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should I stay? or should I learn Evolution, knowing that a year down the line I will probably want to go back to Revolution?
Both NewsPublisher and Frontpage are available for front-end editing in Revo. Formit2Resource is as well.
I agree that the productivity tools in Revo more than make up for the slow response times, and the Revo manager continues to pick up speed.
MODX Staff
The manager is a little slow on systems with little available RAM and we don’t recommend using Firefox with Firebug running which reprocesses everything all the time and slows the browser by up to 70%. As far as the front end performance is concerned this is dependent on the system, cache settings and more. In 2.1 we’ve made significant improvements to the caching that have shown large measurable performance increases. modx.com receives more than 400,000 unique visits per month and 1.5 page views/month and handles the traffic easily. We’ve also seen Revo used across 5 front end servers and a DB cluster handling nearing 100,000 resources and blazing fast performance.
Revolution is very very slow to deliver manager stuff. It’s not particularly fast at delivering the pages either.
I used to be just like you. I loved the idea of in-context editing but after deploying MODX for 5 years I realized not one of my clients, mostly small-biz non-technical types had no problem using the Manager. In fact MODX was designed to use familiar analogies like the document tree and simple forms and RTEs. Having the client understand the structure of the site and how resources relate to the nav etc makes it far easier for them to use. That being said there is one use case for in-context editing and that is the quick fix of a typo or error. I have felt for the past number of years that I have spend less than a few hours training clients on managing their sites including possibly complex TVs. We shouldn’t underestimate how empowering it is for clients to understand the basics and the relationship of the back to the front end. Just because the are a little apprehensive doesn’t mean need to be completely left in mystery on how the site is built.
The lack of a front end editor - I know it will come but I am dreading the phone conversations to get my client up to speed with using Manager
This is a little harder, we’re looking at ways to make this easier to understand and implement common ACL policies, Policy Templates are a step in that direction but it is difficult to be both super flexible and create a UI that factors in the variables of every use case.
The complexity of the security system and access permissions, I also have spent half a day with "access denied" messages and I’m a bit wary of getting back there.
I used to be just like you. I loved the idea of in-context editing but after deploying MODX for 5 years I realized not one of my clients, mostly small-biz non-technical types had no problem using the Manager. In fact MODX was designed to use familiar analogies like the document tree and simple forms and RTEs. Having the client understand the structure of the site and how resources relate to the nav etc makes it far easier for them to use. That being said there is one use case for in-context editing and that is the quick fix of a typo or error. I have felt for the past number of years that I have spend less than a few hours training clients on managing their sites including possibly complex TVs. We shouldn’t underestimate how empowering it is for clients to understand the basics and the relationship of the back to the front end. Just because the are a little apprehensive doesn’t mean need to be completely left in mystery on how the site is built.
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Totally agree. Though I can understand it’s tough when talking on the phone, I just explained the basics of the manager to a client (in her 50’s) and she grasped the basics pretty well. I also gave her the link to this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/bridgecourtinc/ with some English real basic screencasts by Crawford Paul - so she can look at it at her own speed when things are a big unclear.
Quote from: Chris at Apr 21, 2011, 10:18 AMI used to be just like you. I loved the idea of in-context editing but after deploying MODX for 5 years I realized not one of my clients, mostly small-biz non-technical types had no problem using the Manager. In fact MODX was designed to use familiar analogies like the document tree and simple forms and RTEs. Having the client understand the structure of the site and how resources relate to the nav etc makes it far easier for them to use. That being said there is one use case for in-context editing and that is the quick fix of a typo or error. I have felt for the past number of years that I have spend less than a few hours training clients on managing their sites including possibly complex TVs. We shouldn’t underestimate how empowering it is for clients to understand the basics and the relationship of the back to the front end. Just because the are a little apprehensive doesn’t mean need to be completely left in mystery on how the site is built.
The lack of a front end editor - I know it will come but I am dreading the phone conversations to get my client up to speed with using Manager
@TimGS - it’s not an objective decision really, better informed I would probably have gone for Evolution as I need to be productive as soon as. Whether I want to step ’backwards’ is what I’m trying to work out now. I have built one site in Revo, and I won’t move it.
Maybe you are right and the next stage is to build a site in Evo, preparing along the way for the pratfalls of the syntax variations. One of the sites I have inherited is built in 1.0.4 so at the very least I will need to be able to understand it enough to edit it at some fundamental level.
I would be more interested in your reasons, especially the ones that weren’t connected to having a resource library in Evo already.
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As far as my reasons go, I don’t want to just repeat whats already been said (there’s too much of that in some quarters IMHO - sometimes by people who haven’t even verified the truth of their (copied) statements!), so I’ll keep it brief. There were a number of reasons, and I should say that this was just before the New Year with the then current version. However the principal factors for me were:
- the scalability being not as originally described ("no upper page limit" has turned out to be untrue). Just how much of a problem this is seems to depend on who you ask. I have no first hand experience of this, but on this forum there have been examples which seem much better Evo, and some that seem worse. Search the forum for cases (a google search with site:modxcms.com is often more helpful than the forum search tool).
- Slow manager, even on a small test site. Search the forum (though from the sounds of it you have first hand evidence already).
- A new API (I’m a coder, not a designer). If someone’s going to give me a learning curve again, it has to be one that results in an improvement for my work. I couldn’t see one. Obviously this isn’t a factor for yourself and any other newbies.
- A lack of confidence due to claims that in practice have turned out to be untrue. I don’t expect a system to be perfect, thats impossible, but I do want an accurate description. I did actually provide a potential client with a quote for a Revo build of a very large site before I realised that the no upper page limit claim was untrue. Luckily I didn’t win the job.
- A further lack of confidence that due to the new API a vast amount of snippet/plugin for Evo is unusable on Revo. Some ’Evo’ API functions are present in 2.0 but won’t be in 2.1, which seems a little odd. I appreciate some of Evo’s API may not make sense in Revo, but if it can be included in 2.0 why can’t it be kept in later versions?