@etchmo, you should definitely give MODX Revolution a try. If you spend sometime with it, you'd love how easy life turns out to be.
Let's look into your requirements and see how you can easily meet them with MODX:
1. Must support dynamic images. If you look on the homepage I have a large image slider...
This is super easy and you can approach it a tons of different ways. The easiest solution would be any existing extra/addon like
Slideshow Manager CMP. With a few clicks, you'll be on your way to Nirvana.
But the beauty of MODX is that you can completely control your input and output. You don't need to be enslaved by an extra/addon to get the results you want. If you can spare 5 minutes or so, you should absolutely try
MIGX (a killer addon that you should add to your toolset). There's a
video tutorial on how to setup an image gallery using MIGX. You'd follow the exact same steps for your Image Slider.
In your case, I would create 3 Template Variables:
HomeSlider, HomeSliderTitle, HomeSliderImage.
HomeSlider being the main Template Variable used by MIGX (as described in the video) that you'd attach to your home page template.
The content of the form tab (of your HomeSlider TV ) (
Step 2.1 Form Tabs) could look like this:
[
{"caption":"Info", "fields": [
{"field":"title","caption":"Title","inputTV":"HomeSliderTitle"}
]},
{"caption":"Image", "fields":[
{"field":"image","caption":"Image","inputTV":"HomeSliderImage"}
]}
]
Once you've installed MIGX and set it up in the back-end as shown in the video and discussed in the MIGX documentation (link above), you can use the following steps for your front-end set-up:
To display your slideshow:
<div id="slider">
<div class="royalSlider rsDefault">
[[!getImageList?
&tvname=`HomeSlider`
&tpl=`HomeSliderTpl`]]
</div>
</div>
In your HomeSliderTpl chunk, paste the following code:
<img title="[[+title]]" class="rsImg" src="[[+image]]" />
And voila! Now you can edit, add, reorder or delete your slideshow images with just a few clicks.
If the slideshow images don't change often, you can skip MIGX and SlideShow Manager CMP altogether. You can simply put the content of your slider in a chunk or in a Template Variable (with the input field set to text area). That's another way MODX gives you the freedom to tailor your site however you see fit.
2. Blog functionality
You can use
Articles for this. The Editor to use is your choice. I prefer TinyMCE, as it's more up to date and you can customize it in system settings. For a blog-friendly TinyMCE look, I keep the
setting_tiny.custom_buttons2 system setting empty and use the following key for the
setting_tiny.custom_buttons1 setting:
bold,italic,underline,separator,hr,separator,pastetext,pasteword,separator,bullist,numlist,separator,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,separator,image,modxlink,unlink,separator,code,separator,styleselect,formatselect
If you value hardwork, you should definitely try
Redakcor. It's a premium addon developed by a few very smart MODX community members.
3. Video support
A video is just another type of content. What you can do with text (as far content management), you can do with Video or audio for that matter.
Articles and
GridClassKey are perfectly appropriate for this.
If all your videos are stored on YouTube, you can store the YouTube URL on a Template Variable and use an embed code like this:
On the child video page: (www.mysite.com/videoblog/4/20/2014/myvideo.html)
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="[[*YouTubeURL]]" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
or when retrieved via Articles on another page, like the blog listing page (www.mysite.com/videoblog/)
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="[[+tv.YouTubeURL]]" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As you well noted, Discuss takes care of this. I'll let the community address the sub questions.
5. Loops
Can you clarify your question?
6. User Management
MODX handles user management extremely well. So well that it might seem a bit intimidating at first. I recommend
Login to make yourself at home with the phylosophy of user management à la MODX. You should also read about
Permissions in MODX Revolution to get an even better understanding.
As far social Media integration, I believe there are a few addons for this. Just search the forums or the addon repository. Again, like everything MODX, you can do this your own way if you're comfortable playing with APIs and SDKs. You can create your own snippets, etc. The official docs are very rich in this regard.
7. If I install MODX on my own server, will the package manager still work the same?
Absolutely! Usually if you're able to install MODX on your server without a glitch, the package manager will also work without glitch. If it doesn't, it's usually a matter of making sure all basic requirements are met.
Finally,
MODX is a blank canvas for your creative vision. Power anything today—from responsive HTML5 websites to a mobile CMS for native iOS or Android apps—and whatever comes next. MODX fits your needs without compromise … not the other way around.
--www.jasoncoward.com
That quote sums up what MODX really is.
I Hope this helps and welcome aboard!
[ed. note: treigh last edited this post 10 years ago.]
☆ A M B ☆
