Getting Started with MODx

Hi all you Guru’s out there!

Ok, I have just recently been exposed to CMS’s and quite frankly think this is going to be a very beneficial development process for me. I own my own company and want to build my website using modx. There are some things that I don’t understand and need a little help with, and I’m hoping someone will be kind enough to help me.

First, I’ve read every thread on here about adding a template and i’m just not catching onto what’s being said. I’m not getting the snippets or chunks, but realize that will come with time. Currently i’m trying to build the basic functionality of my site, and can get the look and feel of it later. I’m using the Yahoo! server to host my site (www.platinumtouchent.com) and am having issues with the default contact us form. (It’s not sending an email out). I have my php mail service active, so i’m not sure how to fix the issue. Can someone help me with this?

Personally I’m sure that my biggest issue is my inability to understand what i’m reading at the moment when it comes to the tutorials and the forums. Also, i realize that a lot of this will come with trial and error, but I have a big show coming up on september 28th and would like my basic site to be operational by then. Someone please help!

Thank you
Chris Warren
New Modx User

Have you gone through this:
http://modxcms.com/designer-guide.html
http://sottwell.com/modx-from-the-inside.html
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Beginner%27s_Guide_to_MODx#Creating_the_Template
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Main_Page

You don’t find documentation about MODx in one place, yet, but hopefully this a step foreward.

Good luck with your site. And ask if you need more help.

Chris,
Where is the Contact Form?
You don’t seem to have the demo content installed which has the form and some other basic pages to get you started.

Chris, See also the site in my sig for a basic overview of MODx for beginners. The terminology can be a bit daunting to begin with but before long, it will all make sense to you.

About templates, this is from my site and may help:

You might think of a template like the letterhead used by a business. The letterhead will almost always have a standard header and might also have a footer and sometimes a sidebar. When the business sends a letter, the content of the letter appears inside the standard elements of the letterhead. When you create a typical MODx document, you type in the content and save it. In the template for that document, you put the MODx content tag, [*content*], where you want that content to appear. When a user visits the page, MODx gets the template, plugs in the content where it belongs, and sends the page off to the user’s browser for display.

I unpublished a few pages of my starter site until i can figure out the functionality. I really appreciate the how to guide, i’ll actually download the page in a few minutes to view it and see what I can find out.

Ok, I’ve re-published the contact us page, but i’m still not seeing any email messages in my inbox. does anyone have any suggestions?

Check you have or another valid email address, rather than in your eForm snippet call.

If you don’t put a &to parameter at all it will default to the site’s default emailsender. It’s a holdover from legacy code that emailsender doesn’t have an underline; all other site variables do, so it’s easy to get it mixed up.