advocating the Sections/Categories distinction, which i would like to see in WP)

lack of a working template out of teh box turned me off… ??

it seems like txp forces the use of a certain framework for designing. comparatively, wp is open and gives the user the free will to do as he pleases.

randy –
I agree that I’ve taken one direction. But I’ve heard of a lot of people looking to make their blogs not look like the average blog… Lord knows there are lots of features in the system already, and a lot of what I’ve done is just playing with layout/css/index.
WP is a great foundation. I wouldn’t use a full-blown ‘CMS’. I don’t like them. Too big, too onerous. No idea what is happening where in the code. I can do most anything a big CMS can in WP.
And just to be clear, I view bloggers as CMSes too. All of them manage content. CMSes are generally just seen as ‘more complex systems’. Actually ‘real’ CMS software is more about the content management, whereas ‘open source’ CMS software is all about plug-in modules. ??
-d