Newbie - first impressions

Hi,

I’ve stumbled upon modx completely by accident after looking at Joomla and Drupal and I have to say the vibe is very good.

Primarily a developer, I thought I’d steam right ahead and "knock up" a small site quickly using a template then look deeper behind the scenes at making my own stuff.

Where should I be looking for some templates - the modx site is obliging but frustratingly there are few thumbnails to leaf through when looking at the templates, making it a bit tedious.

Where is modx free template heaven until I have time to get to grips with using my own stuff?

Paul

demo.amdbuilder.net has a few templates all of which have full modx powered demos. There are also a few at http://www.sottwell.com/templates.html

The truth is, templates are so easy to make/adapt that it’s difficult to get enthusiastic about providing them.

It’s just a newbie thing and perhaps being spoiled by playing with Joomla. In some ways it’s probably important since new adopters like to have an easy start.

Take any HTML/CSS template and it can be adapted to MODx in no time. Any. Or take an XML file format spec and feed it into a dynamic Flash container to drive a site. MODx works there too.

Or HTML 5. Or CSV/XLS. Or PDF. Or text. Or whatever you want to output.

MODx is a bit flexible in this regards. That said and all fairness aside, I’d really love to see a dedicated template gallery, too.

There’s some info here on porting a standard template to MODx:

http://bobsguides.com/porting-your-site-to-modx.html

You shouldn’t underestimate the effect of having a well working template/designs/add-ons section with proper previews. Just because we prefer to indiviudally create our sites from the scratch doesn’t mean everyone does, in fact the majority doesn’t. I made a little research by asking and reading around, trying to find out why joomla is still so popular, the result: mostly because of the vast amount of templates + add-ons available for it.
A really big part of CMS users see it as some flexible site builder, they want to install their CMS of choice, check on its homepage for some template and add their stuff on it + make some minor changes, if any.
It’s not a coincidence that the most popular CMS’ (Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress etc.) have a useful theme page with a lot of content, not to mention the third party ones.
Besides that, it might be easy to create a design/template, but it isn’t easy to create an actually good one.

I think most users don’t start by reading dozens of pages, if they want to find their CMS, they prefer checking the theme page to see what’s possible and then decide. Pictures say far more than words (at least for the first impression) and are faster and more effective with delivering the message. The MODx HP currently doesn’t do a good job at that though, not at all, unfortunately.
It would be enough to add 10-20 completely different, but all quality designs with proper previews to show "see that’s possible with MODx without hacks", ppl would see that MODx sites don’t look all the same.

Just my 2 bits’n’bytes...

PS: This is not a rant

I have tried all of those systems and more.

There might be tons of modules, add ons, and templates but not all of them are good, especially the design templates. The better ones get downloaded countless times which sort of defeats the purpose of "creating a web presence" in my book. Not everyone wants to download a web template that has been used 1134 times.

Log into the Wordpress or Drupal forums and you will find countless threads on how to adapt or customize existing templates. Many "designers" of such systems will spend a ton of time and effort "backwards engineering" how the template was constructed in an attempt to make the look their own. This is a real awkward way of going about it my book.

The great thing, and I mean great, is how adaptable & flexible MODx is when it comes to making a custom design work with the system. It is the best I have tried so far.

Building a website generally falls in two different camps: the design world and the developer world. Some are stronger at design but weaker with coding and scripting. For others the opposite is true. It is rare to find an individual that has top skills in both areas.

I tend more to the design side. I have very little PHP knowledge. I certainly can’t write script code from scratch. I can read some of it and understand it. But you don’t need to know this arena cold. You don’t have to be an expert at javascript to know how to take advantage of jquery functions. This forum really helps with filling in the gaps here.

Some CMS forums are either too large or too small. Some are just overwhelming while some never get that much traffic. MODx seems like good balance between the two.

I understand newby frustration. I started a major "impressions from a newby" thread myself some time back.

Bottom line: if you want all the power and flexibility of a cutting edge CMS that does not get in the way of designing custom websites then MODx is simply the bomb...

@AMDbuilder: You rock! Nice ---> http://www.demo.amdbuilder.net/
@sottwell: You rock! Nice ---> http://www.sottwell.com/templates.html
@MODx webpage: You rock! Nice ---> http://modxcms.com/extras/repository/packages/Templates
...

Quote from: N!Ce at Nov 12, 2009, 04:47 PM

You shouldn’t underestimate the effect of having a well working template/designs/add-ons section with proper previews. Just because we prefer to indiviudally create our sites from the scratch doesn’t mean everyone does, in fact the majority doesn’t. I made a little research by asking and reading around, trying to find out why joomla is still so popular, the result: mostly because of the vast amount of templates + add-ons available for it.

I agree completely. At this point, though, MODx isn’t at a point where we could support those users, IMO. Having a lot of template designs available would attract a horde of naive users that would expect MODx to be a plug-and-play platform and would flood the forums with questions like, "why won’t MODx cook my breakfast for me?"

We need to attract developers and create comprehensive, easy-to-navigate documentmation before we’re ready to try to attract the masses.