Ditto in the MODx Wiki - Recommend Tips Here

I know there’s going to be some more documentation at Ditto’s upcoming Trac site, but the MODx wiki is here and it seems sensible for Ditto to be represented on it. It also seems sensible to take some of the burden off Mark and to collectively produce the documentation that everyone’s crying out for.

http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Ditto is a simple start.

There are over 100 threads in this forum - some are solving problems with Ditto’s code and some are solving how to actually use Ditto. It is a lot to get through, which is one of the reasons for writing the wiki pages in the first place!

I know that not everyone wants to spend time summarising issues and grappling with wiki code, but for those like me that are happy to wiki-fy things, it would be helpful if people could point out useful tips from this forum, or areas that should be addressed in the wiki.

The wiki will ultimately include detailed guides as well as simple FAQs. So, what have you learned from this forum that you think should be in the wiki?

I think a page of ditto tag examples would be very helpful. What I have in mind is along the lines of what’s been done in the Wiki in the "Category Tagging with Ditto" article, but on a much simpler level, ie, a tutorial on setting up a simple one level blog with commenting, and maybe a few examples with different sort orders and maybe one using pagination and one not, and explaining what each delineator does, with examples, and which ones need to be used in combination to achieve certain things, which is probably the part of blog creation with modx that is the most difficult for a non programmer to understand.

There are some posts on the forum but they’re pretty specific to certain problems. Susan’s original tutorial on setting up a blog, which is now out of date, is close to what’s needed, with more and varied examples and links to what was achieved using different combinations.

I’d write this but I’m not qualified to get it right. Zi might.

I think a series of calls/templates/css to emulate the default behavior of the various blogging system formats would be really interesting.

Greetings,

I guess I’ll throw out my thoughts on this. I don’t want to get off topic, but I might a tad here. I think the wiki for Ditto would be awesome. I do think that MODx itself is starting more and more to out grow it’s idea on being for more programmers and smart people.

It seems more and more of us end users are showing up and I personally think that it’s becoming way too tasking for newbie questions that we ask, I’m sure I’ve driven many people nuts with stupid newbie general questions, but to the point, I like kickass’ idea of various examples and idea’s of calls and such for Ditto but I think that should apply to everything for MODx so we can cut down on simple Q/A on the forums to free you awesome people up to do more great features and updates on the Core of MODx.

That is my 2 cents, I think the wiki is great idea and should be applied not only to Ditto but everything MODx and once I get my site down and life situated I’d be happy to help in any way to make it easier for new to MODx

Keep up the great work.

Quote from: rthrash at Nov 12, 2006, 06:51 PM

I think a series of calls/templates/css to emulate the default behavior of the various blogging system formats would be really interesting.

Yes, this is exactly the type of thing that is needed. Especially since most of my past clients have been wordpress clients who are now looking for "a bit more" yet who expect to be able to do a lot of things "the wordpress way" regardless of the fact that ModX is a different animal! I’m sure David M. gets similar requests for textpattern behavior from his past clientele now moving to ModX. And I’m sure there are others.

I think that should apply to everything for MODx so we can cut down on simple Q/A on the forums to free you awesome people up to do more great features and updates on the Core of MODx.

That’s what the ModX wiki is for, I’m sure! I’m also sure that some of us volunteers are going to have to step up to the plate since the dev crew is busting butt to get the new release out. I’ll be doing my part with an article on "Templating 101", talked to Zi about it today.

Quote from: rthrash at Nov 12, 2006, 06:51 PM

I think a series of calls/templates/css to emulate the default behavior of the various blogging system formats would be really interesting.

Agree, such an exercise would be of merit even to those of us that can create our own blog, as it would let us see how other systems achieve things. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.

Of course, these things don’t just rely on Ditto.

I’ve started one article:
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Creating_a_Blog_like_in_the_Default_Content
which needs a lot of work to actually explain why things are as they are. (And needs editing in light of the recent fix).
It’s my intention to make sure that all of the Default Content features are represented in the Wiki, as it is a good reference point.

So,
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Creating_a_Blog_like_WordPress
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Creating_a_Blog_like_Blogger
could naturally follow. Indeed, I’ve just signed up to WordPress to see how it differs.

Actually, as the above will get bogged down with code, a separate page would be good to explain the other differences and the similarities (Want a blogroll? You’ll want a chunk in your template, then.), listed by WordPress concept.

But what should that be called?

How_WordPress_Concepts_Translate_To_MODx
Doing_It_Like_They_Do_In_WordPress
Guide_for_WordPress_Users
WordPress_Help (Word still has WordPerfect Help in the Help menu..)

Any ideas?

(And if anyone has any other Ditto areas that they want covering other than blogs, do speak up).

Great ideas Paul... thanks my man!

I vote for "Doing it like they do it in WordPress".

And if you figure out how to do pings, trackbacks, and rss subscriptions to comments in modx you’ll have my undying gratitude! BTW, Paul, you said you "signed up to wordpress" -- if that means wordpress.com, that’s a stripped down version of the program, it’s not complete. You need to download and install on your own server if you want to have full "stock" WP functionality (so you can copy it.)

I don’t know how you folks are planning on managing the wiki. Other wikis I’ve worked on you create a new article in your personal discussion area, then move it to the proper place when it’s ready for primetime,after others have commented, edited, etc. When you have an article ready for vetting you drop a comment with a link in it in the main discussion area (do we have a main discussion area? )

Ah. Yes, I just signed up to wp.com. Well, I guess it is still worth running through the "stripped down bits", as that is presumably the essence of WP, and then go through the install-your-own features.

And there will be a lot of "This functionality does not currently exist in MODx but a snippet could be written." or pointers to relevant snippets. Hopefully this will inspire people to sort out pings, trackbacks etc.

Quote from: kickass at Nov 13, 2006, 08:10 AM

Other wikis I’ve worked on you create a new article in your personal discussion area, then move it to the proper place when it’s ready for primetime,after others have commented, edited, etc. When you have an article ready for vetting you drop a comment with a link in it in the main discussion area (do we have a main discussion area? )

Interesting. I don’t think anything has been agreed, but we’re pretty much going straight to Wiki, but putting "This is a work in progress" at the top if it’s not complete. (I guess it would be nice to have one of those banner things like Wikipedia has for ’This article needs a cleanup’ etc). I think this method’s easier while it is built up, as it lets us work out the interlinking now - and reduces on duplication of effort. I’m sure we’ll have to revisit this when it’s being actively used as documentation, just to keep it neat.