Wrapping up my first modx fully done site

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sottwell Reply #11, 16 years, 6 months ago

You will need to have MODx tags for the information you want in the site template used by the individual item documents. Ditto has nothing at all to do with that, nor should you be using it for that. Ditto is only for aggregation purposes - gathering up the documents in the specified parents and applying its chunk tpl to each of these child documents and creating its list of summaries and links. When you are considering each individual item, forget Ditto. It is not involved.

The individual items should have their own site template, with snippets like the AuthorTimestamp snippet to show the author and the date, and the [*pagetitle*] and [*longtitle*] tags to show the title and long title, and the [*content*] tag for the content. Set this site template up so the individual items are displayed by themselves as you want. You can just duplicate your main site template, rename it, then make the adjustments around the [*content*] tag to have the other information that you want.

I’ve been using MiniPhoto with great success so my users don’t have to worry about what sized images they upload, but that just resizes them. You might try DirectResize as it does a great deal more along the lines of options for showing the larger image.

You may need to go through the forum posts for this if you have any problems with it. It worked fine for me, but did far more than I wanted.
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,19236.0.html

Studying MODX in the desert - http://sottwell.com
Tips and Tricks from the MODX Forums and Slack Channels - http://modxcookbook.com
Join the Slack Community - http://modx.org

42 Posts

jessay Reply #12, 16 years, 6 months ago

Thank you so much for the DirectResize I got it up and working on the first try and have it performing exactly what I wanted. Ironically I thought that was going to be the hardest thing however I am struggling with the template.
The AuthorTimestamp link is broken at the moment and I performed a google search and was unable to find an alternative link.
Since I was taught to use Ditto/tpl method to structure my content displayed which turns out to be wrong it seems like I had the right idea just applied it wrong. Since I cant use Ditto I am unsure how exactly I should have the data.

I currently have this set-up for my incorrect ditto system

and then each one has their own code setup like this

			<div class="news">
				<div class="newsTitle">
					<span>[+author+] - [+date+]</span>
					<h3><a href="[~[+id+]~]">[+title+]</a></h3>
					<div></div>
				</div>
				<div class="newsContent">
                                      <p>[*content*]</p>
<div align="center">[[TweetThis]]</div>

				</div>
			</div>

So since I should not be using [+blahlbah+] ditto calling to structure the content. I figured then instead of doing a template call &tpl=`ag_tempnews`
Under my templates I would replace [*content*] with the chunk {{ag_tempnews}} and then that would resolve this whole problem. Hopefully I made sense in explaining my current understanding.

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24,524 Posts

sottwell Reply #13, 16 years, 6 months ago

No. You are still confusing the Ditto chunk tpls with a main site template. Please forget about Ditto and chunks. Pretend like you are going to have a menu with links to these pages, like all your other site pages. No Ditto. No chunks. No placeholders.

Go to Elements -> Manage Elements, and open the Templates tab.

How many templates do you have? Do you want the news pages to look mostly like your main site? Masthead, menus, sidebars, footer? If yes, then duplicate your main site template (open it as if you wanted to edit it, and click the "Duplicate" button). Otherwise, create a new template.

Rename the new template, something like "News Pages". Now what information (besides what is in the Content field of the document) do you want to see on this page? Use the regular document variable tags, and snippets where appropriate. You’ll most likely want them to be above the [*content*] tags, in <h2> or <p> containers or something along those lines so you can style them.

The link to AuthorTimestamp appears to be working fine now. In case you can’t get to it, here it is.

Studying MODX in the desert - http://sottwell.com
Tips and Tricks from the MODX Forums and Slack Channels - http://modxcookbook.com
Join the Slack Community - http://modx.org

42 Posts

jessay Reply #14, 16 years, 6 months ago

Oh my goodness. Well here is why there was such a confusion. The lady that instructed me on how to create a website has me generating my templates like this.

{{ag_header}}
{{ag_headerlinks}}
{{ag_topmenu}}
{{ag_leftcolumn}}
{{ag_rightcolumn}}
{{ag_infosli}}
{{ag_quicklinks}}
{{ag_newsheader}}
<autolink>[*content*]</autolink>
[!bannerrotator? &position=`1`!]

{{ag_footer}}

She would have me take the web page cut it up into sections and create chunks that would create the whole website.
It would kind of stink to have to completely redo all that plus a quick test i am already noticing more things breaking than working.
(for instance now Latest News background image no longer shows now for some reason and its like that for the headers on all the pages now)

is the one referring to. Which is just making me pace in circles pull my hair out and chain smoke my cigarettes.
However if that is the proper way and the right way than I guess I will have to just suck it up.

I do apologize for the inconveniences, the lady that had taught me the basics of MoDx was a friend of mine from his church, and it would appear I was instructed wrong. However that does stink because I really liked how clean that all looked to be honest that was one of the first things that I liked about it.