Custom admin panel - is possible?

Hi,

we’re going to make a website for a publishing house, with sections such as catalog, authors, and a blog that can be easily done in MODx, I think (from what I’ve read here). The site will also include a store for selling both physical books and downloadable e-books, with customer management, shopping cart, payment gateway, order management, shipping options, the works, and we are planning on developing this set of functionalities from scratch.

Obviously, the client will have access to an admin UI to manage all of this. My question is, can MODx be used to build this kind of site with just one login and one admin interface for all these areas, both to update the sections built with MODx and those custom built? Or perhaps this would require something more like Codeigniter, for example?

Hope this makes sense. ..

You can use the MODx manager interface, using "modules" to add extra functionality to that used for MODx itself. I use a module for managing an external perl newsletter script (DADA mail), and also for another site have a module for managing a translation terms database. http://www.sottwell.com/create-module.html

Thanks for your quick answer and the link, Sottwell. I can see you have done A LOT of work for the community!

This modules thingy looks powerful, I’ll have to take a closer look at the docs.

Just one more question: I understand that using groups and roles we can also restrict client access to only the parts of the manager interface they would need for day to day use, in practice "hiding" from them sections like templates and such. Is that so?

Yes. That would be "roles". User groups are associated with document groups, controlling which documents a user has access to. Roles control what a user can do in the Manager.

I’ve often wished there was a mechanism for assigning roles to groups, but as it is roles are on a user basis.

There is also the ManagerManager plugin, which gives a lot more control over who can do what.

OK thank you. I’ve been using Textpattern for a lot of sites and I love it (what it does, it does beautifully) but sometimes I need extra power, and for these cases I’m looking for a complement. MODx is a good candidate, as are EE and Symphony (mixed feelings here: I like it very very much, but can’t begin to grasp it -my fault, no doubt, and a lack of proper documentation).

Anyway, thank you again for your help.