Is MODx right for me?

Hello,

I’ve been reading up on MODx and it seems great. Exactly what I’m looking for actually. However, the demo pages at opencms.org aren’t working, and I haven’t had a chance to actually see it in action. So forgive me if I ask anything that should be obvious.

Does the MODx system support multiple editable content sections on a single page? More than just "content" and "sidebar"?

Does MODx have a nice WYSIWYG text editor? Or is it the same editor I’m using here on this forum?

Does MODx support on-page editing?

If I, as the developer, prepare several different page designs and configure the MODx installation for my non-technical users, can the user, when creating a new page, choose which of my designs to use as its template? I’d very much like a system where I can define different designs for "product pages" versus "documentation pages", for example, and have the users choose them as is appropriate for their needs.

Does MODx support images-as-content and user uploading of images?

And, lastly, does anyone know when the demo will be working again at opencms.org so I don’t have to pester all of you with stupid questions.

Thanks

Chris

Quote from: cperkins at Sep 27, 2006, 02:45 AM

I’ve been reading up on MODx and it seems great. Exactly what I’m looking for actually. However, the demo pages at opencms.org aren’t working, and I haven’t had a chance to actually see it in action. So forgive me if I ask anything that should be obvious.

That’s a third party demo that refreshes from time to time and is out of our hands. It’s just as easy to do a quick install in a local dev environment and test it out, and you get full control.

Does the MODx system support multiple editable content sections on a single page? More than just "content" and "sidebar"?
Does MODx have a nice WYSIWYG text editor? Or is it the same editor I’m using here on this forum?
Does MODx support on-page editing?

Virtually unlimited custom content fields that also support @BINDINGS which are unique to MODx. They’re incredibly powerful but take a bit of work to get your head around. We currently support TinyMCE or FCK Editor RTEs, plus there’s Markdown, Texy and Textile plugins available as well. Our front-end "in page editing" is called Quick Edit and clients love it.

If I, as the developer, prepare several different page designs and configure the MODx installation for my non-technical users, can the user, when creating a new page, choose which of my designs to use as its template? I’d very much like a system where I can define different designs for "product pages" versus "documentation pages", for example, and have the users choose them as is appropriate for their needs.

Yes. Not in a totally optimal way, but in an entirely workable way.

Does MODx support images-as-content and user uploading of images?

Yes.

And, lastly, does anyone know when the demo will be working again at opencms.org so I don’t have to pester all of you with stupid questions.

Every two hours unless they’ve got larger issues.

hi modx community,

just wanted to clock in. and say THANK YOU.

i’m pretty new to modx, er...in fact I’m pretty new to building web pages, full-stop. have been web savvy for a while - OK, so I use ie, sorry...will doubtless get round to this but used to produce content for the web, and work with a lot of designers and coders at BBCi, f’rinstance.

then i had time to expand on an idea for a site, and decided to build it myself. gulp. sad sod, i read html for dummies, decided google, W3C etc was better and soon found myself reading Zeldman and Meyer - what a surge! learnt dreamweaver, learnt that it’s better to write the code if you want standards, went googling again and got excited about a bunch of things culminating in ajax.

then i thought, maybe i should research a cms. like, what comes first, chicken/egg. actually, that’s a question i’ve still not really found an answer to, but i sumise they kind of evolve together for a newbie. you need to know what cms options you have in order to cater for your site needs, or more importantly to know what and what you can’t do with what you’ve cooked up in your design and code. er, hmn...sorry if i sound so damn basic. i am. in fact i’m not even sure i’m posting this in the right forum

looked at a bunch of stuff, from cms400 to wordpress, tested galore and ended up installing joomla. typical! but then i started playing with it - it’s kind of a html1 eq to moonfruit, no, the naughties answer to geocities. great for most sites, but not if you want control, dynamics and standards. and by the looks of it not if you need to be able to interact with a receptive forum. (don’t even mention drupal, was my reckoning, those guys are way too *dry*, doubtless way overstretched.)

i kept googling [cms] vs [cms], and eventually up popped modx. at your rate, soon enough it’ll be popping up first.

ok, so i’ve gotta learn php, by the looks of it, oh...and js wouldn’t hurt

sobeit. in fact, 5 hours into this forum, another 12 into the docs - i am slow, yup - i want to, am highly enthused to. ok, so i’ve read the caveats, "we can only really accomodate folks with the extra skills, know about closing tags or somat, and somat and somat" ...

but this cms is awesome. this community kicks. i can hardly believe it is such a rare breed, mixing standards with script-power. looks like i learnt this web thang at the right time, in a way, so i don’t at least have to drop bad habits. and no better place to start, that here with modx, plus all those css/script bookmarks. if you’ll have me...i’ll try not to ask dumb questions. PRAISE BE THE WIKI. and i hope to be able to contribute.

ok, gotta work out some ridiculously pathetic things now, like how to link my stylesheet in the manager. sad, innit. just thought you deserved to know that you are influencing the most meek, as well as the cream of the industry.

did i say thank you...

(just shove in a few more of these for good measure.)

You can log in to my Manager at http://www.sottwell.com/manager with username "guest" password "guestuser" and look at just about everything, including the templates and the documents and chunks with snippet calls, etc.

big cheers Susan...many thanks. Olly.
PS - sorted the css - when enabled it pays actually to use the aliases!

First off, I must give my gratitude to the MODx community and developers. This is such a versatile product! I love the innovative approach and code-based tagging/mapping through Chunks, Snippets, etc! Genius.

I have always been one to code-from-scratch. Give me an advanced version of Notepad (e.g. http://www.emeditor.com) and Adobe PhotoShop and I’m set!

Having used Joomla! as my introduction into the CMS-era, I was impressed. However, I was quickly losing interest finding what could take me a matter of seconds to do using code was so much harder through the menuing, modules and/or components. You need to consider the audience/end-users; also, like most things new, there generally will be a learning curve. Oddly, it seemed rather steep...

For a simple and robust, interlinked, SEM/SEO-aimed solution MODx was the obvious choice. It wasn’t even 10 minutes during/after the install before I was hooked. The ability to apply templating at the page-level is Huge. And the power in which you can build your templates is even bigger. I’m still learning the real secrets of MODx, and am thoroughly entrigued!

@Ryan,

What do you mean by:

...Virtually unlimited custom content fields that also support @BINDINGS...

When I am editting at the page-level, I only have One content section [FCKEditor] which I reference in my template as [*content*] ...

• Are you saying that there is a way to assign things like [*content2*], [*content3*], etc at the page-level? (Page-specific)
  
• Where does @BINDINGS tie in?

Quote from: pixelchutes at Oct 12, 2006, 02:04 PM

Are you saying that there is a way to assign things like [*content2*], [*content3*], etc at the page-level? (Page-specific)

Yes, he is. Check out template variables, using the RichText option.

Quote from: pixelchutes at Oct 12, 2006, 02:04 PM

Where does @BINDINGS tie in?

For example, If you want a page to have all the properties of its parent, make the default value of a Template Variable be: @INHERIT

Viola, instant regression.

Quote from: splittingred at Oct 12, 2006, 02:11 PM

Yes, he is. Check out template variables, using the RichText option.

Aahh...that makes so much sense now! I am using TVs (I’m catching on to the lingo now!) ...but didn’t fully understand their true potential.

I was using a static TEXT option TV for a path to my current template.

e.g.
[TEXT] tpl = ’assets/templates/my_Curr_template/’

then, in my template, I can just place something like:



..I wonder if this is not necessary? (or a better solution?) Regardless, this is huge! I can create "component" based TVs that plug right into my Template at the page-level. This is gold. You can plan on a donation for this in itself.


Quote from: splittingred at Oct 12, 2006, 02:11 PM

For example, If you want a page to have all the properties of its parent, make the default value of a Template Variable be: @INHERIT

Viola, instant regression.

OK...so I’m trying to understand this in a real-world scenario. Are you saying if I created a RichText "content2" TV with default val of @INHERIT, that all child elements would obtain the value of the top-most defined "content2" ? If you are, then that is bad ass! I’ll do some digging through the Docs to review the list of @BINDINGS!

Thanks for the quick response!

pixelchutes:

Re: bindings, yes, that is what I am saying.

And regarding you trying to do dynamic CSS files with TVs, I recommend this wiki article I put up on that:

http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Dynamic_CSS_with_TVs

@splittingreg,

Rock on! Great Tut.

BTW...your MODx looks MUCH better than mine (your screenshots) ...are you using a skin, or > 0.9.2.1 ? ...I will search for the 0.9.5 BETA and see if upgrading is easy.