Making the website

So basically, this is the first time ive ever used a CMS.
And i want to know how you make new webpages and how you style them and everything.
Do i have to make the pages in cPanel like normal, but then how do i make it so they can edit the content with the CMS.

I am a complete noob to this part and im absolutely clueless.

Edit: every document i make is: modx/index.php?id=##

How do i actually make a new page so its modx/about.php

Edit: All i want to do is make a website like normal but make it so that the guys im making it for can use the CMS to easily edit their content.

There is no need to use cPanel for anything other than managing the server. modx will be the place that you edit the content.

The basic principal is to create the look (or looks) for your site in the form of templates. Then replace content and navigation with modx resources (placeholders, template variables and snippets). Then build your site structure by adding documents document groups (parent > child relationships) using the document tree (left hand panel in the manager).

I ran into this series of introduction videos the other day, worth sitting through:
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/MODx_Instructional_Videos

There is also an article in the wiki that will walk through the templating process.

Quote from: dev_cw at Sep 19, 2008, 01:02 PM

There is no need to use cPanel for anything other than managing the server. modx will be the place that you edit the content.

The basic principal is to create the look (or looks) for your site in the form of templates. Then replace content and navigation with modx resources (placeholders, template variables and snippets). Then build your site structure by adding documents document groups (parent > child relationships) using the document tree (left hand panel in the manager).

I ran into this series of introduction videos the other day, worth sitting through:
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/MODx_Instructional_Videos

There is also an article in the wiki that will walk through the templating process.

;) thanks for the help, still one question though, how do i make it so that its actually /about.php instead of index.php

Quote from: thatguy at Sep 19, 2008, 01:14 PM

;) thanks for the help, still one question though, how do i make it so that its actually /about.php instead of index.php

That’s what’s know as "friendly urls".

There is an excellent guide in the Wiki about friendly urls, too. I would suggest using the "Friendly urls with mod_rewrite (dropping the ?query string and using ONLY the alias)" section, as that will give you a page like yourdomain.com/about.html (or whatever suffix you give it, ex. html, php, asp, etc). http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Friendly_URLs_Guide

That’s right. By default most dynamic applications will run with index.php?id=1 in the url to identify the page or data to load. With friendly URLs you can change the url to whatever you want (well almost anything). You will need to activate the friendly url feature and rename the ht.access file inthe root directory of modx to .htaccess

yipee, thanks guys, im good to go.
;)

thanks for the very quick assisstance.

Oh, actually not good to go, whats the difference between template and template variable?

Quote from: thatguy at Sep 19, 2008, 01:24 PM

yipee, thanks guys, im good to go.
;)

thanks for the very quick assisstance.

Oh, actually not good to go, whats the difference between template and template variable?

Template Variable: http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Template_Variable#Overview

Template: Template is just what the site looks like. Basically the "skin" of the website, that holds your content.

Also look at the two posts in my signature for what TVs are. They are just extra content fields.

See also the site in my sig for another collection of info for newbies on how MODx works.

But my sig is better than yours!