Add your Newbie FAQs here, please...

I have spent some time exploring (lurking) the site and viewing projects by Modx users and I have to say that I’m impressed with Modx, your active community and the site as a whole. To this point I have primarily used Joomla, some Drupal, WP and Frontpage for site development. While I do like Joomla above all others, I have recently become disenchanted with both Drupal and Joomla from the standpoint of having to constantly patch and upgrade. This is due to the ever increasing number of security threats that target CMS in general but those two specifically.

Now to the point of this post, my first question is somewhat loaded while the second is pretty straight forward.

Is Modx subject to the same type of security vulnerabilities that plague Joomla and Drupal and is the program targeted to the same extent?

Is there a current Windows version for local install/development?

I would like to do some serious evaluation before taking on yet another CMS platform and from what I have seen, Modx has a nice set of core features and community support.

Thanks

I’m not exactly unbiased, but I think MODx has been hardened from a security standpoint very early and very well. The only significant security issue in the last two years was a threat opened by a MODx add-on, not MODx itself and that was very easily fixed by renaming one file. That’s the only security- related fix I’ve had to make on any of my sites.

The current stable version is MODx Evolution 1.0.2: http://modxcms.com/download/.

MODX will run fine in an XAMPP install on any Windows platform since XP.

MODx Revolution 2.0 is due out soon in RC1 form.

BTW, MODx has gotten rave reviews from former Joomla and Drupal users who generally find it liberating.

I have no knowledge or skill in PHP or any kind of coding. I could however build a few sites with Modx pretty much the way i visualized them. This is why I moved away from the big CMS such as Joomla and Drupal.
However now since the beta versions of Revolution, I feel that the user profile of Modx could change and non programmers would not be comfortable with Modx anymore. I know it is too early to judge at a beta stage, but I find that the revolution documentation specifies the requirement of skills and knowledge that I don’t have and may not grasp even if i invest time. Also I read a post from a developer that the focus of development will shift to revolution very soon.
Has there been a change in the vision or change in the developers themselves?
Am I right about my reading of the future?

Have no fear, indeman, Modx Evolution is still the same friendly CMS we all love, and it’s not going anywhere. In fact, just yesterday a minor bug in the manager got fixed, so eventually there’ll be a 1.0.3 coming out with other improvements, but no changes to its basic simplicity to use.

Quote from: sottwell at Mar 14, 2010, 06:53 AM

Have no fear, indeman, ...

Thanks Susan. I hope over time, revoution becomes dummy friendly.

And I’ll make the claim that once the docs and transport packages fill in, Revolution will prove to be much more newbie friendly than Evolution (with the exception of permissions).

Hi Guys,

I’m new to MODx and PHP CMSs in general and just need a few pointers to help me get on my way with a website I want to develop.

I want to develop a website that will allow authors to write articles for a variety of topic categories. One of the requirements is that there are 3 images associated with each article. One image is used for promoting the article on the front page. One image is used for when listing a summary of the article (similar to the content generated by Ditto) and the 3rd image is used in the actual page which shows the article in full.

What I’m unsure about is how do I create the association of images with the the articles. Also how do I categorize the articles?



If I can some pointers to get me on my way that would be highly appreciated.

Cheers
Johnny

Use TVs. Three TVs with "image" input type, and one for "tags" which will be used for your categories.

Quote from: BobRay at Mar 14, 2010, 05:04 PM

And I’ll make the claim that once the docs and transport packages fill in, Revolution will prove to be much more newbie friendly than Evolution (with the exception of permissions).

One suggestion for what it is worth.
Most of the current documentation for revolution appears focused on existing users of Modx who have familiarity with Evolution. Understandable because that is where a lot of the initial users of Revolution would come from.
However there will be a need for the documentation to be repurposed for first time Modx users starting with Revolution.
There could be a need to merge the existing documentation/tutorials/guides written originally for evolution with the documentation for Revolution. In fact Bob your own tremendous work for Evolution would be a great place to start with. i see you have made a begining and look forward to more.

Great suggestion. It’s a tough decision because there are new users for Evolution too, so you hate to rewrite everything. OTOH, it’s a pain to maintain two copies of everything.