The simplist of 'forums' in Modx

Let's say I want a forum in Modx. But the only requirement is threaded communication between registered users.

No PMs. No smilies. No other functions. User registration and ability to post a topic and reply to other topics.

Threaded topics with replies. Hard?

No smilies? what kinda forum is dat?

modx.pro Tickets Comments which exists a showcased site using the comments as full blown forum.

With a little imagination you can combine Newspublisher (new topics are MODX resources, and Quip - threaded/replies) and voila!

But these days, why mess around using MODX for stuff like that. Vanilla Forum can easily be the most configurable thing out there, and its SSO (works flawlessly with MODX user base) is unmatched. Not threaded though; the authors quite opinionatedly prevented that ability, and for good reasons...

Thanks for the response, I knew it wasn't too tough to do.

I diagree about Vanilla personally, but its easy enough to get a basic forum up of course. Just don't agree about its configurability but we may be talking about different aspects.

I found that changing the layout of the forum is not exactly easy, and they tend to be pretty standoffish in those forums. Hell simply changing their default 'Howdy Stranger" requires fairly complex code placed in an otherwise obscure folder/file.

Anyway, thanks a lot!

Wait Vanilla forums are not threaded?? What is the advantage? I want the contents to be connected to each other...maybe I misunderstand you

https://blog.vanillaforums.com/news/why-vanilla-no-nested-comments

Nested Comments

Also known as "threaded" comments. Some sites will let you indent replies ad infinitum. In other cases some will allow only a single level of indentation.

I think I meant "nested comments".

To be somewhat fair, I might say the standoffish thing you smelt was really a way to chase some really scary people on there who like to ask questions without first searching the 1000 results.

I have not asked a single question there yet, and I have come a long way in Vanilla.
Once you understand the structure, then you'd be flying like a happy squirrel.

1. Altering the bulk layout is quite easy - use smarty.
And SASS can @extend all them classes quite easily. Enables you to base your site on Bootstrap or Foundation 6 etc.


2. And then with bare CSS and JS you can alter and move around most things.

3. To do the alterations serverside, well, you can override most->all functions that spit out those little bitty html


4. Keep all your modules here, MODX equivalent is snippets. You can later call this in smarty using
{module name="myListofHotStuff"}


5. and lastly, to change all the lingo around the site just copy a standard local.php to

Well to each his own. I found Discuss much better laid out in terms of structure, you can control things more precisely. With Vanilla by necessity you are going through a big routine (not a fan of smarty sorry), which is very much like Wordpress and introduces the same issues in design.

What I smelt in the forums was a simple fact: they don't want to help ^everybody modify freely because they make money modifying for people.

I saw more than one fairly clueless (not scary) person who just needed to get pointed to wrapper.tpl, (iirc, I mean the name of the main tpl or whatever, one of the key places to modify), with a little blurb about how to work it. Like the posts I do here sometimes when a person needs a little direction. I was once one of those people.

In the Vanilla forums, which I was a member of for about a year, I saw that those people didn't get squat for help or direction, indeed they sometimes got rudely dismissed or even ridiculed. It was too much trouble to set them straight or engage them.

The software is decent. Some of the main people are not. One of the people over there had some nice comments about Modx when a user wanted to port his Discuss db to Vanilla (which we helped him to achieve).

They were real nice he was a total mensch. Nuff said

By contrast from day one in say 2009 in these forums I got direct, helpful answers. [ed. note: nuan88 last edited this post 5 years, 5 months ago.]

I have been to some number of forums. MODX forum is unique and awesome, well, until "everybody" ran away to Slack.

Some folks on other forums seem jaded, quite understandable seeing all this stuff we are dealing with is OpenSource and volunteer work.

What I smelt in the forums was a simple fact: they don't want to help ^everybody modify freely because they make money modifying for people.

The facts if carefully stacked would go against the above in generality.
I am a huge Flarum admirer, but had to suspend my admiration and involvement when I became extremely successful in making Vanilla look just like Flarum.
And all this by the info provided within the code itself, the full documentation on the main site, and the forums. These folks are so kind that they share with the populace most of the premium-grade Extras that they use in their cloud. Really impressive!!!

I am using only 9 plugins to run a powerful blog/forum system, 4 are mine, and 5 of the plugins are signed "by Vanilla Staff". That means really reliable stuff that won't break or get outdated anytime soon.

I have briefly discussed this on the MODX Slack community, and intend to share my work as a MODX plugin, time permitting.
The whole journey began with creating a powerful complete out-of-the-box Blog for MODX.

I found Discuss much better laid out in terms of structure, you can control things more precisely.

You might be meaning this software we are using to exchange right now? Or discourse or disquss?

Documenting your software is hardly beneficent. I never criticized the software per se, only the attitude in their forums.

They like developers like you because you add to their user base, users that will get stuck if they leave the developer or if the developer bails on them. They do not like users who want to actually modify their software freely, because it has the danger to damage their profits.

That's pretty obvious, if its so easy to modify why do they need to offer modification services? Their calculation quite obviously is that it will be cheaper to hire them because the software isn't all that easy to get going with. Otherwise everyone would have an in-house Vanilla guy, which certainly does exist anyway. Hey guys I am offering a paid modification service but jump into the forums and I will be providing solid basic advice on modification? Just not going to happen, no one will do that.

A better model going forward would be a 'preferred partner' structure where Vanilla supports that in-house person rather than slogging through all the code changes themselves...call me guys.

Keep in mind we see things differently because you are a true developer and I am not. Unfortunately. You read all the docs and didn't even need to post a question, which is great for you. They don't give a rat's ass about John Nobody coming into the forums and asking some basic questions. Trust me I watched, in posts you wouldn't find because they didn't contain any useful information.

The people there consider their knowledge as something to be kept, not handed out freely. God forbid some kid somewhere could actually find that main file and get started.

Anyway I think we can let this discussion go. Anyone who wants to know about these guys can easily google and get the comments I mentioned above which were quite rude and unnecessary. And probably a lot of people will end up finding your detailed post on how to use Modx with Vanilla! You did make it look pretty good, and it is decent software. But every game has its time frame...

Feel free to get in the last word if you will, I am done here lol [ed. note: nuan88 last edited this post 5 years, 5 months ago.]

I agree to agree. You have good points.

https://blog.vanillaforums.com/new-boilerplate-theme-a-new-way-to-create-beautiful-themes-with-vanilla