Jack of all trades, master of non - reflexion

Btw, my last post is really out of topic.

blogplus, thanks for opening up this thread. It’s really great for all of us to be able to discuss this openly to which direction MODx should go. Even though I can see your point here, but I can guarantee you that we currently have the roadmap on the right track.

If you found something that you think it’s important to share your ideas, feel free to knock on this forum again.

Btw, welcome to the community, and enjoy your stay here.

Regards,

wendy, thanks for the enthusiasm !

I share it I lack many talents, but I have an eye for new projects and I rarely get it wrong when I feel "something is happening". As you say, MODx deserves to be known but you also have to manage the life cycle of communities.

Trying to have as much users as possible right now could put us in a difficult position. I very much liked your 3-tier thing (quote below).

Quote from: wendy at Jan 18, 2006, 08:10 PM

I think by having a 3-tier market in MODx will help us achieve this so called "Jack of all Modules, master of the CMS.", Raymon.

The first tier is of cource the core developers who are diligently keep improving the system, and the second tier is the module/snippet/plugin maker who keep extending the capability of the current API and system into a full scalable product for the end user, while the last tier is the end user who just need a system that can be run in a minute and run flawlessly and serve theiir specific needs.

The second tier is more like the bridge to he end user. It can be a paid consultant who knows what they are doing with MODx or the users who are willing to make a package of pre-installed system under MODx for the end user to use it.

We have a rock solid first tier with the core team, and a visionnary one at that. I believe what we need is to consolidate the second tier (to which we both belong) before we aim at third tier.

As I have said before, It’s key to have a second tier base wide enough to help polish and fine-tune MODx and provide quality support to the third tier (end users).

Quote from: davidm at Jan 18, 2006, 09:35 PM

As I have said before, It’s key to have a second tier base wide enough to help polish and fine-tune MODx and provide quality support to the third tier (end users).

I can’t be more agree than that. It’s so true that we need to have a wide community for the second tier user first.

I quoted myself on google story

When the time comes, it’s when Google start booming as if they are just being lucky to discover the best search engine on the web, even though the fact that they have been working on it for the past 2 years in improving the system, while nobody take notice on it.

And I quoted myself on trying to attract more people in this community to be the second tier

So for all of you who have been involve in this community, I woulld personally to ask you guys a favor to help make this community better. I believe all the guys behind MODx core team are a good guys, and they have the will to make this CMS (or should I say it CMF?) a lot better than what we see right now.

So lets work together guys! I’m nobody in here, but I know that I’m not making the wrong choice here. If I found something bad that needs to be fixed, I’ll figure out my way to fix it. It’s either knocking on Core Developers’ email and asking them to fix it or I’ll try my best to fix it myself, and I usually ended up messing it up though. lol

Like what most open source community encounter. Majorrity of the community is the end user (third tier), and I do aware that some people in here has a good background at least in PHP & MySql application (considering the needs of both of this skill in making the most out of this CMF). So I think it’s our job (you and me) to start working in attracting this second tier users. lol

Anyway, nice discussion, and I would like to see more of the reality for us in achieving this solid second tier users as well, not only the first tier.

And I’d love to be helping in that 2nd tier, but as you have seen from my posts, I’m just not that talented ;(

However I can at least play the part of the user who knows enough to get by and often get into trouble.... at least by the time you get to a large tier 3, you would have all the answers to those questions on the forums already

PS I am slowly working on a snippet / plugin thing... Just I have to focus on other non MODx tasks at the moment

That will be great you know. Everyone of us are uniquely designed. So I don’t think there is an important role or an unimportant role in this community. As long as you’re enthusiast with the community, then you’ll soon be important to the community, doesn’t matter whether you’re in the community to just bothering people around or actually making a good impact to some other members. lol

In anyway, I would like to see this community grow even more with a loyal users and members from people like you and the rest who’ve been actively using this software/system.

Ehmm.. it’s time for me to take a deep breath and stop posting in this forum. I post too many replies in here I guess

Is there such a thing as too much activity here ??

As long as you have something to say, why shouldn’t you say it, the only thing is, don’t wear down by spending too much time posting

Briggsys, when I say second tier here I am not thinking you have to be some kind of whiz coder (not one myself). As wendy pointed out, we need people to help improve MODx and the second tier ranges from the designer whose area is rather xhtml/css and templating, to full blown developpers with experience and talent.

Luckily, in between, many people can contribute ! Beginning with a lot of power users, advanced bloggers and geeks. You can report bug but not be able to solve them, it’s a start. Then hopefully you learn by doing and grow skills that can benefit others Maybe you can even start solving some small bugs, have some improvements submitted...exactly what I’ve been doing the past 3 years with various communities.

I’ve learned many things from your post and your contributions are great, don’t worry !

Thanks David. I have a few ideas, just need to get them into code..... not an easy task, but I’ll hang in there (might need 4 years though )

In a couple of months when I get time to work on devloping the site some more I’ll see what I can do about learning MODx a bit better.

Ok David, I think I’m starting to get tired replying all post in this forum. lol.

(Now this is really2 short )

Quote from: davidm at Jan 18, 2006, 03:09 PM

In a way, what you say is : "don’t try to be everything to everyone, but try to be the best for a given user target". That makes sense.

In HiFi and TV you can allways bet that inbetween 2 geräten of the same manufacturer the one with most buttons is the one with best data. Still the more expencive must be easy to use.

Sometimes buying the ranked "best buy" you plug it into the wall, hit "ON" and it works. The following thought appears: "Why was such a simple apparatus so expencive?"
...because people (me) only reflects on what is, and not what wasn’t! Quality appears simple and crap that doesn’t work appears impossibly advanced.

Sometimes softwares and hardware tech stuff (all categories) work so smoothe that everyone would return it to the store if they didn’t know that just that particular brand is BEST and smoothe only because of quality. Smoothe often otherwise mixed with simplistic.

"It was only cheap crap, had only one button."

We often forget that the one-button-highQ-stuff is really what we all dream about. The fantastic future!

I could bet that both programmers and automechanics that have the best tools rate them as close to average. But in a competition they would produce better Q att half the time compared to the ones who use trendy sh_t from the luxury store...

What I say, as a global reflexion is: Something is not a good tool just because things can be done with it.

Something is not a good tool just because things can be done with it.

With respect to MODx, here’s where I would beg to differ with you. In MODx, there’s probably 3 or 4 ways to get to the same end result. You can almost emulate working like you do in many other systems (a subject for future tutorials, I hope). And it’s very easy to get started with!

Personal opinion: What I’ve found in other systems is that they’re typically either incredibly rigid in how they’ll allow you to work and not intuitive. They also typically won’t let you produce clean, semantic XHTML/CSS sites. MODx is as close to the opposite as I’ve seen. Converting existing sites is fast, and you’re not limited to what you can do by any means due to the powerful API.

Now where I DO agree with you is on the manager. I still think it sucks honestly. Not compared to other solutions, but compared to how I know it can/will be! It’s just not organized right, the "lingo" is confusing, and it’s not simple enough for mainstream use instantly. I think all the tweaky advanced options are important, but they should be on advanced configuration pages which can be hidden away from everyday interaction. Kinda like having root access in Linux: as a general rule don’t login as root, unless you really need to get into the system and make some drastic, kernel-level changes really fast.

We are going to address that in due time, but it’s going to take some more time to get it done. But if you’ve been around a while, you’ll notice that "MODx time" is pretty compressed.