MODx From the Inside

I'm writing a series of articles that may become a book. This will hopefully be helpful to beginners, but have in-depth information also useful to more advanced users.

The first article/chapter (not necessarily chapter one) is up, with commenting. Screenshot images will be added.

http://www.sottwell.com/modx-inside.html [ed. note: sottwell last edited this post 11 years, 6 months ago.]

Thanks Susan.
That’s very clear and informative.
I hope the time and effort it takes doesn’t put you off doing more!
Let us know when the next chapter is available.

I second the wish that you will be able to continue this great work. There is no doupt I will learn allot from this, and I will definitely by the book if it comes.

Great reading. I learned a few interesting facts.

In the parser description, are the chain of events described in the order that they happen?

Very nice. I put a link to it at Bob’s Guides on the MODx home page and the links page.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you could add a little about the order of processing of chunks, TVs, and snppets.

I’m going to go into that in more depth later, on a whole article/chapter on the parser.

This is for 0.9.7 right?

No, it’s for 0.9.6

Quite well done, very descriptive and good job in not overusing screenshots.

I would personally suggest a different structure to your documents though.

But, with great criticism must come great suggestions as well. At least, that’s what I think. ^_^

When explaining steps, try a list.

Example (your first paragraph about the parser):

When a page request loads the front-end index.php file, it passes to the server the ID or the alias of the document being requested. The index.php file initializes the modx object and starts the parser. The parser first determines if this is a document ID or an alias. If it’s the alias, it finds the document’s ID. Then it gets the site’s configuration from the database. If the site is configured to be offline, either the document specified to be the “offline” document or a plain default document with a simple message is displayed (this behavior is specified in the main Configuration form).

I would describe this paragraph as:

Steps of the MODx parser:

• Client requests a file (by ID or alias)
• Index.php sends the request (by ID or alias) to the Parser.
• If the request is an alias, retrieve the ID from the database
• Retrieve the Site Configuration from the database
• If the site is configured to be offline, retrieve the "offline" document (this is specified in the configuration)

Plain explenations are a bitch to wade through for people just looking for a quick overview. Of course this is just a quick mock-up, but you get the idea.

Ps. Yes, I wrote several help-files. And there’s some larger posts from me in the snippets forum as well, like a PDF generator.

That’s great! And exactly why I posted on this forum. (although I was planning on working on a "flying geese" quilt I’m making today...)

Ok, is that better now?