MODx for Blogging Experiences, Reasons and More: Give back to MODx

I am writing an article for the soon to be unleashed modxcms.com and I decided that I wanted some feedback from real modx users. I know many of you wonder how you can contribute to MODx now you can.

I would like to get your feedback on this. Even better I’d love to get some feedback from client end users.

1. Why did you choose modx for your blog?
2. What blogging applications have you used other than MODx?
3. Are you a designer, developer, agency or are these the reflections of your client?
4. What did you like about building a blog in MODx?
5. What didn’t you like about building a blog in MODx?
6. Could you share a link or links of a blog built in MODx?

Thanks so much for your contribution.

Cheers,

Jay

This will be a much awaited tutorial / article.

Up to a short time ago I was of the mindset that MODx was not a blogging CMS.

The main issue I have with MODx as a blog CMS is that it takes a bit of building. What I mean is that unlike with WP where you only need to really be concerned with the look, in MODx you also need to put it together and if you are starting from scratch or are not an experienced blogger you will also need to know what you want to add in terms of function. There are some blog tutorials, but they treat a blog as only posts with comments, but there is so much more to a blog (pings, track backs, managing comment spam. Not only do you need to know what MODx can do, what tools you need to accomplish that, but you also need to actually know about the mechanics of a blog which may seem easy but still requires some thought.

To build a blog in MODx you need:
1) TV’s
2) Ditto
3) Jot + JoCo
4) Reflect
5) TagLinks
6) Search
7) DirectResize / MaxiGallery or another auto image resizing tool (this is not required but it helps)
8) Maybe NewsPubisher
9) Trackbacks and Pings (??)

You need at least 7 different components and they all have their own learning curve (each snippet has it’s own methods). Because of this I consider building a blog in MODx an intermediate/advanced level task. On the other hand it is an entry level objective with many first timers going straight to building a blog.

It would be nice to have a plug-n-play blank blog structure to use as a starting point so that only the design would be needed and all of the ’parts’ would already be available (like the demo site but without the design).

When I was starting with MODx I would have used WP for a true blog, now that i have some experience and know what to do to get what I want, it is not that bad (although being able to read Japanese helps with the pings).

I was thinking about this the other day when a post was mentioned about Wayfinder config files.

Wouldn’t it be good if some clever chap/chapess could create config files for ditto/reflect for a ’news’ solution or ’blog solution’.

Or...

Maybe a plugin would work where by choosing requirements via the plugin configuration would result in the relevant snippet call required would be presented to you. Then an info box telling you what snippets/tutorial were required for said choice to be implemented.

This would at least get the basics in place for people who have problems getting started. For some of us it is second nature but not for most or new users to Modx who spend hours looking into how to just to implement a simple blog or news solution.

Moondawgy, that is something that is being considered (well I’ve devised it and 096 would need a custom installer) and in Revolution, Packages will be able to be distributed easily from MODx and shared. You will even be able to create your own blog system with templates and all and distro them publicly if you choose or just use them for your MODx installs.

dev_cw, thanks for the great input, I agree that blogging with MODx currently is intermediate to advanced but doing full custom templates in wordpress is harder and more cumbersome by a long stretch.

Cheers,

Jay

Brilliant Jay

doing full custom templates in wordpress is harder and more cumbersome by a long stretch

No doubt. I was only considering the building of the blog infrastructure. There is no comparison. I am just saying that in MODx you need to know what a blog is made up of before you start. With freedom comes responsability.