Wrapping up my first modx fully done site

I am finally coming to an end to wrapping up my website utilizing modx in every way I have been able to learn and successfully execute.

Before going live especially with this being my first ever site being done solely by myself in the cross over from html to a CMS I went with a testing site like most. I feel like I have achieved nearly everything I could hope for however since MODX is a smaller community which is one of the reasons why I went with it, that and it just really clicked on how to transfer standard htlm to modx template. I am struggling on finding certain things I assume could be handled by snippets, or perhaps some format of ditto. I do apologize if some of the things I request aid for could of easily been discovered with some searching on the forums as I had to rush to post this as we are leaving before the sun even gets up for family gathering in Baltimore for Easter. With all that said onto the real reason to my Post.

My testing site
http://demo.angrygaming.org

First issue:
When utilizing the wayward snippet displayed here

I get the result

Where if you view demo.angrygaming.org now is the desired result. Is there a way I can make it so I can use wayward finder as I like the idea of having that entire menu section automatically generated based off my directory tree.

Second issue:
After enabling friendly URLs which was no problem, I enabled pagination and with a basic ditto call I now have my news being displayed pretty much to my exact liking. However if I were to specifically click on one of the news postings it loses the template format. Meaning the topic of the news post, who posted it, and date (the entire yellowish,orange like color bar) are gone. How would I rectify the problem?

Third issue:
I have the basics of pagination understood however Ditto being so vast I feel as if I have only scratched the surface that being said. Under my articles section for the HLXCE Tutorial section it is a rather lengthy post. Is there a way to have pagination automatically cut a long post up into pages or will I need to cut that article into pages myself and then have a specific ditto call for that article. Is there an article manager out there already I am missing out on?
Fourth Issue:
Is there a way to have pagination work in calling the next page using the friendly url name or will that not even matter in relation to SEO optimization.

Eventually we would ideally like to have Modx work in conjunction with our Vbulletin Forums software. I know a year ago when I first stumbled over modx SMF was supported but there was nothing for VB. Is that still the case?

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you in advance for anyone that takes the time to read this lengthy post which I apologize for and provide any kind of assistance.

I see that you are getting the idea of how to use Wayfinder Since Wayfinder by default makes a simple nested unordered list, with quite a number of classname and id attribute options as parameters, you can use your CSS to do anything you want with it. And if you need a different structure, you can use its tpl system to make each part of the menu the structure you want; everything from definition lists to complex structures of divs and spans to just an output of links with no structure at all (even tables, if that’s what you need for some reason). http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,34176.msg207851.html#msg207851

Ditto has nothing at all to do with your individual item pages. All it does is make a list of them, using the tpl you specify (or its own default tpl if you don’t specify one) to display that list. What is on your individual pages is entirely controlled by what you put in them. There are several snippets for displaying the information you want directly in your page; it’s all in the database, and it’s just a matter of formatting the information (like converting the date from a timestamp, or the author from the user ID).

I believe that there is a plugin for dividing up long pages; hopefully someone else will remember what it is called.

Thank you so much for the fast response I read when I was able to sneak a read while out at the family gathering.

So for wayward finder it seems I now just need to advance my knowledge from just understanding the concept to making use of it. Thank you for the link I now have it bookmarked!

So since Ditto has nothing to do with it then how will I have it so when clicking on a specific news post how do I have it recall the template I already have in place for it. Or point me in the direction to read up on I do not expect to have all the work done for me

I have begun researching for the plugin dividing long posts as that is exactly what I am looking for.

Edit your individual news item resource (document) and set it up to look the way you want it. The tpl you fixed for Ditto has nothing at all to do with how the news item will look by itself; that tpl is only what Ditto will use for listing it along with all of its sibling news items.

The easiest way to do this is to have a separate template (by this I mean a template in the Elements -> Manage Elements menu item’s Templates tab; see this article for more details) and in that template, just before the [*content*] tags, put a set of HTML containers (<div> perhaps, or <p>, or whatever best suits your desired layout) with the MODx tags to produce the items you want, such as the author or the date.

http://modxcms.com/extras/package/25

You can also use normal MODx document tags such as [*pub_date*] and use PHx to format it:


http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/PHx

Keep in mind that the Ditto snippet and its output are functions of your main News page, and Ditto has nothing at all to do with the creation or display of the individual news items. All it does is generate a list of links and summaries to each item.

was able to resolve my pagination issue.

I understand what ya mean by templates and yet for some reason when I use the code


I had to change [+content+] to [*content*] just to get the article to display I thought this was the proper way to it?
I have the chunk called ag_temparticles and in my template I call for it under AGNdocs as my template name. Am I doing something wrong?

Placeholders are set by the snippet (Ditto) and are only available to the document where the Ditto call is. With the Ditto chunk tpl, using placeholders, the page the Ditto call is on is doing the processing, so the placeholders in that tpl are available and used internally by Ditto as it loops through the individual documents it is making its list from.

Think of it as "mine" vs "theirs"; the content that is "mine" [*content*] won’t change, while "their" [+content+] will be different for each one of "them". Without the Ditto call, there is no "them", so saying "their content" has no meaning.

okay I understand that now so by putting


at the top of my document that has all the content I want to be displayed it shows it all no problem. My question is though I have tried everything, making that line a code every kind of element so I can have it automatically implement that ditto call any time I posted an article. Then applying it to all my other pages based on subject.

With that call, it will display the three latest articles posted under document #11. As you add more posts to that container, the articles displayed will change to show the newest ones.

making that line a code every kind of element so I can have it automatically implement that ditto call any time I posted an article. Then applying it to all my other pages based on subject.

I don’t understand what you are trying to explain about what you want to do. Perhaps you are talking about tagging? Or do you have different containers for each subject? You can have more than one Ditto call on a page to have it display the articles from different containers.

what I am trying to do is generate a "template" for how I want the title, and date to be displayed

The way I learned how to customize the news to be displayed etc was by creating a chunk and then using ditto to call upon that. I think I am making it harder then it needs to be. So I am going to explain exactly what I did since I have no idea of the proper terminology and sure I am making you wish you never replied to this thread

So lets take http://demo.angrygaming.org
on the front page on the right in the content section I use the ditto command



my ag_tempnews chunk consists of

when i click on one of the news topics it loses that whole template for obvious reasons now since you explained that I had no ditto template for it there. That is where I got confused I figured that child document would inherit automatically the template used to display it initially. So my problem is I do not want to remember to post the ditto command

on every news post I make to ensure I get the yellow bar with the date, subject, and author of post.
So thats my question how do make it so I do not have to spam ditto calling on all my postings

I have one other thing left which is a way to have it so all images posted on my site automatically get thumbnailed to a specific size if too big and use something like lightbox 2.0 to allow for a nice overlay full image display effect. I have been staring at extra’s section for the last 3 days and all i see is gallery’s and things of that nature. I found some mgSOLO thing when I searched the forums but had no clue what the heck that was about.

That wayfinder guide you posted, holy toledo the capabilities it offers I am still working on absorbing all that info.
Do you know of any good books like ModX for dummies or something along those lines?