ModX Book

Hi,

I am interested in writing a new book for web development using ModX and its extras.

Do I need to get documented permission from the ModX Team etc or can I just write it and publish it since ModX is open source?

In which language are you gonna write the book?

English for now, my native language. Does that make a difference??

Can someone from the ModX Admin team message me on the previous message please?

Ideas for the book would be also appreciated

Great news. Hope it goes well.

Since you ask for ideas, here’s a thought or two. First off, empirical studies of learning to program have repeatedly shown that small examples are extremely useful - and that’s what the extant MODx documentation is very short of; there are reference pages but no examples - so it took ages to discover what to do with EVAL, for example: I could easily see how the PHP code worked, but for a long time I couldn’t see where to put the EVAL statement. Once you know where to put it, it seems obvious, so you think you don’t need to show an example. But you do, you do. A tiny, very simple example does the job.

Second, you might want to consider carefully whether you really want to develop one single example worked on throughout the book, as in the book by Antono Solar John (’MODx web development’); or whether you want to give a myriad little examples, as in many O’Reilly books. Each structure has some advantages but given that Solar’s book is there, you might prefer to take the other approach.

Third, do help newbies by showing the purpose or role that the components play, because that’s something often lacking in the official documentation. (What are hidden fields for?)

Fourth (sorry, didn’t realise that so many thoughts were crowding my head - I’ve been very frustrated by the documentation) you might want to explain some of the slightly more advanced things one can do. For example, using a Ditto call to pass a parameter via the URL to a second Ditto call. As in, "We want a first page that lists all the pets, but where the link from the pet name goes to a second page that shows all the pets owned by the same owner – so the link from Fluffy would go to a page listing Fluffy, Fido and Felix, owned by Fiona. " It took me ages to solve that one. Easy once you’ve got it.

One more and I’ll shut up .... You might want to explain some of the unexpected things. If you write [*content*] in the Resource Content field of a resource that has children, you get output that to me is quite unexpected, showing that I don’t yet understand the workings of MODx, despite my attempts to do so.

Happy to discuss any of this. I’m currently trying to write a document with lots of small examples about Ditto, and if it would be useful to you I’d be happy to share it.

Cheers

Thomas Green (York, UK)

Hi got10thumbs,

I appreciate your ideas and feedback as you have come up with quiet good points. Right now I’m just brainstorming and haven’t done any planning etc.

Just want to clear out permissions I need etc first as I don’t want to go into legal implications and have to check that it is viable.

I really don’t think that there is a legal issue since MODx is GPL. Just give credit where credit is due, that’s only common courtesy.

The only reason that contributors to MODx code need to sign some kind of legal waiver (I forget what it’s called) is to make sure that all MODx code stays open-source and GPL; it’s happened in other open-source projects that people have changed their minds and caused problems with projects they’ve contributed to.

Ok.

The last indecision is whether I should do it on Evo or Revo. I’ve been using Evo for quiet a long time now, but I see Revo as the way forward.

What do you guys think?

Btw, Evo 1.0.5 is coming out on 31st December?

I’m not unbiased here, since I’m just finishing up a book of my own on MODx, so take this with a large grain of salt, but this information might still be useful for you.

My book focuses mainly on Revolution, with some notes on Evolution at the end of each chapter.
My book is currently about 1700 manuscript pages in MS word, so it will be hard for you to cover much about Revolution that I’m not covering.
The existing book on Evolution is seriously out-of-date.
We could definitely use a good up-to-date book on Evolution.
Revolution is very much a moving target and it’s hard to keep up with all the developments, some of which are major changes.
Evolution will be around for quite a while and is much more settled as a platform with fewer major changes to the Manager or standard add-on components.

All that said, feel free to choose whichever platform you want to write about. The more information about MODx that’s out there, the better for everyone in the community.

BobRay says "We could definitely use a good up-to-date book on Evolution." and makes other good points about Revolution being a moving target at present.

You’re so right.

Either way - good luck to everyone who’s working on books or other resources - definitely needed.

Thomas G