I’ve been playing with moving/renaming the core and manager directories with the Advanced and Traditional distributions and I’m wondering if it’s really worth it to have two separate distributions of MODx.
Some of what I experienced is probably due to the immaturity of the Advanced distribution, but even so, I think it’s worth discussing.
The effort and expertise involved in moving/renaming the directories isn’t all that different. In both cases, you have to edit files and physically move and rename directories.
In the Traditional distribution, you have to move/rename the directories, edit the four config.core.inc files and edit the core/config/config.inc.php file, then run setup in upgrade mode. Not all that hard.
Currently, in the Advanced distribution, you have to move/rename the core, edit the setup/includes/config.core.php file, create a new directory for the manager (if you’re moving it) and edit the paths during setup. Not that much easier.
The down side of having both distros:
1. Time Management: Managing two separate distributions can be a real pain in the long run, especially if changes cause trouble in one but not the other. Testing gets more time-consuming and the SVN version is a hybrid that doesn’t really match either distribution so, in theory, every change needs to be tested in three versions. This will suck major time over the long run, IMO.
2. Support: Supporting two distributions is also a pain because for every failed install and for many other problems, we have to ask the user which distribution they’re using and wait for their reply. If they’re using the traditional (most are) the information doesn’t help us much and if they’re using the Advanced, we have to say "Try the traditional" and wait for them to often reply that that didn’t help, then start over. This usually stretches things out to two or three days where the user is making no progress on the install and getting increasingly frustrated with MODx and most are smart enough to figure out if the question of which distribution they’re using turns out to be irrelevant. One of our best features is our support and I think this undermines it significantly.
3. Loss of Prospective Users: I know that there are users right now that go to the download page, see that there are two distributions, can’t decide which one to download, and put off the whole issue by going away. This is on top of the problem of having to decide between Evo and Revo. I think I put off trying Revo for quite a while because I didn’t know which distribution to get. In addition, some prospective users will download the Advanced distribution, have it fail to install, and give up on MODx.
That’s a fairly high price to pay for the relatively slight increase in convenience gained by users of the Advanced distribution, especially since a solid majority of users will probably leave the directories at their default locations and won’t upgrade very often. My experience has taught me that I should never develop two versions of a piece of software unless I absolutely can’t avoid it.
There ought to be a "best of both worlds" version we could create that would try creating/moving the directories, and if that fails, give the user the option of using the defaults or creating/moving them manually and re-running setup. The options to move/rename things could be hidden in an "Advanced Options" slider.
Then there would be just one version to develop, support, test, and download. I think we’d be much better off in the long run.
Just my $.02.
