Uggh, my first post in the forum, I haven’t felt like the odd man out since I first logged into my first linux help forum, hope you guys will be patient with me....because like many noob posts, this is a long one with more than one question to be answered. hope I posted in the correct area. I am on windows x64 xppro machine with mysql 5.1.41 database, php 5.2.11, modx 1.0.2 and phpMyAdmin 3.2.4 installed, I guess I am a bit of a slave to adobe to be working on my linux box, a much better server environment.
I am absolutely amazed by modx, this is what a cms should be! within a day I was able to do exactly what I want, even customizing the menu of the site I am working on as it does in its static version. with that said please be warned, that I am a designer not a coder and there is still a few terms which go right over my head.
my experience is this: solid solid css, I have never used a table in my career, other than that, a simple php cut and paste is about as far as I get with php coding.
I have three very important questions and hopefully some of you powerusers can help straighten these doubts out, because once these are answered, I can deploy.
anyway here it goes: (please reply as you would to any layman, once I understand everything else falls in place)
1. I designed a php site for a client a few months ago, but that was to allow automated changes in the footer date and for the email, now this is the question I have:
in the original form which I created for the client I began the form as this:
<form id="form1" method="post" action="mail.php">
and closed it with this
<input type="hidden" name="next_url" value="http://clientssite.com/mail.php" /></form>
which allowed the thank you page to load and execute this script:
<?
$to = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'subject';
$message = 'From: ' . $_REQUEST['name'] . "\n\n" . $_REQUEST['data'];
$email = $_REQUEST['email'];
$headers = 'From: ' . $email . "\r\n" .
'Reply-To: ' . $email . "\r\n" .
'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail ($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
header("Location: thanks.html");
?>
I know I couldn’t use this technique in modx, why bother?, but I did want to rescue the css styles for the form so I created a newchunk from the original contactform chunk and did this:
<span class="headfont">Contact Me</span>
<div class="commentform" id="commentform">Please feel free to ask me anything you want. Also, if you would like me to contact you via telephone please add that with your comments and or questions.</div>
<form method="post" action="[~[*id*]~]" id="form1" name="form1">
<fieldset>
<div class="mrmrsradial" id="mrmrsradial">
<input name="formid" type="hidden" value="ContactForm" />
<label for="cfName"><span class="emailformtitles">Your name:</span>
<input name="name" id="cfName" class="formstyle" type="text" eform="Your Name::1:" /> </label>
</div>
<div class="emailinputfield" id="emailinputfield">
<label><span class="emailformtitles">Your Email</span>
<input name="email" type="text" class="formstyle" id="YourEmail" />
</label>
</div>
<div class="textfield" id="textfield">
<label for="cfMessage"><span class="emailformtitles">Message: </span>
<textarea name="Your Comments" id="cfMessage" rows="17" cols="30" class="formstyle" eform="Message:textarea:1"></textarea>
</label>
<br />
<span class="send"> <label> </label><input type="image" name="contact" id="cfContact" class="button" value="Send This Message" src="assets/templates/Dakota_Therapy_Theme/images/SEND.jpg"></span> </label>
</div>
<div class="send" id="send"></div>
</form>
</div>
</fieldset>
this made the css styles fall into place, but will it work and send an email to the cms or host, I see no reference to email or domain (I know I have to start thinking dynamically instead of static terms), I tested it on my local server and the thankyou page came up (modx’s original one) but no message in inbox....just wondering will it work when it’s deployed to the live server?
2. This one is really goin’ to make someone upset, especially since it’s coming from a designer, but how do I create a splash page without messing things up? I know I know, I am sorry but the client’s profession actually makes it a nice intro into the main site. the main site is already set up, content, structure, etc, etc, just how do I go about doing this. I have already read this post
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=40027.0
and I tried to follow it but I must be missing something. If you could tell me how to do this I would be deeply grateful. Plus how to link? wayfinder can’t be used, link to page id or what?
3.the home link on the wayfinder menu takes me to the root directory not the page, also when I save in manager it does the same and the drop down menu from the top of the browser window when log in and viewing main content does the same. I have already experiment with make the main page not have a menu item then creating a weblink in wayfinder, but I have a feeling this isn’t the way to do it, though it works in the browser.
ok I lied, couple more questions
4.there is a link in the main text body of the content which I want to point to another dynamic page, I used this:
which works fine on the local server, is the way to do this? I styled the link a bit and I wanted to keep the css.
5. uggh, forgot what I was going to ask, but the above four are REALLY NEEDED. I would just like to say that modx was the best find ever, I am a wysiwyg man and I have battled with the notorious JOOMLA! I even paid for an expensive plug in to work on templates which still require tables of all things, and after a couple attempts of tweaking it with the plugin and FF web developer toolbar for the css, I had to say to myself "screw this!" (sorry for the vulgarity)
and I have already figured to use chunks to get my javascript to work marvelously and my menu to function as it did in the static site, I created the menu in pure css with rollover effects sans the help of javascript and it works! unreal!! I AM HOOKED AND I HOPE TO GOD THE DEVS OF THIS INCREDIBLE CMS GETS THE FINANCIAL BACKING THEY DESERVE, ALAS I AM POOR AND CAN ONLY GIVE KUDOS. :’( At least now, designers who are not coders, nor have the ability to enjoy endless lists of code, to have a backend to their designs without having to split the meeger income with a crew of co-workers.
before in the U.S. it wasn’t a problem, I had friends who helped on the backend but I now live abroad in the third world and finding anyone who knows php in-depth is practically impossible. I really want to thank all of you before hand for taking the time to help me out.
) 
☆ A M B ☆