This is
This is Textgarden.org, a central repository of downloadable Textpattern layout themes.

Contributors
Dean – hosting and owner
Alex – doing the contests aswell as the textpattern magazine
All the plug-in writers!
All the testers!

About setting it up
Setting up this site wasn’t as much work as expected. I hit a few speed bumps here and there, but that was because of me not knowing Textpattern as well as I thought. Textpattern actually grew on me.

Designing the look took very little time. I decided to go for a “Textpattern family” look, in green. As of July 2005, Textpattern.com, Textdrive.com and the default layout supplied with 1.0RC3 looked pretty alike. left, center and right columns. Why not follow this tradition and let the end-users get something they know how to use.

I was planning to create a new section for each category of layout. This would let me set up each category in a different way with a menu and look specialized for the category and avoid the use of IF tags (like <txp:if_category>). I quickly found out that using article_custom to list articles did not paginate the list. No newer or older link would work. This is where I started to hate things a bit.

As a good engineer, I sucked it up and sat down to rethink my plans. I needed to get pagination working. I tried the chh_article_custom plugin. It gave me paged results but had bugs.

Things started to come together when I used Textpattern the way it was designed to work. All layouts in a section called layouts, separate them by calling ”?c=a-category-here”. A few IF tags in the layout page to hide the right column when listing layouts, and whoop there it was. That wasn’t so bad. I spent less time configuring sections and pages and textpattern did everything for me. I should have just done it this way in the first place, instead of forcing things into doing it my way.

Getting a link between a layout and the actual downloadable file is handled by Mary’s excellent upm_file_packets. It came about as sent from God. Just what was needed for Textgarden.org.

The domain name comes from this thread , first coined by kennethlove666 and eagerly set up by Dean Allen. Hosting is supplied by Dean and Textdrive

Plugins used
ajw_admin_workflow, by Andrew Waer – enabling article owner switching. Let someone edit your article.

mdn_count, by Mark Norton – easily add a count of your articles

mem_self_register, by Michael Manfre – Letting people register and sign up on the site

ob1_googlenav, by Henrik Jönsson – great looking, google-like, pagination

rss_admin_show_adv_opts, by Rob Sable – lets the advanced options be shown automatically

swf_if_empty, by Scott Woods-Fehr – testing for field data

upm_file_packets, by Mary – add files to your articles

zem_contact_reborn, looked after by Stuart – adds the “Contact” form mailer to the site

love,
Sivert (sivni at the forums)