not so complicated template for travel agency

Some good posts here...

One thing to keep in mind is that creating a flexible, powerful, feature rich site that looks great is not like making instant coffee: somewhere along the line some real work needs to be done.

MODx is a very flexible and adaptable CMS when it comes to working with a specific design or template. As a part time designer I found it MUCH easier to make things happen with MODx than it was for better known systems like Joomla etc.

This site will be for marketing a travel agency and helping its customers etc? My opinion (and this is just my opinion) would be to put MODX down for a while and instead focus on the design of the website itself. Websites are a form of communication: real information needs to be provided to the viewer. But the presentation is vital as well: viewers will make an instant judgement on the business in the blink of eye after loading your travel site. The images, colors, graphics, layout and typography all have to work well together. A site can have the greatest CMS structure in the world with every little module and every add-on configured perfectly, but if the design and first impression is not pleasing to the viewer they will move on to your competitors.

In short I would do whatever it takes to build a clean static page and get the design down perfectly (with everyone’s approval) and THEN use that as your template within the MODx system. As this is a business in a competitive detail oriented market I would hire a designer to build this page design for you.

I thank you very much all the users for the kind answers.
I write you below some comments. I’ll probably leave this cms , and maybe come back in the future with more time spending opportunity and maybe with a little donation to help you out.

I disagree on some point of the basic of the project and here’s why:

• Anything which needs to be approached, expeccially if difficult, should have a linear path. It’s not correct to have a not linear guidelines which may came in contraddiction or in competition. This happened to me trying to follow the instructions to install templates
• Usable Internet publishing should not be something that HAVE TO be difficult for the masses. I think there are enough complicated methods to publish and update content online. You can keep originality in the contents and have a flexible robust cms which does just his job:manage the contents, not itself (Ref Photowebmax)
[li]Basic things as change a color I don’t think may require huge developing work (or default alternative templates) and this may not just end in commercial options.

On the other hand I appreciate a lot the seo and clean approach of ModX.

thanks again

If you need a system that’s easy to make templates in, then MODx is MUCH easier to use than Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, or Expression Engine, and I’ve tried them all. You really should look at MODx more seriously in this regard. In my opinion, It’s by far the easiest system to create custom templates in. The green style you are referring to has nothing to do with MODx... if you’ve ever changed styles before, then you know that the content is different from the display of that content. Check out
http://csszengarden.com/ to see what I’m talking about... the same content can be displayed in VERY different ways, just by changing the style sheet. This should help you understand what some of the others in this thread are talking about.

If you see ANY site, ANYWHERE, just view the HTML. You can easily copy the CSS and JS files to your server, then it’s merely a matter of replacing parts of the page with MODx placeholders. It really can’t get any simpler than that. This is soooo much more straightforward than other CMS’s.

See this video on how to make templates in MODx:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EasmxiU0LsM

There’s a long page in the Wiki that shows how to create a template for a site:
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Beginner%27s_Guide_to_MODx

I see that your site now is running Joomla... good luck with dealing with Joomla’s boxed whacko-ness for creating templates. It’s much more difficult for most people, so maybe we’ll see you back here soon...

thanks for your kind help
I finally decided to use another cms with ready commercial templates and less pain in development.
Although I’ve suggested Modx to a developer friend of mine and I plan to try it again when I’ll have some time to get deep into it’s complicated and powerful features .
thanks againg
ciao