Advice on best means to facilitate end user editing of content?

Hi just installed modx this week. Wanting to port a client site in to enable them to edit / add content. Started with revolution - then decided evolution would be a better choice for now. Have 1.0.4 running fine with friendly URLs (I like it)!

There seem to be lots of different ways of doing things - especially with respect to enabling editing - using manager with or without restricted subset or enabling them to edit as a web user.

Can anyone offer advice on best practice re facilitating end user editing by someone that is intelligent but does not know or want to know what html is?

Thanks

I’ve had an excellent experience working with a developer who uses PubKitBlog for front-end editing and creation of new documents. He uses the QuickManager, configured to only show the links for editing resources, plus a custom link "Admin" that goes to a page with (very nicely styled) links to resources in an unpublished "Tools" container in the Resource Tree. These pages have PubKitBlog calls customized to each section.

The editor’s "Manager Login Startup" is set to that Admin resource’s ID, so the editor never sees the Manager.

Simpler editing tasks, like a page full of FAQ question/responses, restaurant menus, or any other list of items not needing a separate "read more" page, uses Jot (or an extended version of Jot that I’ve called Notes that adds "categories" and "position" features) with some fancy javascript additions to its input form to allow file and/or image insertion (using the standard resource browser), as well as a bit of AJAX for re-ordering the items in the list.

Altogether, it’s a little bit of extra work to set up, but the clients seem to love it. Of course, the fact that my partner in this is a designer (I’m not!) and makes the forms and links absolutely gorgeous doesn’t hurt.

Thanks Susan - although that sounds a little complicated for a newbie like me. I was hoping that I could use chunks to break the page into bits - so, for example, there is an ’opening times’ chunk that they are permissioned to go in and edit - but with what? Is TinyMCE typically used for end use editing or are there better / more suitable tools.

Do people let clients use the manager but with a restricted view or enable them to edit as a web user (assuming that’s possible)?

TinyMCE is provided with the default MODx installation. It is applied to resource content, RichText type TVs, and optionally for chunks.

You can create "roles" that control what your editor user can do; after setting up the role with the permissions you want, just assign the user to the role.

You would probably find it simpler to use the front-end editing supplied by QuickManager. The editor logs in to the Manager (you can configure the editor user to be sent to a specific front-end page on login; it’s in the User tab when creating/editing a manager user). The QM menu is hidden at the top of the page, and drops down when the mouse is passed over it. QM is highly configurable; go to Elements->Manage Elements and the Plugins tab, open QM and go to its Configuration tab. You can disable it for pages you don’t want the editor to mess with, you can remove items from the menu or add your own custom items. For example, if you have a blog editor you could add a link to an unpublished blog management page (manager users can view unpublished pages, and even this is configurable using roles) that uses Ditto to provide links to all the existing blog pages. A manager can be denied/allowed access to the Manager itself in his User tab.

Since QM allows editing of the TVs attached to the page’s template, your editor can edit the TVs for the page. I believe the latest version of QM even adds buttons on the page itself at each block’s location. Using TVs instead of chunks for blocks of content is perfect for this, since each block can be customized for each page, just use a default set when the TV is created, or inherit a parent’s TV content if the default was set to @INHERIT. You really can’t make use of half of the power of MODx until you get a start with TVs.

http://www.sottwell.com/how-template-variables-work.html

Thanks Susan - that’s what I wanted to know. I appreciate you giving up your time to help me.