Textpattern CMS 5

Textpattern CMS 5 was originally conceived as a major rewrite of the codebase, based on the Spark/Plug PHP framework built by Sam Weiss, a former member of the development team. The rewrite within this framework would not have been backward compatible with the Textpattern 4.x branch, but would gain the advantage of a modern codebase free from the legacy code dependency built up over the years. All existing v4.x plugins would also need to be redesigned and rebuilt for v5.

In January 2012 Stef Dawson announced the details of the Textpattern 5 plans. However, members of our valuable plugin developer community voiced their concerns that this direction was unappealing—favouring incremental improvements and modernisation of the 4.x codebase over a total 5.x rewrite. After deliberation we too agreed that this route matches the development capacity of both the core team and third-party developers better.

Textpattern CMS 4.x

Once the decision was made to stay on the current codebase, we released Textpattern v4.5 incorporating a number of improvements originally planned for inclusion in Textpattern v5, and since that release development pace has picked up rapidly for our v4.6 plans and beyond—justifying the decision against a major rewrite.

In fact, more patch revisions have been made to the project during 2012 than in the years 2008 to 2011 combined, confirming our commitment to the future of Textpattern.