A common beginner’s question about Textpattern is how to manage non-blog content, like an “about” page, or a collection of documents. This is quite easy to achive, though not entirely obvious to a first time user. Below are some layouts that might help beginners; experienced users will probably want to skip this one.

First, it helps to understand how Textpattern organises content. Articles are documents that have a title, body and author, plus some optional fields like excerpts, categories, comments and so on. Sections are divisions within the web site that contain articles. Each article is contained within exactly one section. Depending on the url mode selected in your Textpattern setup, section URLs look like¹ http://example.com/mysection/ or http://example.com/index.php?s=mysection.

The way a section is displayed is determined by Page templates and article Forms.

A normal Textpattern blog-style section uses a page template that displays a list of articles (<txp:article limit=5 />), and an article form that displays the article’s title, permlink, date, author, body and comment link.

To display static or non-blog content, all we need to do is use an article form that leaves out unnecessary features like comments, and change the page layout to suit. We can then use the Textpattern article interface to create and edit content.

The Article Form

The default Textpattern article form looks something like this:

<h3>
   <txp:permlink><txp:title /></txp:permlink>
   &#183;<txp:posted />
</h3>
   <txp:body />
<p>
   <txp:comments_invite />
</p>
 * * *

This template is used to display the list of articles in a list on the section page, and each individual article on its archive page. It’s a nice simple layout for a blog, but not quite what we want for our static content. Create a new form:

<h3><txp:title /></h3>
<p><i><txp:excerpt /></i></p>
<txp:body />

Set the form type to “Article”, and save it as “static_article”.

This gives an article layout that’s much closer to what we need: the comments are post date are gone, and the article excerpt – if any – is displayed at the top of the article, just under the heading. You can leave out the excerpt part if you don’t plan on using it.

We can use this form to display all our non-blog content, whether it’s a simple “about” page or one of a series of articles.

Now create a second form:

<h4><txp:permlink><txp:title /></txp:permlink></h4>
<p><txp:excerpt /> <txp:permlink>(read more..)</txp:permlink></p>

Set the form type to “Article” again, and call this one “static_headline”.

We can use the headline form to display a list of articles in a section that contains several articles (a collection of recipes or tutorials, for example).

Next we need to create page layouts that use these forms.

The Page Template

We’ll set up two different page templates here: one for an “about” section that contains only a single article; and one for a “recipe” section that contains many articles (you can change these names to something more appropriate for your own web site, of course).

In the Presentation/Page section of the administration interface, select the “default” template, and copy it twice: once as “static_page”, and again as “static_list”.

In “static_page”, look for the <txp:article /> tag, and change it to this:

We’ll use this to display our “about” page, which contains only a single article (hence “limit=1”).

Now edit the same tag in “static_list”:

This will display a list of article titles and excerpts, as defined in the static_list form, and also handle displaying the article body when the user clicks on a title.

Finally, we need to set up our sections to use the correct page layouts.

The Section

First, the about section. Textpattern should already have a section named “about”, so we can use that. In the Presentation/Sections tab of the administration interface, select the following settings for “about”:

• Uses page: static_page
• Uses style: default
• Selected by default: no
• On front page: no
• Syndicate: no
• Include in site search: yes

Now create a new section called “recipe”, and change its settings:

• Uses page: static_list
• Uses style: default
• Selected by default: no
• On front page: no
• Syndicate: no
• Include in site search: yes

If there’s a red exclamantion mark shown beside the section name, you’ll need to click on it and follow the instructions.

All that’s left now is to write some content.

Post an article in the “about” section; it’ll be available at the URL http://example.com/about/ (or http://example.com/index.php?s=about, if you’re using messy URLs). The article title will become a heading on that page, and the body is its content.

Articles posted in the “recipe” section will show up in a list at http://example.com/recipe/ (or http://example.com/index.php?s=recipe). Clicking on the article heading or “read more..” will take the user to the full article page.

If you’d like to add further sections for static content, there’s no need to create new forms or pages, unless you’d like to lay them out differently. Just create a new section, using the same settings as “about” or “recipe” above, depending on whether it’s a single page or a list.

Customizations

Finally, here are a few quick enhancements you might consider.

If you’d like to enable user comments on your recipe pages, you’ll need to change the settings in the Preferences tab if necessary, and add this tag at the bottom of your static_article form:

You can disable comments on the “about” page just by setting “Comments: off” in the article editor.

To sort the recipe list alphabetically, rather than by date, requires a little trickery. Change the static_list page template like so:

<txp:if_article_list>
<txp:article_custom limit=100 sortby="title" form="static_list" />
</txp:if_article_list>
<txp:if_individual_article>
<txp:article limit=1 form="static_article" />
</txp:if_individual_article>

Bear in mind however that this method has some disadvantages. article_custom doesn’t support browsing by category or page, so these features won’t work in your recipe section using the above template. Make sure limit is large enough to include all articles in the section.

The article links on the recipe list page show the tooltip text “Permanent link to this article” by default. To change this, install the zem_link plugin, and change your static_headline form to look something like this:

<h4><txp:zem_link title="link to '%s'"><txp:title /></txp:zem_link></h4>
<p><txp:excerpt /> <txp:zem_link title="read the full article">(read more..)</txp:zem_link></p>

If you’d like your recipe articles to be available to RSS and Atom subscribers, simply set “Syndicate” to Yes in the section settings.

¹ “clean” URLs require some additional magic with .htaccess and section files, which are outside the scope of this article. If you’re having trouble with 404 errors or pages that show the wrong content, test in Messy URL mode first.