Why Modx is not yet no 1

@ChukTTruck

Thanks a lot for that little piece of clarification you made about snippets, php and joomla.

Things like that are actually what am talking about and they would be very helpful to many of us.

@davidm

Well,what can I say? You are a marketer, and it shows.

Yes, like i said in my first post, I always fall in love when i add a design/template and it appears exactly as i wanted it to.

So the design flexibilty of modx is never in doubt.

I think what is needed is bits of the kind of tutorials mentioned at Nettuts and also the kind of insight on how things work in modx like the one ChukTTruck shared.

@smashingred
The tutorials dont have to come from hobbyists. I dont think the one at nettuts was written by a hobbyist.

Wow, this thread sure took off. The situation at hand, where you want to use a third-party script is not straight forward in any environment. However, in MODx it is much easier than in most other CMS. You do need to have some experience in order to understand how the script works and be able to identify what needs to be changed. Depending on the complexity of the script it may be a lot of tedious work.

I think that the sub-tag for MODx should be "some assembly required"to enforce that it is not a plug-n-play framework. It is more about flexibility and control over structure by providing building blocks but not ready made solutions. I am continuously amazed at what can be done with MODx and of the creativity of those that are pushing the envelope (like the recent xEdit prototype demonstrates).

I have several MODx resources I am working on but work does not allow much time to follow through. I am, after all, just a starving freelancer

The community wiki is full of great information, I always find something new and useful in the wiki. Did you read the article on creating snippets?

Quote from: Ynotmodx at Mar 19, 2009, 07:03 AM

@davidm
Well,what can I say? You are a marketer, and it shows.

Actually I am *not* a marketer contrary to what my badge implies... I have always been an enthusiast, maybe an "evangelist" but *not* a professionnal marketer.
Everything I have said is based on actual experience with modx and other CMS, and is not a sales pitch

@Ynotmodx I wasn’t implying that tutorials or articles should come from hobbyists I was suggesting that many articles written about Wordpress were written by non-web professionals who don’t necessarily make their living building web solutions. Shane (dev_cw) Sponagle is no hobbyist and I think in the case of MODx the better articles are written by heavy/moderate users who write up solutions when they have the opportunity but us web-professionals are often too busy working on projects to write the articles.

I’ve written some and I think you will see many more to come this year.

I agree wholeheartedly that more brief tutorials like ChuckTTruck’s and longer ones like dev_cw’s Nettuts article are needed along with screencasts and the like. But like in the case of all the great (and not so great) CMS apps these are created by the community.

My commitment is to help make more learning content easier to find, easier to contribute and easier to share. I sincerely appreciate your feedback, as comments, criticisms and complaints are always opportunities to improve, discuss and learn.

Great thread!

I totally get the OP’s point, not that this ground has not been covered several times before.

After several months of looking at this issue I think I can make this observation: there is a divide between code geeks and front end designers/site builders. Not personalities, but rather skill sets and practices.

There are a ton of sites built by code jockeys that have wonderful under the hood functionality, but could use some design and user polish. And there are countless sites that are great looking css.zengarden style wonders, but are hampered by lack of code functionality or flexibility.

My hunch is that there is an emerging awareness of MODx amongst the design community: people will find out how smooth and flexible it is design and incorporate templates with MODx. The big elephant in the room is how to include user functionality if you lack PHP and scripting experience? Like the OP says that initial rush of "isn’t MODx great" is soon tempered with wobbly documentation that is scattered, sometimes out of date, or worded in a manner that targets code gurus. Some will roll up their sleeves and figure stuff out (along with great appreciation for this forum.) Others will exit saying "why do I have to learn PHP just to get things to work with this CMS?"

Face it: creating TVs and figuring out complex snippet calls is not that straight forward. Some get it quickly and some less so. Everyone has different tools and skills.

My biggest hope for MODx is connecting these two "camps": creating a smoother bridge from custom template design to back end usability. The best way of doing this? Create more working examples, tutorials and video screen casts. Posting long lines of PHP code and parameters is great for coders but for the designer camp this can be a dragon filled mote.

I will soon try my very first tutorial: creating a screen cast that covers creating a custom design and incorporating it into a working MODx site. My plan is to create an imaginary business and begin everything from scratch...

Max

Many important things are already said in this thread but I would still like to promote MODx community which is simply amazing.

I have never ever been a part of a community that is so full of skilled and intelligent people. This must have something to do with MODxs liberating freedom to use your own imagination to solve problems and create new solutions. Quite large percentage of community users are also freelancers and small/medium business owners and this also really shows in a positive way. The quality of MODx resources is also outstanding compared to any other similar project thanks to the skilled individuals.

As noted before, a smaller group of skilled people is much more efficient than huge number of less skilled point-and-click oriented people.

Well said !

MODx community’s wealth of talent and great vibe can’t be overstated indeed (Here is where MODx is already number One and has been for a while )

And it’s true I have never seen as many freelancers and SMBs represented in such a way in an OS community...

I’m not a PHP expert by any means - more of a copy/paste/edit hack right now, but once you understand the MODx calls and how they work, its really pretty straight forward in making any PHP script work within the frame-work. I haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would like working in MODx yet (darn clients!), but I can tell you I think its a better, more thought-out platform then Joomla. I built a few sites using Joomla and walked away from each one nervous about the code and the manageability of the site. I’m sure I’ll do some more work in it again, but given the choice I would pick MODx.

Modx might not be number 1 against other CMS, that’s because MODx is in it’s own league. You can not compare something against itself so modx might not be no.1 against mainstream CMS software but it’s no.1 in it’s own league. No other CMS has the flexibility, community and ability to make someone like me who had no skills 2 years ago to someone who is relatively competent.

Drupal etc are nice pieces of software but they are they’re too complex to hack and to create your own... MODx clearly is number 1 for that reason alone. It’s all about personal taste and ability... granted there are somethings that MODx do not have but that is not to say it won’t or can’t come.

When I first started using MODx, I used it for a very basic static based site... now I have learned a lot that I can now create vibrant sites in no time compared to other CMS software.

You nailed another disctinctive aspect of MODx : it empowers peole to create because it’s so flexible, but also it speed up the development process by making your workflow "shorter" (less steps) and believe me much less time doing maintenance !

I speak from experience, currently working on a big Drupal project I feel the difference

Don’t even get me started on incompatibility issues between modules... I recently lost a day’s work trying to figure out which of the 120 modules my project is running was screwing up with the forum’s post (they were no longer visible). Sure, Drupal has so many modules it’s bound to happen more than a CMS which has less addons but still... Now I am documenting everything I do !

I think once MODx gets some key addons rolling (intranet/extranet and advanced community features), I’ll never work with another CMS, period ! I have faith that Revolution will open a new era in terms of addons development and this hopefully will open many new doors !!! Not to mention a nice usability improvement with the new manager