Can MODx do this? + CMS Made Simple Comparison [was: Am I Missing Something?]

David touched on an interesting point, when he said

A fundamental distinction between MODx and most systems out there is, it’s really a framework built on top of core CMS features.

Right now, this is true, but the goal of the core team is to flip that on its head, and make MODx a CMS built on top of a core framework. Things will get even more flexible and easier to develop as the project progresses.

Quote from: davidm at Oct 19, 2006, 11:03 PM

...But what you say make sense, Ditto is not for everyone and for every use....

Thanks David, I was worried I would either come across as a ’complainer’ ie someone who only points out the drawbacks of ModX or people wouldn’t ’get’ what i was on about. i admit that sometimes its hard to describe your problems and what you what like to propose as the solution (it took me about an hour to write the first thread explainging my issues)

Thanks for the validation of finding CMS (nice to know after sorting through all those CMS’s my thinking is aligning with others ’in the know’) and your assessment of its shortcomings compared to ModX. This saves me tremendous amounts of time trying to compare features that may be hidden. Your explanation of TV’s is also welcome, I was still trying to see the power/flexibity of these, I think it is becoming clearer

who knows even offer an automatic snippet calls generator via a simple GUI (choose the sort order, number of articles to list, filter to apply... etc). Now here is an idea

I am very impressed by the honest and upfront responses to my issues from the ModX team.

Rather than take the defensive attitude of "...if you don’t like it, don’t use it" or bury their head in the sand (I know what it is like when people only point out the things not going right when 90% of things are going well) with the "...there is no problem, it works for the majority of our users" response.

What i got was what I was after ie "yes, we understand you and yes there is an issue, but it can be (and is being) addressed". That’s all i can ask for


Let’s keep the communication flowing

Edit
Quote from: davidm

...who knows even offer an automatic snippet calls generator via a simple GUI (choose the sort order, number of articles to list, filter to apply... etc). Now here is an idea

If there where categories/tags attached to the news/blog post then the snippet call could be used to create category pages or aggregrate like posts ie ’all sport posts page" would include posts tagged with basketball, baseball etc. This would be very useful and powerful!

Quote from: sottwell at Oct 19, 2006, 11:09 PM

David touched on an interesting point, when he said

A fundamental distinction between MODx and most systems out there is, it’s really a framework built on top of core CMS features.

Right now, this is true, but the goal of the core team is to flip that on its head, and make MODx a CMS built on top of a core framework. Things will get even more flexible and easier to develop as the project progresses.

Nicely said Susan, this sums it up quite well (mind if I re-use this for evangelizing purposes ? )

Quote from: kiwi_dude at Oct 19, 2006, 11:35 PM

Thanks David, I was worried I would either come across as a ’complainer’ ie someone who only points out the drawbacks of ModX or people wouldn’t ’get’ what i was on about. i admit that sometimes its hard to describe your problems and what you what like to propose as the solution (it took me about an hour to write the first thread explainging my issues)

Well, it’s an hour well spent, ideas came out of it

Your querry was really constructive and made some really fine points, thus there is no reason why you should come accross as a complainer.

Quote from: kiwi_dude

Thanks for the validation of finding CMS (nice to know after sorting through all those CMS’s my thinking is aligning with others ’in the know’) and your assessment of its shortcomings compared to ModX. This saves me tremendous amounts of time trying to compare features that may be hidden. Your explanation of TV’s is also welcome, I was still trying to see the power/flexibity of these, I think it is becoming clearer

You’re welcome

I have spent a *lot* of time testing CMSes before I found MODx, which basically has everything I dreamed of (minus some remaining items which will come along with the next gen, but I don’t mind the missing features -> ever since I came onboard I knew the people here would make those a reality in a matter of months, and in the smartest of way at that).

Quote from: kiwi_dude

I am very impressed by the honest and upfront responses to my issues from the ModX team.

Rather than take the defensive attitude of "...if you don’t like it, don’t use it" or bury their head in the sand (I know what it is like when people only point out the things not going right when 90% of things are going well) with the "...there is no problem, it works for the majority of our users" response.

What i got was what I was after ie "yes, we understand you and yes there is an issue, but it can be (and is being) addressed". That’s all i can ask for

Yeah well, I sure can relate to the surprise you had... lots of communities are quite defensive about their baby (so to speak).

I think that’s also what makes this project a strong one : we like to have our assumptions challenged, and we listen constructive people (I mean, had you come to us with a negative attitude, you might have found us a little less welcoming )

Be my guest, David. I’m not at all averse to having anything I say that’s worth repeating repeated.

Ok, I know that developers don’t give ’timeframes’ for releases and it is generally impolite to ask, but nothing ventured, nothing gained

Can anybody give me a ’worse case’ and ’best case’ scenario for the magical 1.0?

Quote from: kiwi_dude at Oct 20, 2006, 12:06 AM

Ok, I know that developers don’t give ’timeframes’ for releases and it is generally impolite to ask, but nothing ventured, nothing gained

Can anybody give me a ’worse case’ and ’best case’ scenario for the magical 1.0?

Worst case: Never.
Best case: tomorrow.

LOL, just kidding.
for real the only answer is sometime after 0.9.5 comes out.  0.9.5 has brought up new challenges for the developers, many that were unexpected.  The reason a "reasonable guess" as to when 1.0 will be availabe is "when it’s done" is partly because 0.9.5 isn’t out yet and until it is finalized, it is hard to even get a good guess on what the challenges will be to get to the one point oh mark.  I believe one of the major goals is to be free of all etomite code, on which much progress is being made.

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

Indeed, as far as I see it, being free of legacy etomite code is the only bit that makes it 1.0. There are various hints about the place to an extra release between 0.9.5 and 1.0 and it is entirely possible that the user and revision issues will be addressed in a release that is highly stable and deployable but still starts with 0, which makes the whole timeframe somewhat elastic. Realistically, we’re looking at next year for 1.0.

But it *is* possible to use MODx as it stands, by addressing the issues using existing components and a modest amount of custom code (none of which would change the core).

Quote from: kiwi_dude at Oct 19, 2006, 07:43 PM

Quote from: PaulGregory at Oct 19, 2006, 07:26 PM

...I would concede that if you don’t trust your editors, then you’ll run into issues with MODx as it stands presently. The majority of concerns that I’ve heard have been from people anxious about hypothetical issues; I don’t recall any actual problems that have happened. If you *can* trust people to keep within their areas while giving them more access then they need, then there’s no problem at all. ...

Sorry Paul, but developing a website for a school and giving all interested parties ie community/parent groups/teachers/executive staff etc access to add/edit/change areas they have been given permission for is not a hypothetical problem, it is very real ie disgruntled parents, people making mistakes & deleting the wrong thing, spelling mistakes, bad grammar etc. Happens on a daily basis

Intriguingly, you appear to define giving other people access to areas as the real problem! Incompetence is covered by my point about trust. If you can trust users to EITHER create unpublished documents and wait for someone who can actually string a sentence together to tidy up the page before publishing it OR publish something that isn’t crap, then a lot of headaches go away.

If you don’t trust your users at all, as seems the case from the way you describe the likely human errors, it sounds like the way to go for you right now is to have a system of users submitting content via the frontend which is then subedited, approved and published by a competent Manager user (ie the "give people very little control" approach). Adding documents in an "unpublished" state is already possible with the right snippets etc.

Now, the only bit missing in that scenario is the ability for "Mr Pour-Spelre, PTA Chair" to take a published document, edit it, and save the new draft somewhere where it wouldn’t replace the published document until it had been approved by "Mr Perfect, Web Overlord". However, creating a new document using a copy of existing text is doable, and switching document content is also possible to code right now.

Similarly, it is entirely possible to keep copies of all documents in case someone makes a mistake.

So in a matter of hours, you could emulate a (partly hand-cranked) revisioning system within MODx. I appreciate that this is not, in any real way "Made Simple", and it ends up using even *more* documents, but it would work.

PS: Note it is MODx not ModX and the plural of TV is TVs (but even OpenGeek gets that wrong).

Thanks Scotty

I was of the belief that 1.0 was being developed concurrently to 9.5 and was a seperate fork with new code. So, my hope was that ths would have more of a definitive timeframe than ’after 9.5?’

Cheers

Dean

Quote from: PaulGregory at Oct 20, 2006, 06:16 AM

Intriguingly, you appear to define giving other people access to areas as the real problem!

Isn’t this always the case?

In all seriousness, it not just about trust (heck, i won’t meet half the people that will have access to specific areas, they just need to be able to), it is about responsibility and accountability, all it takes is one ’mistake’ and in a School situation this could have serious repercussions. Trusting people is one issue, maintaining high standards is another.

I appreciate your advice on how to accomplish this, but forgive me for saying this, doesn’t MODx pride itself in being user friendly? These workarounds, while possible, would be a logistical nightmare for any administrator to maintain.

But the fact that things are extensible without hacking the core gives me hope

Cheers

Dean

MODx provides a framework around which you could build this solution. The built in permission system right now makes this not idea. MODx will never be the right solution for all problems, unfortunately. I can personally say from the type of questions you’re asking I’d love to see you here, but the fact is that another project might make sense for you. But that’s a question you’ll have to answer; it’s baked-in-features-right-now vs. what’s coming + the community + extendability.

As far as the 1.0 timeframe, you’re correct that it’s being co-developed simultaneously with 0.9.5 (and an interim release).

0.9.5 is in late beta. We’re continuing to address corner case install/upgrade issues and clean up the demo content. It’s locked down for feature additions. Should see a final external beta release this week in fact (lots has been fixed since beta 3).

0.9.7 is quite developed and the next tentatively scheduled regular release. It’s a completely rewritten core (backported from 1.0). It’s built on top of XPDO and includes an API extension that currently has probably 95%+ compatibility with 0.9.x projects (and probably 99%+ compatibility with projects that only use public – not internal – API methods). You’ll gain some quite interesting capabilities and much more flexibility with this one too ... more on that later (after our 0.9.5 release). In fact, I’d argue (and will continue to do so) that this should really be our 1.0 release since it should be (core-codewise) eto-free. You could quite-likely see a beta release of this this year. That’s all I’m gonna say as it does provide an out if things go absolutely haywire.

1.0 is likewise tentatively scheduled to address some other legacy design baggage like the separation of web/manager users and a frame-free manager. Toss in some revisioning and rollbacks and a few other advanced capabilities and you have a good idea of what the plans were/are/might be. 1.0 in it’s current plans is probably mid-2007 at the earliest based on what I could best-guess. But likewise, I really consider it a 2.0 (actually more like a 3.0 or 4.0) as far as capabilities and architecture goes.

Hope this helps...