Managing Modx for clients

Hi All,

Not sure how to go about this and maybe it’s already on the forums somewhere but it would be great if we could pitch in different ways we have set up the manager to allow clients (and some who are computer dummies at that) to manage their sites. This would include any documents developers have put together, video tutorials etc. From a developer perspective ModX rocks and we use it for all our sites but we have struggled finding the best way to let our clients at it. Manager Manager has helped a lot but many still find it confusing. Quickedit is decent but doesn’t allow the ability to add pages.

What have others done to ease this process for those who have a tough time using Google far less ModX?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

CJP

Overall my clients catch on to the modx way with minimal effort. However there are always a few who just cant get the concept. With these you just need to be patient and try to do a screen cast of talk them through it a few times. Personally, I think that anyone who can’t figure it out should not be administrating a website. For these users you may consider a front end editing structure with limited options (Newspublisher of FDM).

For those who just don’t get it, send them a maintenance plan and provide the service to do it for them.

My tips are:
- (My opinion:) Never, ever, ever do RTE’s. I do Textile, but Markdown might work for you too. If a client really has a problem with not having an RTE, they’re generally a problem client (in my experience). I don’t have the emotional fortitude to revisit a site we build to see 48pt bold, underlined, italicized, bright red Comic Sans in an otherwise beautiful design. (Also, with RTEs people tend to paste from MS Word, which is just the worst thing ever.)
- Use Customize Manager Fields or Manager Manager (can’t find the link) to get rid of everything on the document edit pages that you don’t need. This can do absolute wonders for not-so-technically-adept clients.
- Use phpThumb whenever you display any sort of image that the user can modify. This will prevent your users from uploading an 8mp image then resizing it down to 200px wide. Then, of course, they call you and ask why their pages load so slowly.

You can customize the RTE toolbar to remove most of the buttons; there is also a Paste from Word plugin that works quite well (for TinyMCE, anyway). I tend to disable QuickEdit for the "problem" clients; it’s been my experience that they get into more trouble working from the front-end. I guess they are inclined to pay more attention when they have to actually work in the Manager, or maybe they don’t think it’s OK to have the receptionist edit their website if all they know is the Manager.