ExpressionEngine vs Wordpress vs Textpattern
Note: This was originally from early 2008. I've stripped out parts that no longer apply and it's now mostly a comparison of the template systems. It's also from a front-end-only designer's perspective, not a clients.
Textpattern, Wordpress and ExpressionEngine are the 3 main content management and blogging systems that I looked at to control brett-munro.com.
Templates
One of the most important features for me was the ability to customise the template to allow for any XHTML/CSS I wanted to use.
Templates - Textpattern
Textpattern has a very intuitive system for templates. You click the presentation tab in the admin interface, then you can choose from Sections, Pages, Forms and Style.
Style - clearly this is where you paste your CSS.
Sections - These are basically the parts of your site that you can post content to. You can select whether to syndicate the content using RSS, and what styles/templates you want the section to use.
Pages - These are the HTML templates for your sections. This includes all the links to your stylesheets, meta keywords etc etc.
Forms - These integrate into your templates. They can be described as "mini-templates" for things like individual post items. Here's an example:
<div class="post">
<h1><txp:title /></h1>
<p><txp:body /></p>
</div>
If you saved this form as "postform", then in the Pages section, you would place this code where you wanted it to appear:
<txp:article form="postform" sort="Posted desc" />
Now all your posts will appear styled by "postform" and sorted descending in the order of the date posted.
Another cool feature is the tag builder. It can automatically add tags instead of making you search through an instruction manual. You can also customise these. You can choose a custom Form for the tag to use. If you want to make an unordered list of your recent articles, then make the Wraptag "ul", and make then Break "li".
<txp:category_list label="Categories" section="articles" wraptag="ul" break="li" />
I also managed to customise Textpattern's admin interface just by changing a few images.
Templates - Wordpress
Wordpress has a slightly different approach to Textpattern. Wordpress's theme files are all stored as .php files that you can edit using the admin interface. It doesn't offer much else, so you'll have to scour the manual for all the template tags. The tags are also php-based:
<?php the_title(); ?>
It works well enough and you can include php files for repeating page elements. One problem is that it would often attach it's own HTML tags to the elements, lacking the functionality of Textpattern's Wraptag and Break options. I couldn't find a way to remove them easily, although maybe I just didn't look hard enough - a "tag builder" like Textpatterns would help here.
Templates - ExpressionEngine
Unfortunately ExpressionEngine is the only CMS tested that requires you to pay hard cash if you want to use it commercially. In saying that, it does have the most out-of-the-box features and there's a free version available for non-commercial use.
With EE's templates, you add templates inside a group. You can use multiple groups for one site. The name of the group becomes part of your URL unless you're server supports the option of disabling it.
http://www.your-site.com/index.php/template_group/template/
For example, this blog page has a "blog" template group, with "post" and "blog_sidebar" templates inside it. The only difference between blog and post is that post contains the comment code and limits the blog entries displayed to one. Here's an example of the simple code:
{embed="blog/blog_sidebar"}
<div id="blog_right">
{exp:weblog:entries weblog="blog" orderby="date" limit="15" paginate="bottom"}
<div class="post">
<h3><a href="{title_permalink="blog/post"}">{title}</a></h3>
{body}
<p>{entry_date format="%M %d %Y"}</p>
</div>
{paginate}
<p>Page {current_page} of {total_pages} {pagination_links}</p>
{/paginate}
{/exp:weblog:entries}
</div>
Removing the index.php from the URL requires a small amount of work compared to Textpattern/Wordpress, where you can select what type of URL from the admin menu - everything from query strings to full search engine friendly SEO URL's.
Conclusion
I decided on ExpressionEngine, but I would've been swayed to Textpattern had it been more compatible with my host.
Other Mentions
MODx - Easy-to-use for clients, but custom fields require PHP knowledge and relying on things like Ditto seemed less than ideal.
Drupal - Had a strange system where you were directly editing the page without an admin interface. Got confusing quickly and I would've preferred separation.
Dec 28 2009