Orangescale Studio

Last year, I joined Textplates, a Textpattern theme competition organized by Thame of erraticwisdom. It was a great competition. In this competition, I submitted three themes in different categories/topic. The reason was simple: I want to challenge myself to enchance the power of Textpattern. At that time, I switched to Textpattern (from Movable Type). In my experience, Textpattern can do many things. Many people found that Textpattern is simple blog (CMS) application. Simplicity does not mean lack of features.

My first theme called Textpattic. The word 'Textpattic' came from the combination of 'Textpattern' and 'Artistic'. Haha! I did not know how I could come to this kind of idea. This theme can be used if you want to use Textpattern as the 'common' blogging tool. "TextPattic is a simple, feature-rich template that incorporates the Textpattern theme".

When I finished my first theme, I asked myself: Is it difficult to use Textpattern as a catalog-like site? The best answer was: Let's try it! After struggling with the template tags and plugins, CataShelf was born. The keywords: catalog and shelf. "CataShelf is a template set for those who want to use Textpattern to manage review, opinion, or something related to that."

My last template is Profilo. "Profilo is a clean and simple 'company profile' template". If there is a question: "Is it possible to use Textpattern to produce a non-blog-like site?" The answer is: yes.

Personally, I found that this kind of competition can bring many benefits, not only for the blogging application itself, but also for the bloggers. After the competition, I know more about Textpattern including its template tags, plugins, flexibility, and more. I am waiting for more competitions like this one this year. Anyway, here are some notes before and after the competition:

• CataShelf won the third place. (read the announcement). And we got two icon or vector illustration Collections from IconBuffet.
• Now I have Kyoto Christmas Vector and Amsterdam. (value: $268.00 USD)
• When I write this entry, Profilo is the most downloaded templates (in Textplates). Total download: 5475.
• All templates submitted to Textplates also available at Textgarden (Textpattern Theme Garden): [1], [2], [3]
• I received some feedbacks from people who use my themes.

Fun!