moving from Drupal to MODx

Hi, I am a heavy Drupal user but I want to give MODx a try for a small web project I have in hands. It’s basically a small corporate site with the usual stuff:

- Home page with some news that should be able to be updated by the editor
- A menu with some products categories (these categories must be edited/updated by the editor)
- A list of products with their pictures (the editor must be able to add new products and classify them under one of the categories)
- Some static pages such as Contact info, Services, etc. (the editor must be able to update these contents too)

I don’t want the editor to login into the big Manager Backend, as it can be overwhelming for a computer-illiterate guy. The ideal situation should be the editor being able to edit the items and contents right from the Front End (after being properly logged), or even add new products from the Front end manager.

With Drupal I know how to accomplish these, or at less to provide the editor with a stripped-down backend interface in order to manage the web contents. Also Drupal provides me with all that Taxonomy/Views stuff that allows me to categorize / visualize the content.

Can I accomplish this same behaviour with MODx in a fast way? Thanks alot in advance.

Hi Ibagur,

welcome to modx! Yes, you will be able to accomplish what you want with modx.

Quote from: ibagur at Sep 28, 2008, 02:07 PM

- Home page with some news that should be able to be updated by the editor
- A menu with some products categories (these categories must be edited/updated by the editor)

You can easily create categories by creating a document and specifying it as a container (basically a folder) and create your product categories as child documents of the categories.

- A list of products with their pictures (the editor must be able to add new products and classify them under one of the categories)

You even have the products displayed as summaries with a click more/read more button. You can use Ditto to do this. This is a powerful snippet ( am not sure about the Drupal equivalent, maybe a drupal module?). Ditto aggregates documents to create blogs, article/news collections, and more, with full support for templating.

Check it out here: http://ditto.modxcms.com/index.php
and its forum is here: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/board,180.0.html

Pictures can be added dynamically if you want to using the power of modx template variables - TVs. Read more about TVs here: http://modxcms.com/template-variables.html
You are not limited to TVs though. You can easily add pictures using the inbuilt modx text editor

- Some static pages such as Contact info, Services, etc. (the editor must be able to update these contents too)

Static info can be handled in different ways, including using what are called chunks - basically pieces of reusable html or text. Chunks are especially useful for stuff like footers. Read more about chunks here: http://modxcms.com/chunks.html

I don’t want the editor to login into the big Manager Backend, as it can be overwhelming for a computer-illiterate guy. The ideal situation should be the editor being able to edit the items and contents right from the Front End (after being properly logged), or even add new products from the Front end manager.

For front end management, you can use modx quickedit capabilities or check out the snippet Front end Document Manager, FDM: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=14977.0

With Drupal I know how to accomplish these, or at less to provide the editor with a stripped-down backend interface in order to manage the web contents. Also Drupal provides me with all that Taxonomy/Views stuff that allows me to categorize / visualize the content.

You can create managers or user groups with different levels of permissions in the backend. For a powerful customisation - with stripped-down views of the backend, have a look at the plugin ManagerManager. ManagerManager (MM) is a powerful plugin that allows you to change the names, visibility, and layout of document fields within the Manager - and lots more!

For more info about creating groups and users, have a look at this: http://modxcms.com/manager-users-roles-groups.html and this: http://modxcms.com/web-users-web-groups.html

ManagerManager, can be found here: http://modxcms.com/ManagerManager-1565.html and it’s forum is here: http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,16948.0.html

Can I accomplish this same behaviour with MODx in a fast way? Thanks alot in advance.

Fast really depends on you IMHO. If you can quickly get your head round how things work in modx then you could. One thing though, you will love modx. I don’t know how good your templating skills are in Drupal, but in modx you will be able to use any xhtml/css template. Modx will use what you have and not constrain your design in any way .

One thing I believe is that you will love modx. I don’t know how good your templating skills are in Drupal, but in modx you will be able to use any xhtml/css template. Modx will use what you have and not constrain your design in any way.

Someone else may come along with better answers to your queries. If you have any other questions, just hola.

For an intro to modx check out these guides (apart from the documentation which you can find on this site)
http://bobsguides.com/MODx.html
http://sottwell.com/modx-from-the-inside.html
http://www.sottwell.com/index.html
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Main_Page

cheers/k

ps: sorry for the colours in my post

Hi,

Thanks alot for your reply, I´ve alredy started playing with MODX.

There is something I´m trying to do, I guess it’s pretty straight forward but I cannot make it work. I got my home page showing, and I want that ’Edit’ link on the top of my content to appear *only for the editor*. How do I accomplish that with QuickEdit? I mean I’ve been fiddling around with web user permissions and document groups but I cannot make it work at alll. These are the steps I’ve followed:

- I’ve set a Web User Group called ’editors’
- set a Document Group called ’corporate’
- link User Group ’editor’ with Document Group ’corporate’
- create a new Web user ’editor1’ and give it access permissions as ’editor’ (and ’registered user’)
- set access permissions for my ’Home’ page as ’corporate’

But now my Home page dissapears from public view. I only can see it if I login as ’editor1’. In any case, after login as ’editor1’ I cannot see the quickedit ’Edit’ button anywhere. I’ve used the tag method [*#content*] as stated on QuickEdit docs.

I’m getting a bit confused with this Manager and Web User scenario. Why is it not possible to set a ’role’ for the Web user as well? wouldn’t be that easier? If I set my Home page permissions as ’All Document groups (public)’, then it shows up again, but now it makes no sense to set a ’editor’ group that can only edit ’corporate’ pages.

The behaviour I want to have is just the following:

- User ’editor1’ logins from the FrontEnd (I don’t want the editor to access the Backend Manager and it would be nice if the login box doesn’t appear on the FrontEnd either..maybe accesible from a url like ’mysite/login/’ or similar)
- Then the ’Edit’ button appears on top of the ’Home’ page
- ’editor1’ edits the home page with the TinyMCE popup editor, saves it and logout.

I guess I should move this questions to another topic, but if you could answer me, it would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!

i.

Web Users have nothing to do with content management in MODx. This is what Manager Users and Manager Permissions are for. QuickEdit uses the Manager session to present the links to manage content.

Web Users are for front-end site users, for example, if you had a Members Only section of your site.

@ibagur: you can limit the view of the manager user to accomplish a simplified set of tools with a combination of roles, user groups and document groups. There is also a plugin named ManageManager that will allow you to personalize the layout of the document editing screens as well as add some cool widgets.

If you want to build your own front end management you may be interested in the FDM (Frontend Document Manger) snippet. It is in beta and not officially supported by the author, but based on the activity in its support forum there is an active user base. Another option is the NewsPublisher snippet or if you are a coder than the document manager api is the set of tools you want to be aware of.

In modx you can go about ’categories’ in several ways. You can simply place documents under other documents (containers) and have a category based on a direct parent/child relationship. However you can also have tag based categories (like in wordpress) where there is a virtual relationship rather than a direct one.

One key concept that you will want to understand is the Template Variable (reffered to as a TV) which allow you to add additional data fields for each document (for example tags).

Hi, thank you very much for all your answers. I’ll have a look to those plugins. In any case I haven’t still managed to get this ’Edit content’ button on my front page. It’s only appearing when I log as admin from the Manager, and then go back to the front end. I’ve tried setting up both web and manager users, also created a role as ’Content Editor’ for one of my manager users (with edit, save and delete permissions). When I login as this user, I get the manager panel with the options I set before in the role, but when I go back to the Front End the ’Edit’ button is not appearing in the ’Home’ page as it should. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Quote from: ibagur at Sep 29, 2008, 10:50 AM

When I login as this user, I get the manager panel with the options I set before in the role, but when I go back to the Front End the ’Edit’ button is not appearing in the ’Home’ page as it should. What am I doing wrong?

QuickEdit ("Edit button") works only for Manager users...

Quote from: ibagur at Sep 29, 2008, 10:50 AM

SNIP.....also created a role as ’Content Editor’ for one of my manager users (with edit, save and delete permissions). When I login as this user, I get the manager panel with the options I set before in the role, but when I go back to the Front End the ’Edit’ button is not appearing in the ’Home’ page as it should. What am I doing wrong?

QuickEdit ("Edit button") works only for Manager users...

I think he is logging in as a Manager user....or am I reading this wrong?

Hi,

Thanks everyone for your replies. I finally managed to make it work the way I wanted. I’ve set up a role called Editor with permissions to Edit, Save and Publish content. I also set the ’Run Module’ permission on. Finally I’ve created a Manager User and assigned to it the ’Editor’ role and it’s working now.

I mean, it makes sense as that role is going to eventually run the QuickEdit module, but that’s not very well explained on the QuickEdit FAQ and it can take some time for a novice to find it out! Thanks anyway

Glad u got it to work....now you can move on to the next task  . This aside, how’s your experience so far with modx? Just curious