modx website sign in process

I love modx.

But the modx website has had me confused more than once.

I tried to log in, couldn’t.

My first gripe: to log in you have to click a drop down box to access the fields, and if your login fails you need to click it again to get any feedback!


So clicked "Forgot Password?"

Which took me to what appeared to be a completely different website.

So I typed in my username.

response: "No user with that username exists"

Uh? OK, so i clicked "If you have forgotten your username you can retrieve it here."

... and typed in my email address, same thing "Email not on our system." or words to that effect

OK, i’ll just have to set up a new account.

The CAPTCHA text is almost impossible to read, I have to try SEVEN times before I get it right, each time having to re-type the password and each time being told "You must enter the text exactly as it appears in the picture." in big red letters. I know! I’m trying!

Eventually I succeed. And click the "Click here to log in." link

Which takes me to a "MODx CMS / xPDO" website which looks nothing like the original site I started off in. What on earth is xPDO?

OK I log in anyway.

It says: "Welcome to the MODx Project JIRA Bug Tracker."

!!!!!!

Wait a minute I wanted to get to the Modx cms site so I could use the forum!

So I type http://modxcms.com in the address field

OK this looks more familar... but I need to sign in again, ok

This looks familiar, but wait a minute, even though I signed in with my new account it is showing my old username which I’ve just been told doesn’t exist!!! I’m confused.

As I say I love Modx but I can’t help thinking that this logging-in palaver isn’t going to be very impressive to someone coming to the site for the first time, and it’s selling Modx short because it is a fantastic product but the sign in process seems to break fundamental rules about good user experience.

Sorry, rant over.

Mike

ATM the forums login is separate from the main website/contributor accounts, and yes it can be confusing depending on where you sign up. Things that will be improved soon. We will be moving to OpenID logins, so that SSO becomes possible across all of the various tools we are using to manage this project.

FWIW, there are only two distinct accounts involved, an SMF forum account and a modxcms.com account that is powered by Crowd; Crowd integrates and provides SSO for JIRA (our bugtracker), Confluence (our wiki), Fisheye/Crucible (our online source code viewer/code review system), and the rest of the modxcms.com website which is developed in MODx Revolution.

Yes it is confusing and needs to be improved (we’ll do what we can to simplify the network of links), but if all you want is to participate in the forums, just sign up on the forums at http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?action=register

I see, I feel bad about moaning as i think Modx is brilliant and you guys do a great job, but it has left me confused a couple of times. Sounds like you are well aware of it though. Thanks for responding and keep up the good work.

I love Modx.

Cheers
Mike

Quote from: thingstodo at Apr 23, 2010, 11:22 AM

I see, I feel bad about moaning as i think Modx is brilliant and you guys do a great job, but it has left me confused a couple of times. Sounds like you are well aware of it though. Thanks for responding and keep up the good work.

I love Modx.

Don’t feel bad about it at all. If you love something, you want to see it do well, and this is something that definitely needs to be addressed. So kudos for reminding us of the pain point. Sometimes a little reminder is all we need to get us to take action.

Cheers!

Thanks to Jeff (bravado), we have tweaked the login box a little bit, not an ideal solution but it should be better now.

Thanks again for pointing out and reminding us.