Modx right for me? -- Workflow, and multiple content Areas on a page/template?

Hi,

I’ve got what is probably a pretty basic question. I’m trying to evaluate whether ModX is the right CMS for what I need. I have only read read the documentation and used the demo, but haven’t yet deployed a site. I haven’t really grasped the workflow yet, and my question revolves around taht.

I like that it seems really easy to take an existing site and plug it right into the templates without hacking up a bunch of PHP code -- just add some [*content*] tags. It seems that when you add a new page (’add a document’) it always adds to the same area of the page. What I’d need is to be able to add content onto different content areas of a single page. So, for example, the template might have [*content_for_left_column*], and [*content_for_right_column*] in the appropriate places. How I imagine this might work is there is ’add content’ button on a page which looks much like add document does now, but there is an additional dropdown menu next to the other dropdowns which parses the template for the various places the content might go, and lets you choose one of the content areas as a landing place for the content: ’right column’ or ’left column’. If the template only had the standard [*content*] then there would be only one choice.

I guess a larger issue is, when you edit a page, are you always just editing one whole page at once? (with wysiwyg text area and associated TVs) as a single chunk? I’d like to be able to add discreet chunks of data to a single column. Each of these chunks has associated templates and TVs. I am not sure if this is something that the snippets or chunks could do.

As an example of the kind of workflow I’m talking about: I might create a ’personal profile’ chunk/snippet which has 4 custom TV fields and an associated template which takes those fields (Name, Favorite Color, Height, Weight) and creates the HTML for a personal profile. As an enduser, I click on a page in the left navigation which already exists and has some content on it. I click ’add content’, gets asked ’what kind of content?’, and choose ’add personal profile’. In the course of creating that content, I choose whether it goes into the left or right column (the content area mentioned above). Then I fill in the appropriate TV fields: name, favorite color, height, weight. Once added, I can go back to the page and add more profiles onto the left or right column.

Can this kind of workflow be achieved in Modx? From what I’ve seen, the TV fields come very close to doing what I mention but only treat a single page as a single block of content.

Thanks for any ideas.

as a newbie, having already made the commitment to modx for several projects I’m working - I’m still trying to get a handle on multiple content areas myself - looks like no one has replied to your question, but assuming you have worked this out somehow or another.. Any clues?

TVs give you unlimited content areas.

It kinda sounds like you’re wanting the community features talked about here. TV’s will help you achieve this, along with other plugins, like PPP that would help you extend user profiles.

As Ryan says, TVs allow you to define several content fields which you can use to make several areas editable and that’s one big plus of MODx among others...

Editing those content fields is easy, you can do it in the manager or directly frontend thanks to quickedit (you have edit buttons appearing for each content areas). Remember that there is the word template in Template Variables : in the manager, the content fields won’t appear until you have selected the proper template. And that also means you have assigned your TVs to your template to begin with... You’ll see the workflow is way more efficient than many other CMS because things are so flexible. But it’s hard to describe it all, you have to experiment to really grasp what MODx can do for you

As for switching an existing website to MODx, that’s very easy and fast since MODx fully separates content and presentation, I mean once you’re proficient with it you can switch in a matter of minutes

Thanks to all who picked up this thread. My own original issue developed out of confusion around percceived differences between the [*Content*] ’area’ and TV’s in general, wheras I didn’t get that [*Content*] is just another TV. I actually I had searched whatever documentation I could find, including the wiki, guides, and 2rd party, but was mostly looking in the Designers Guide when i should have been in the Developers Guide. SO perhaps two suggestions re the docs coming out of this (as I haven’t been the only one with such a fundamental query). 1: Make clear(er) the status of [*Content*] as a TV. 2: cross link from designer guide to developers guide.

I still have a gobsmackingly large amount to learn but am already blown away with the possibilities for Modx.

Well, it’s not really a TV. TVs were added later; all the fields stored in the "site_content" field in the database can be accessed with the [*...*] tags; that was in the original core.

TVs are bound to templates, so only documents using the specified template can use the TV, and of course they can contain a great deal more than just simple strings. So while TVs are a suitable subject for developers, since they can contain php code among other things (@EVAL), the basic original document variables ([*content*], [*id*], [*parent*] etc) are suitable topics for designers and editors.

The new core will eliminate this admittedly fuzzy, but very real, distinction.