A few general questions

Hi there,

first of all I like to introduce myself: I got here because a customer (hi Michaela ) resigned from a job (I had to build two Mambo/Joomla templates) because she now rather like to use modx herself. I am not angry because of that because my patience is near end with Joomla, the whole last year no improvement in standards, content&user management and so on. I took several looks on this page (although no time at the moment), but I think I´m infected with a new virus ;-) The things I read in the documentation, the quality of the forum discussion and the Speed of development is AWESOME! I already started to write a book about Joomla, but the progress is decreasing with every new restriction I explore every day in this Joomla-"CMS". I´m relatively known in the Joomla community (a template of mine "madeyourweb" is in every distribution of Joomla) and also well known for my individual hackings of Joomla to fit the customers needs. But why hacking if I can get it right here without? ;-) So please excuse my questions (Usually I use to discover myself, but there is no time at the moment to make a installation and I´m very curious...):

1. I read in the documentation (blog tutorial) how to integrate the editor in the frontend. Is it also possible to implement frontend editing for chunks in the frontend? Like in reddot where editable parts are marked with a red dot. This is important for most of my customers which don´t even want to know how the manager looks like ;-) They want just simple edit their pages (the rest is my part). But it would be very nice to edit the addtional informations (like in chunks)...

2. Could someone give me a short abstract about the history of modX (I read something about etomite, why the fork?). And what is the name all about? Why sometimes tattoo? With 1.0 a new name?

3. Where do you see the target group? From what I saw yet, this is a powerful thing here and a lot easier to understand than this mammut typo3... So I don´t think that the target group are small pages and blogs (so the impression sometimes when I read around)

4. Is there a roadmap?

So far till now, I don´t dare to ask about the wording of chunks, snippets, TV, widgets and bindings ;-) Ah, okay, one thing: What is this TP 3.3 all about (seems to be a kind of versioning somehow...)

Okay, now finished. Thanks in advance for your replies and keep up the good work!

Greetz Marc aka MadeMyDay

I might not be the best representative to answer all the questions, because I just join the community less than a month.

I’m here just to welcome you as a new user who is migrating from joomla to MODx.

The answer to your question is:
1. As far as I know, only page variables and template variables able to be edited from the front end editor.
2. I believe it’s because the old core developer in etomite left the system, so they decided to come up with another name, to use an existing system and built a better etomite.
3. Dunno for sure, but there are couple discussion regarding about this.
4. http://modxcms.com/roadmap.html - I believe it’s not what you’re looking for, right?


Sincerely,
Wendy Novianto

Hi Marc, some very good questions... most of which have been answered in spots but are now sufficiently burried in the forums to merit a review. Glad you’re checking out the project, and find the development pace and community to your liking it seems.

1) Front end editing is great. It doesn’t edit chunks currently, but it does edit any content or TV. Look for more in the future though!

2) The short version is that MODx was originally a modification of Eto... the developers without warning deleted all references and the main support thread on their forums. We really had no choice, and would have loved to continue there, but it’s a moot point and a totally different project now.

3) Really, the target now should be individuals like yourself. We’re working on creating a much more robust, object-oriented framework that maintains compatibility with existing sites/databases. We’ve got some amazing things working behind the scenes and are deciding which methods to implment. The system will ultimately be simpler to use/understand, a proper OO project, and much more robust for developers as a custom application framework.

4) Yes. It’s outdated though. http://modxcms.com/roadmap.html You’ll see more post the currenlty-internal-testing 0.9.1 release.

MODx was in a "tech preview" state, hence the TP nomenclature. We made the decision to move to a release as it is certainly stable enough and robust enough to merit that. All the other lingo is going to get simpler, soon, so glad you didn’t ask!

I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with and for your active participation in the community... welcome aboard and get ready for a great ride!

I’m not going to try to tackly all of these questions at once. The history question is an especially lengthy topic, but I will answer your question first question. I wrote the frontend editing module so I suppose if anyone should know I should

QuickEdit does not handle chunk editing at this point. It’s something that has been requested and it will happen at some point in the future. The whole concept of chunks is slated for a prety substantias reworking so I wouldn’t expect anyting to happen before that point. The next thing I hope to tacle with QuickEdit will be creating, moving and deleteing documents. After that chunk editing will probably be the next thing.

Welcome to the community and I hope that you continue to have a good experience with MODx.

Erm... are you guys nuts? 15 minutes, three perfect answers...

Yes. It’s outdated though. Wink http://modxcms.com/roadmap.html You’ll see more post the currenlty-internal-testing 0.9.1 release.

...and lots of question marks turned into exclamation marks. *impressed*

QuickEdit does not handle chunk editing at this point. It’s something that has been requested and it will happen at some point in the future. The whole concept of chunks is slated for a prety substantias reworking so I wouldn’t expect anyting to happen before that point. The next thing I hope to tacle with QuickEdit will be creating, moving and deleteing documents. After that chunk editing will probably be the next thing.

Somehow I was hoping to read this. Thank you!

Really, the target now should be individuals like yourself. We’re working on creating a much more robust, object-oriented framework that maintains compatibility with existing sites/databases. We’ve got some amazing things working behind the scenes and are deciding which methods to implment. The system will ultimately be simpler to use/understand, a proper OO project, and much more robust for developers as a custom application framework.

same thing here!

welcome aboard and get ready for a great ride!

You betcha!

Think I´ll start my next bigger project with modX... Learning by doing is best I think. Therefore little OT: Is there some application (module, right?) which integrates well in modX for a reservation issue? Okay, okay. One step at a time

Thank you guys, I think I don´t only have to move in real life to a bigger and more suitable location but also in my choice of CMS Next question is how to convince the publishing company to publish a book about this here rather than Joomla

Keep on!

Quote from: MadeMyDay at Dec 08, 2005, 07:44 PM

Next question is how to convince the publishing company to publish a book about this here rather than Joomla

How cool would that be! The problem is, if we make progress the way we’d like to, it’ll be outdated before it hits the shelves

The problem is, if we make progress the way we’d like to, it’ll be outdated before it hits the shelves

well, as long this counts:

We’re working on creating a much more robust, object-oriented framework that maintains compatibility with existing sites/databases.

...I wouldn´t worry. And new stuff for a second edition is always good for the author

well, I´ll see what is coming up the next two weeks. The things I wrote yet are easily adaptable for another CMS because they introduce only the website which has to be built (and which would need a lot of hacks and tweaks to implement in Joomla... )