Newbie help needed

Here is my scenario:

I am running Win XP Pro with XAMPP installed on my laptop with Dreamweaver 8.

I can preview my pages, but I can’t access the manager to experiment around with the features.

I have the site installed under xampp\htdocs in a folder called ’Natalie’. This is where I installed the modx-0.9.5 folder.

Is my install correct so far and how can I access the manager?

I am a newbie to CMS and have limited PHP skills (so be gentle please).

Do I need to rename my .html files with the .php extension to get them to work correctly?

Thanks!

Oh, also, when I preview the pages from Dreamweaver 8, in Firefox and IE, they do come up using the http://localhost/ if that helps.

Also, the xampp installation is working correctly according to all of the controls and Apache and mySQL is running.

Quote from: ejcross at Dec 08, 2006, 04:18 PM

Is my install correct so far and how can I access the manager?

I am a newbie to CMS and have limited PHP skills (so be gentle please).

More information needed...

Have you actually done the web-based install process? This is where you use your browser to navigate to

localhost/Natalie/modx-0.9.5/install

and enter information about the database, database user, passwords and set up the admin user.


After that you can enter the manager just by going to

localhost/Natalie/modx-0.9.5/manager

and you will get a login screen..


HTH

Gordon

hold on a minute... you can preview your pages, but you cannot access the Manager? MODx does not keep its "pages" in .html files on the server, you use the Manager to put them in the database. The only real page you access is the index.php page, with the ID of the actual document you want in the URL: http://localhost/index.php?id=1 for the home page.

The Friendly URLs and the rewrite rules in the .htaccess file can be used to map the alias name you give each document, such as "home.html", to the correct real link (index.php?id=1).

What will happen is that MODx will go to the database and get all the information for document #1, then generate an actual HTML document to send to the Apache server to pass on to the user’s browser.

When you say you cannot access the Manager, what exactly do you mean? Do you get the login page? What happens when you put http://localhost/manager in your browser’s address bar?

Ok, so I’m really having some problems here >:( !

First, does my site folder named ’Natalie’ go into the htdocs folder under xampp?
Next, I place the modx folder under the ’Natalie’ folder and then do the web install, am I right so far?

I have gotten so frustrated that I deleted everything, removed services, uninstalled, and reinstalled it all.

I am newer to php and mysql, so I know that there is a learning curve with those -- any recommendation mostly for a good book or resource for php?

About using the Modx CMS system. Does the documentation come in one downloadable file that I can save on my local computer or print off for reference? I don’t have access all the time to the internet, and sometimes when I do it’s with *ack* dialup *ack*.

I have just attempted to reinstall the Modx service with the above description of locations using Dreamweaver 8. When I attempted to install the service by going to the install/index.php I am now getting Object Not Found! Any help would be appreciated as I am at a loss.

Quote from: ejcross at Dec 12, 2006, 08:52 AM

I have just attempted to reinstall the Modx service with the above description of locations using Dreamweaver 8. When I attempted to install the service by going to the install/index.php I am now getting Object Not Found! Any help would be appreciated as I am at a loss.

I am at a completely loss as to how you would install MODx with Dreamweaver, which is an HTML authoring package, not a browser. I think it’s probably best if you learn a bit more about the basic workings of PHP and MySQL, and can verify beyond a doubt that they’re working before moving on to installing any applications including MODx.

ejcross, I would forget about Dreamweaver for the time being...it will only confuse things:

1) Unzip modx into a folder called blah
2) Under your htdocs create your folder called mymodxsite
3) Put all the files from folder blah into mymodxsite
4) Now visit http://localhost/mymodxsite/install

- This will get you as far as the modx installation.
- Please ensure you have setup an empty MYSQL database and you have the host (localhost) username and password handy as you will need all these in order to install modx.

Please note modx is a CMS......the idea of modx is to empower users to edit content themselves, hence the reason people got really confused when you were saying you were viewing your pages using Dreamweaver!

Hope this helps......

Ok, thanks for the input.....

I have finally figured it out, I think. I now have it working, installed into the folder under xampp/htdocs and can access the manager. I am now learning all of the features of the ins and outs of creating documents, templates, locations, etc. and am working toward getting ready to move my daughters site to this platform and a new server.

I use dreamweaver for some of the other sites I maintain and didn’t know that it wouldn’t work with this. I am now figuring out that part of it.

Is there a location that has some good basic php or MODx code samples and tutorials? I am especially interested in creating a photo gallery, blog and guestbook / comment form. I know modx has these features, but I would really like to learn more about them.

Thanks for your patience with this newby, and help also!

Here is what I have now for my daughters site: http://www.natalie-update.org

Congrats on getting it up and running!