My Proposed Site - Ideas and MODx advise please.

Hi there,

I’ve just downloaded and had a play with MODx at home and I must say it’s awesome. Only CMS to install without problems (all thing stopping the install from going ahead were clear and I sorted them easily - mainly down to permissions)!!!

So I’m just about to start working on this site and it needs to have CMS. It’s for a building firm and they want to be able to edit some of the pages highlighting their work over time.

I’ve just had a play and created a ’content’ template that has my top div and two side divs, but have some questions about the best way to go about doing my site with MODx please?

Here’s a link to a couple of example PDF pages to show you:

http://www.mnetuk.org/page_8.pdf
http://www.mnetuk.org/page_11.pdf

That page 8 is like an overview page and they may need to change the title of each section, or picture or text, if they change the corresponding detail page, like shown on the page 11 I’ve shown.

There are other pages that need editing, but hearing how best to structure it with these pages will make it clear for those pages.

So, what’s the best approach for creating templates, template variables etc for my site? Every page will have that same top banner, same left nav, same right fixed picture panel and same footer.

How would I do my menu system? I’m conscious of SEO, so don’t really want ’index.php?id=XX’ type links in the href if I can help it.

Also, any other general advice, comments etc. I’m weighing up the time I need to spend setting this up vs using Adobe InContext and churning it out a lot quicker.

Also, is there any other way to simplify the view a user would have in the admin login? Users won’t be as tech-savvy, so would like the most minimal interface possible in order for them to edit and maintain their content.

Cheers, keep up the good work!

(Sorry if in wrong forum - feel free to move if it is)

At first glance, it looks like a job for the Ditto snippet. Each of your page_11-type pages would be a separate document, probably all in one folder (or in the main folder if there are not that many of them). Then on the page_8 page, you’d just put a [[Ditto ... ]]] call in the content field and Ditto would aggregate those other pages for display on page_8 just as you show them. Changes in each page_11 page (new photo, different title, etc.) would automatically be reflected on page_8.

You’ll almost certainly want to use the Wayfinder snippet for your menu.

Your first approximation of your template would be to have it contain everything but the page-specific content (which goes where you put the [*content*] tag in the template). If you have PHP code, you’ll have to create snippets to contain it, since no PHP code can go in a template or chunk. After you get things looking the way you want, you can move things from the template into chunks.

You might need a slightly different template for your page_8 and page_11 pages but try it with one first.

You can easily restrict what people can do in the Manager and, with a little more effort, you can restrict what they can see there. It might also be possible for people to do their work with the FDM (Front-end Document Manager), in which case they don’t have to see the Manager at all.

It will take a while to get things looking right using Ditto, but I think you’d be glad you did it and your users will very likely think they died and went to heaven.

See the site in my sig for more info about how MODx does things and what all the terms mean.

Welcome to MODx.

Like BobRay I think you can use only one template.
you can display your page 8 using Ditto with columns config, there is an article about it in the Ditto site.

For the URLs you should use Friendly URLS and the Strict SEO plugin. that will solve both your issues with links.

If you look in the manager under Security you’ll see the Roles page, there you can define new roles and what they see in the manager and you can remove all the resources you don’t need them to see.
and you can use Manager Manager to have even more control on the manager interface.

bottom line, I think you do right using modx vs. adobe. The end result will be much better IMHO and your client will kiss you for that flexibility.
maybe your first site will take some time to get used to, but once you’ll get the way modx works you won’t look at anything else and your future projects will be a breeze.

good luck and don’t forget to post the results when you done

Quote from: BobRay at Nov 20, 2008, 10:04 PM

At first glance, it looks like a job for the Ditto snippet. Each of your page_11-type pages would be a separate document, probably all in one folder (or in the main folder if there are not that many of them). Then on the page_8 page, you’d just put a [[Ditto ... ]]] call in the content field and Ditto would aggregate those other pages for display on page_8 just as you show them. Changes in each page_11 page (new photo, different title, etc.) would automatically be reflected on page_8.

You’ll almost certainly want to use the Wayfinder snippet for your menu.

Your first approximation of your template would be to have it contain everything but the page-specific content (which goes where you put the [*content*] tag in the template). If you have PHP code, you’ll have to create snippets to contain it, since no PHP code can go in a template or chunk. After you get things looking the way you want, you can move things from the template into chunks.

You might need a slightly different template for your page_8 and page_11 pages but try it with one first.

You can easily restrict what people can do in the Manager and, with a little more effort, you can restrict what they can see there. It might also be possible for people to do their work with the FDM (Front-end Document Manager), in which case they don’t have to see the Manager at all.

It will take a while to get things looking right using Ditto, but I think you’d be glad you did it and your users will very likely think they died and went to heaven.

See the site in my sig for more info about how MODx does things and what all the terms mean.

Welcome to MODx.

Hi BobRay.

Thanks for the reply!

Ok, so I’ll have a look at the Ditto snippet and see if I can work something out.

The main question I have really is about how I get all the diff content into the main content panel.

So I have a div called ’mainContent’ in my HTML which is just a 664px by 615px div. For, say, the page 11 style pages, that is then further broken down into different sections, with a main left and right section and then within those sections, the left having the top picture, then heading and content text below, and the right section having the top main pic, the lower two smaller pics and then some kind of caption about the pictures.

Am I right in thinking that I would div up all these different sections and in the template place a template variable in each div, with the relevant content type, such as textarea or image?

This makes me think that I need lots of different templates, as the ’about us’ only have the left and right main content panels the same, but what’s within them is different. Likewise, the home page has flash in that big area, and the Contact page has the left and right main areas still, but again the content within is diff, with a google map and contact form.

Will I need to do this, or is there some way of me having just literally one main template for all the outer parts of the site, and then somehow nesting some kind of snippet or chunk on each page that has further nested html inside with all the relevant layout for that page?

Or am I totally on the wrong track? Sorry if that’s confusing what I wrote - please ask for more explanation if it’s nonsense!!

I hope I can make this work as I don’t like the idea for charging my client other than for setting it up. I also like the fact that it gives me some fine control over site layout once it goes live, which is cool!

Cheers.

Quote from: sinbad at Nov 21, 2008, 12:53 AM

Like BobRay I think you can use only one template.
you can display your page 8 using Ditto with columns config, there is an article about it in the Ditto site.

For the URLs you should use Friendly URLS and the Strict SEO plugin. that will solve both your issues with links.

If you look in the manager under Security you’ll see the Roles page, there you can define new roles and what they see in the manager and you can remove all the resources you don’t need them to see.
and you can use Manager Manager to have even more control on the manager interface.

bottom line, I think you do right using modx vs. adobe. The end result will be much better IMHO and your client will kiss you for that flexibility.
maybe your first site will take some time to get used to, but once you’ll get the way modx works you won’t look at anything else and your future projects will be a breeze.

good luck and don’t forget to post the results when you done

Hi Sinbad,

Thanks for the reply.

I’ll look into that Ditto documentation thanks.

Would you be able to give some more info on ’Friendly URLS and the Strict SEO plugin’ please?

Also, if you check my reply to BobRay you may some some opinions on what I’ve asked.

Cheers.

Any more advice guys?

Thanks.

from the examples pdf you showed there is no reason for multi templates. there is nothing wrong with making more than one template, but it doesn’t necessary.
Read the documentions regarding TVs, and chunks. Your main content area is where you’ll place the Ditto call for the home page.
Then use the TVs for the sidebars, which will let you use different content depending on the page you are viewing.

I’d probably need to show a PDF for the whole site, but I can’t see how I can do it with one template when there’s about 6 or 7 different ways that the main content panel is laid out in the site?

Sidebar chunks! 

http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Create_TV-Based_Chunks
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Beginner%27s_Guide_to_MODx#The_Site-Info_modifications

...And of course whole new templates for thoose very different. But looking on the pdf’s and seing a 3 row
with middle being 3 columns Id have chunks in the one big centered.

Quote from: mrhaw at Nov 22, 2008, 04:29 PM

Sidebar chunks! 

http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Create_TV-Based_Chunks
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Beginner%27s_Guide_to_MODx#The_Site-Info_modifications

...And of course whole new templates for thoose very different. But looking on the pdf’s and seing a 3 row
with middle being 3 columns Id have chunks in the one big centered.

Which bit do I need Sidebar chunks for? Don’t quite get what you mean about them and the templates sorry?

Luckily the client is going to accept a static site for a bit whilst I get my head round this, so I’ve been putting together the static one at my test site here:

http://www.mnetuk.org/cranageconstruction/

BTW, the flash on the home page is the wrong size, isn’t using the right pictures and has the text in the wrong place and the contact page doesn’t work yet and isn’t finished.

Also, on the project page, I’ve only done one ’detail’ page, which all 6 link to from the detail page. Will have done the other 5 (with lorem ipsum still) by tonight or tomorrow. There’s also some pictures missing.

So is this kind of site doable easily enough then? I’ve got a bit of time, but not loads!!!

Cheers.