MODx Layout and Design DIscussion/Feedback

I have been migrating toward something similar to what you have up there. Mine is based on the menu structure though.



I am trying to pry the clients from being able to mess up the structure. Use Ditto or template for everything. Create TV’s for individual images or image galleries, extra info. So they fill in the blanks and I create the template for where it goes. If there’s only one ’section’ on a page, I wont do a sub-page. I am toying however with creating a [*content_template*] TV for those (hidden to regular users, in another tab with managermanager) where they fill in the TV’s for the page and I template it with [*content_template*] (why use ditto for just one page).

Well that was run together.

Well the Pirate just posted while I was writing this. I’ll try to explain.

- Use a TV for each individual section/block/image
+WHEN: when the layout is not simple enough it could be done in Wordpress
+Xtra: To make images really easy for a client, use a BINDING to call a directory listing snippet that only returns images from a certain directory. (or queries database for list of users)
- Templating
+WHEN: if multiple items using the same template, use Ditto
+WHEN: if only that page, might as well just use a seperate TV called [*content_template*] that functions as your Ditto_Tpl_Chunk
+Xtra: use PHx for nice if ’this’ = ’that’ show ’this-chunk’ else ’that-chunk’

I just wanted to say thanks for all the comments -- that’s why I posted this!

Yes, sD, I am more used to Joomla. The Article Manager was the main reason I picked Joomla originally as I liked the separation of my articles from any layout/organization of the site itself.

While learning MODx, the examples and demos seem to have content closer tied to its layout in the website and this seemed like it could make the website fragile at first. For instance, if the site was changed around, it would also move around the content/articles pages in the tree.

But I am still learning so thought I’d see if this was not a problem in reality and how people structured their sites with more experience.

I definitely appreciate how MODx let’s you manage your site however you like and it’s the feature that got me moving over to it from Joomla (what, I don’t want a page pointing to just one module type?)

@Pro: TVs are still the one part I don’t have figured out in my head; definitely need to fix that!

For the most part, the Document Tree will be primarily a basis for your menus. It also allows the organizing of your documents into groups that can be controlled by the manager access security system.

TVs are just extensions of the regular document variables ([*pagetitle*], [*longtitle*], etc). They are specific to templates, but their fields are added to each document that uses the specified template(s), and can be edited for each document, just as the "pagetitle" field can be.

Of course, this is a very simplistic description; TVs can be much more than simple values, and their input fields (what is added to the document editing page) can be set to a number of options, as well as how the output of the TV is formatted (widgets). Plus there are the bindings(@INHERIT, edit for a parent/container document and all of its children will inherit the value; @EVAL, run PHP code like a snippet; etc) to give almost unlimited flexibility.

What I’ve often wished is that documents were given categories (like the other elements such as snippets and chunks) and TVs could be linked to categories instead of templates. I’ve found myself using templates as a means of grouping certain documents into categories just for this reason, even though the templates actually are all identical.

Quote from: sottwell at Jun 19, 2008, 11:30 AM

What I’ve often wished is that documents were given categories (like the other elements such as snippets and chunks) and TVs could be linked to categories instead of templates. I’ve found myself using templates as a means of grouping certain documents into categories just for this reason, even though the templates actually are all identical.

I use Templates as Categories. Usually one templateInclude file for each ’category of TVs’.

Timmer,
Check the links in my profile for some example/descriptions of TV’s.