content editor ... is it really?

I should have been more clear. I don’t use the RTE myself, but my clients often do and usually have no trouble with it, although I encourage them to learn HTML. I have, however, avoided some of the problems you ran into by designing the sites so that all they ever do in the RTE is enter text. They upload images with MaxiGallery and files with the FileUpload snippet. Sometimes, they select images from a drop-down list in a template variable.

Generally, clients hire me because they don’t know how to design a site, so I do it for them. Once the template has the design built in, they enter text where the text goes and pick the images that go where the images go. The only real work they do in the RTE is type text and occasionally enter links.


Also, I suspect that something is seriously wrong with your configuration, but I’m afraid I don’t have a clue what it might be.

Quote from: zeroge at Mar 14, 2010, 11:09 PM

I am fine with all what you said but, I think about all this with a "Client point of view". If we were to crreat a website for a client and promote it as the CORE MODx team does, we will be in trouble. Simply because if a TinyMice, VK or FCKEditor is promoted for easy creating additional content/pages, than the client would expect it to work ... FAIR? She/her would not like to hear ohh this doesn’t actually work and you better do it this way. Then better don;t include it at the first place before you are ready with it and it actually works.

TinyMCE and CKEditor are the two most popular rich text editors. Majority of all web based applications (open source and commercial) rely on one or both of them. So you have to learn to manage with them in most cases anyway. This may require for example custom buttons and custom custom CSS file for rich text editor. I suggest you to first learn MODx properly and only after that to customize your rich text editor. MODx itself offers a very good standpoint to customize and install third party rich text editors. I and my clients too have been extreamly happy to work with TinyMCE and MODx.

Ordinary clients (and maybe you too?) often mistakenly presume that using rich text editors are just like Word or something similar. But it’s not quite the same, especially if you are not used to paragraphs and styles. Many users still use programs like Word in a very basic way, for example the main problem is usually understanding that pressing enter will create a new paragraph and how to use predefined styles to preserve nice layout.

It’s also very bad practice to try adding html code manually to rich text editors since they are not html/text editors.

@zeroge: I’m not trying to offend you or undermine your skills. I apologize, if my comment sounded like that.

Let’s back up.

1. What happens when you go to Elements | Manage files on the main menu. Do you see files and folders?

2. Take a look at this file:



and look at the values for these two configuration settings:



Do they make sense for your site?

3. Give us a screen shot of the screen where you see no files or folders when trying to insert an image.

Quote from: zeroge at Mar 14, 2010, 01:32 AM

I tried for a whole day, back and forth and offline and online (ah - offline is even worse as it throws me even an "Internal Error" (screen shot) when trying to upload an image) before I added this post, so I may sound a bit frustrated and impatient here. But that I am. I really like MODx but there are quite a few things they contradict.

I had the same problem yesterday. It’s caused by hosting-settings (php/fastcgi setups). I corrected the paths in the manager as pointed out by someone else here in this topic, corrected permissions to 755 (or 777) and disabled "zend.ze1_compatibility_mode". Everything is working ok now, but I had to logout from the manager first.

Quote from: zeroge at Mar 17, 2010, 03:23 AM

... following this advice - below, after inputting the path into:
Manager >> Tools >> Configuration >> File Manager
File Manager path: /home/thisisme/public_html/andmysite/

do the files show under Manager >> Elements >> Manage Files ? - YES! HURRAY!
Does the "Resource Browser" (used with RTE) display any folder/image?
ALL with CHMOD 777 - NON
ALL with CHMOD 755 - only images from assets/images/ (there is no indication in Resource Browser what folder is displayed, nothing, it just shows the 3 images I put in there!) all folders/files used for the site, however, are placed into assets/templates/andmysite/ please see the screen shot again http://wemseo.com/downloads/modx/Screen%20shot%202010-03-17%20at%203.29.45%20PM.png

I’m confused here - what do you expect to see? MCPUK file browser allows only selection from /assets/images and subfolders...

I looked at the wrong MODx tutorials!

which one?

Support files for templates include css files and background images those css files use. These can be organized in the assets/templates folder if you wish. There is certainly no requirement to do so.

Images that are displayed directly via the HTML img tags can be in assets/images. Again, there is no requirement for them to be put there.

This is known as "separation of presentation and content". The HTML, CSS and associated background images are the presentation (how it will look), while the images displayed in the content with img tags are part of the content. The resource browser is used to simplify the insertion of content, not to modify the template and its styling.

Because the images that go with the template are used only for css background images. They are not inserted with <img> tags. There is no need for the Resource Browser to have access to them; in fact a designer will most certainly not want content editors who have no idea what they are for deleting or replacing them, breaking the site’s design.

Quote from: zeroge at Mar 17, 2010, 10:20 AM

Me too. Indeed! But thanks for knocking on my head and letting me know I looked at the wrong MODx tutorials! (or least let me know I wasted a lot of time believing I could follow the MODx tutorials and think it would work!
I expected the Resource browser to show images in assets/templates/mysite/anwhateverpathitistotheimagefolderfromhere/

I believe you are referring to my tutorials since we have talked about your site before via email. Let me start by saying that with MODx there is no one way of doing things, you can accomplish the same task using different approaches. What I present in my tutorials is not the only way, it’s just one way.

Now on to your question. What Susan said is spot on. I think you’re confusing presentation with content. Your template images are part of your presentation, ideally you don’t want those to be accessible to the content editors via the image browser. If you do that and you hand the site over to a client, or to someone else who’s adding content, they could delete those images or replace them, and then your template would be messed up. You want those sitting probably in your template folder, which is where the rest of the presentation stuff sits.

What is in the image browser is your content images, the stuff that will be added to your pages independently of your template. You want this to be accessible using the image browser, and to not be tied to the template.

Of course you’re free to place things wherever you want them to be, as I state in my tutorials, I present things the way I prefer to do them, you’re certainly under no obligation to use that method or anyone else’s for that matter. Whatever works for you. If you want your template images to be accessible to all editors via the image browser, you’re absolutely free to do so. Different strokes for different folks

Hope this helps. I do apologize if my tutorials confused you, certainly not my intention.