Modx Venting Area

I am one of those who currently find ModX (beyond the basics) not quite worth a major time investment ... yet. Too much flux. Too much confusion. But it doesn’t bother me a whit and I speak as someone who managed documentation once and published three tech books (in a long-past lifetime). If I were doing serious, full-time web work and/or were a PHP weenie (alas, I hate PHP), it would be a different story for me.

I take Ryan at face value. Given the development pressure/flux, ’serious’ doc is probably six to twelve months away; e.g., eighteen months away

If I were the developers, I would figure like this:

1. It would be awesome to have more doc even right now.
2. We are seriously blitzed and outmanned just keeping up with development.
3. We have way more mindshare/participation/usage than we expected for this stage, even without great doc.
4. If we had anymore of 3., it would swamp the project.
5. If we had better documentation and support than we do at the moment, we would have more mindshare (see 3 above ... which would definitely swamp the project as per 4 above ... etc).
6. On top of 1 thru 5, there will be enough significant changes by 1.0 that much fresh documentation (or at least tutorial) effort would be wasted anyway.

Despite the protestations that ModX is aimed for the advanced (protestations I defended in an earlier thread), I have found folks on these forums to be willing to answer just about anything, even my dumb questions.

For now, it’s caveat emptor - and considering ModX is free, that ain’t bad.

At a minimum, the devs have been scrupulously honest about not over-promising what they feel they do not have the energy/time/resources to deliver at this time.

I don’t have time to elaborate right now, but I will, lots of interresting stuff here Paul and Russ !

Let’s just say all this doesn’t take into consideration what’s coming with MODx 1.0. Most people outside the team might think MODx 1.0 will be an incremental improvement of the current build : it will not. I think it has been said here and there but remember that MODx 1.0 is a total rewrite of the core, totally free from the Etomite legacy, with many drastic improvements in lot of areas.

Does that mean we should not document the 0.9.x branch ? Well, of course not, but maybe it would not be smart to do the comprehensive doc lots of people seem to expect... I disagree that advanced users will get frustrated with MODx as it is, I think given the support on this forum anyone with a well-defined / specific question will get a comprehensive answer pretty fast...

Right now, the smart thing to do (to me) is to focus on the incremental improvement on the 0.9.x branch and the 1.0 branch dev... MODx has a clear "target", at this stage it’s advanced users and professionnals. It’s been stated over and over lately, maybe to some people’s distaste... Now, wouldn’t we like to have a great comprehensive doc ? Of course we would ! But would it be smart for us to write such a thing given the applications is being rewritten from the ground up, with radical changes in the 6 month range ? Probably not

To me the "MODx deal" as it is for a newcomer is this : you get unprecedented flexibility and features not found anywhere else in the opensource CMS world, and a vibrant and helpful community, at the price of limited documentation, no 1-click install system... In the end, most people (at least those advanced users we target) will agree it’s a really sweet deal !

This being said, the future not only holds amazing features and concepts with 1.0, but also you might just get what you want in terms of documentation. Why ? Because by then, we’ll have a new codebase : this means changes will be incremental not radical in the short/mid term, which means we make an efficient use of resources writing doc.

My take on things is we don’t have a documentation problem, but we sure should make things clearer regarding our plans for the future, so that everyone understands the choices we make...

The work done on the API for 1.0 for example is 100% documented. In addition, the jargon will be all but gone; we want it simple, clear and decidedly non-goofy.

It’s probably time for a state of the project post, but first I gotta finish up a project...

I’m not a programmer, so this really won’t help you much for me to know, but is the 1.0 fork an Open Source project? Or is that just the 0.9x fork? Just asking since I haven’t seen any 1.0 code branches lying around anywhere.

Oh and would that project you need to finish up be 0.9.5 project?

Quote from: jbjones at May 30, 2006, 10:18 AM

I’m not a programmer, so this really won’t help you much for me to know, but is the 1.0 fork an Open Source project? Or is that just the 0.9x fork? Just asking since I haven’t seen any 1.0 code branches lying around anywhere.

The initial 1.0 code is in our SVN repository in early alpha stages, and will definitely be open-source, but until I get the baseline code completed and ready for collaboration, it will be in a private branch.

Quote from: jbjones at May 30, 2006, 10:18 AM

Oh and would that project you need to finish up be 0.9.5 project?

It’s actually a project that is helping to fund 1.0 development, so no, he’s not working on 0.9.5 (and I’ll kick him if he does). But if anyone has any similar incentives to help fund completion of 0.9.5, feel free to donate so the team can find the proper motivation to complete the outstanding work.

It should now be clear to all that modx is not for neophytes. My initial enthusiasm has been tempered by that reality. I wish I had the skills to make it work for me, but I just don’t so I’ve been looking at other solutions for me until I can revisit modx at a later date.

One place I visited was the origin...etomite. Let me tell you something, the attitude there is so hostile towards modx that they have placed a word-ban in their forums. You can’t even write "modxcms" in a post without it being automatically changed to [etomite fork] and then if you ask questions about that you get suspended. Real friendly buch of developers there.

So bottom line is that I’m rooting for MODxcms to develop and prosper and maybe one day I’ll be able to use it. Even if I can’t use it, I still like the attitude, direction and power of it.

Hmmm, I tend to agree with that opinion that it’s not for neophytes but ... if you think about it from a really simple viewpoint (changing nothing on the site) it really isn’t that bad especially if you haven’t been brought in the phpNuke (plus derivatives) you should be able to adapt a lot quicker.

Myself? ugh, tough to teach an old dog new tricks. I had to erase a lot of previous ways of doing things to get into the groove so to say. ( tough -- along the lines of learning a new way to do things) However, beyond that I’ve been very hooked on ModX since I got over the initial learning shock.

I personaly thought MODx was easier to implement than Mambo, Drupal, Xaraya, ezPublish, Typo3, and WebGUI (the other six I tried). The templating system in those others is a little difficult to wrap your head around when you are previously used to building static sites.

I thought the installation was a breeze, but it’s just about everything else that’s slowing me down.

I’ve had an easier time with websitebaker and cmsmadesimple and I’ve done a few sites with phpwebsite as well.

Maybe I just need to give modxcms some more of my time. I will but not until the next full version I guess.

I’m working on the FAQ so maybe that would be helpful for those (like me) who have struggled with this.

I may not be a modX expert yet, but I’m building a couple modX sites. And if I can learn, so can you. All we need is good docs.

There’s been some differing opinions over exactly where to put the FAQ. Personally I never found the one in the doc area until it was pointed out to me, so unless there’s better navigation pointing at it from a much more prominent place, I’d say not there, since it’s just plain buried. I’m feeling it should be part of the forum since this is the first place everyone comes for support. It’s just a question of where. Tips and Tricks has been suggested, but I’m not sure that’s right since if someone is having a problem it might not be intuitive to look there. Stickied in General Support might work. Toplevel might work. Mats Wall started one here and didn’t get very much response at all, and absolutely none from those who had the most to say about support vampires, so I guess that wasn’t the best place to put it (MODx Community Forums » General Discussions » General MODx Discussions » Add your Newbie FAQs here, please...) BTW, though he did start that FAQ thread at Ryan’s request Mats Wall contacted me and said he would gladly hand over the reins, so to speak, given the almost nonexistent response to his effort.

Anyway, look for me to post it probably by the weekend. I’m sifting through the forum now, trying to snag out the most obvious FAQ, and the threads that answer them. Anyone who has any thoughts on this please post here for now. Also, any pointers of places to start, or even just a list of forum urls that are pertinent, that would be a great help.