A good Ditto tutorial that sets up some articles (but this could be called a blog) is here:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/working-with-a-content-management-framework-modx/
I am currently using Ditto, Reflect, Jot, ManagerManager, and the accompanying templates and chunks to build an end user blog management system in the back end of MODx but still have a way to go.
Basically it will allow the user to:
Select how many articles are view on the blog index page
For the Side Menu:
Select how many article titles are shown in the most recent blog articles section and whether or not this list is even visible
Support Tagging whether or not this list is visible
Support Archives and whether or not this is visible (I’m having a tough time with this with Accordion for jQuery and keeping it open to where you last clicked when you click, say August under 2008) and again, if this is archive list is visible or not
Select how many categories you wish to display and if this category list is even visible
Once I’m done I’ll release the code for it.