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    Any guidance on choosing the "advanced" versus the "normal" install file? The "Fresh Installation" page mentions some of the differences when installing but nothing on *why* a person should choose one over the other except for the PHP time issue. My hosting company kills the setup before it can complete (I can’t override the time settings) so I have to use the normal (or figure out what the page means by extracting the core). But I’m curious, am I missing anything by using the "normal" file?

    Mike
      Michael Henderson
      MODxCMS + Dreamhost P/S + BBEdit
      Safari + Mac OS X 10.8
    • The traditional or "normal" install package has all of the files required for the MODx reference mgr (manager/), connector (connectors/), and web (index.php) contexts in the standard locations MODx users are used to (with the exception of connectors, which is new of course). Here’s a list of key differences atm:

      • MODx 0.9.7 traditional is the most backwards-compatible option for migrating existing MODx sites, as references to the traditional folder structure will likely have crept into your custom code and/or the code of many of the legacy MODx add-ons.
      • MODx 0.9.7 traditional also is going to be the option most shared-hosting users will want to use, as in addition to the PHP time_limit issue it does not use the PHP process to extract the files from a zip like the advanced; being able to do this means ownership and proper permissions for the user running the PHP process to write into the directory tree where MODx setup was placed.
      • MODx 0.9.7 advanced simply will do all the work of extracting the reference context data and files for you directly from the core/packages/core.transport.zip, and will allow full configuration of the locations contexts are located in (i.e. instead of manager/ to access your back-end, you may want the directory called admin/ to prevent conflicts with Tomcat’s management interface).1
      There will also be an SDK version of the advanced package when we get to beta or rc stage specifically aimed at add-on/extension developers, and that includes a local copy of the API documentation.

      The download pages for the new site will hopefully do a good job of directing people to the distribution that best fits their environment.


      1 You can do this in the traditional by manually moving the directories to locations you specify during setup.