Textpattern grew out of the system used to publish [http://textism.com/ ''Textism]'', Allen's personal site, and an unnamed version was announced as available to alpha testers in 2001.<ref>{{cite web | title = Upcoming | url = http://textism.com/article/308/upcoming | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20040302060105/http://www.textism.com/article/308/Upcoming | archive-date= 2004-03-02 | access-date= 2016-10-05 }}</ref> In 2003, Textpattern was formally announced.<ref>{{cite web | title = Textpattern| url = http://textism.com/article/661/textpattern | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20040312114829/http://www.textism.com/article/661/Textpattern | archive-date= 2004-03-12 | access-date= 2016-10-05 }}</ref> The early alpha versions were followed by a series of beta releases which saw more widespread use, and which were themselves superseded by a series of "gamma" releases<ref>{{cite web | title = Textpattern| url = http://textism.com/article/781/textpattern| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20040313194455/http://www.textism.com/article/781/Textpattern | archive-date= 2004-03-13 | access-date= 2016-10-05 }}</ref> which expanded and refined Textpattern's capabilities. Since the final gamma version (1.19), Textpattern has been distributed under the [[GNU General Public License]].<ref>{{cite web | title = g1.19 Released| url = https://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=2102}}</ref>
The next version, in September 2004, was Release Candidate 1 for Textpattern 1.0.<ref>{{cite web | title = 1.0rc1 Released| url = https://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=3810}}</ref> In a somewhat unorthodox move, Textpattern continued to accumulate features as the second, third, fourth and fifth release candidates were made public. During this time the official development team expanded to include several contributors from the Textpattern community: with Release Candidate 3 [https://web.archive.org/web/20050802105320/http://thresholdstate.com/ Alex Shiels] and [http://kusor.net/ Pedro Palazón] joined the development team, and [http://www.sencer.de/ Sencer Yurdagül] was brought into the fold as Textpattern's release manager with Release Candidate 4.
