New to MODx, need some answers

Hi guys,
I know about MODx since several years, but I haven't done anything with it yet. Several years ago I used Joomla (I started with Mambo to be honest), then I've evolved and I migrated to Drupal and I'm a happy Drupal user since 2-3 years. However now I want to evolve again Drupal is a really great CMS and framework, but there are some restrictions and things I don't like, especially in the templates design. I want to touch every aspect of the design and be entirely mine, and as I read this is the strength side of MODx.

I read the MODx site and tried the DEMO, but I still have some unanswered questions.

1. Every site I make is multilingual. Is MODx fully capable to create and administer multilingual sites? I mean interface translations and content translations with easy management system, suitable for blond office assistants?

2. One of the BIG strengths of Drupal is the possibility to create different content types with custom fields. I know there are Template Variables here, but how they are associated to the different content types?

3. One BIG thing that I miss in Drupal (and every other CMS I've tried over the years) is the possibility to create custom Admin panels (yes, suitable for blond office assistants again). When I build for clients I want to deliver them extremely minimized Admin panel with only the items they need to maintain. They don't need to know about TV's, templates, modules, site architecture. They want just a buttons like "create new product" or "create new blog page", or "create new menu button" or "edit selected products". On the edit pages they need only the fields they understand and need. They don't understand what are meta tags or to choose different templates for every content page. They need "product title", "product image" with a Browse button next to it and a "category" drop-down with listed predefined product categories (for example). So, for every project I create in Drupal, I develop custom and very simple and easy to use admin with very, very restricted access. Is there here such possibility?

4. I see there is a "Remove Locks" button in Manager, so there are content locks here. I really hated this thing in Joomla. It often happens that moderators start edit some page, but then they decide to close it and just close the browser tab. In result next time they want to edit that page, they call me with the question "why I can't edit this page? Please FIX THIS ASAP!". Can I remove the lock mechanism? [ed. note: mishoboss last edited this post 15 years ago.]

@mishboss

• 1. Yes, you can do multilingual sites in Revolution using a variety of methods including but not limited to contexts, 3rd party add-ons or other solution.
• 2. Template variables by their nature are tied to Templates. Typically each different content type you have is going to have a different template; e.g., a blog post has a blog post template, staff bio has a bio template and therfore fields for those content types will be associated for that template. You can assign TVs to any template you'd like. It's a different way of thinking about custom fields but it covers about 99% of cases. The other one percent might suggest an actual custom content type that can be made via the api.
• 3. MODX has the ability to limit what people can see depending on user level. It is currently a little complex to get started with the user permissons in Revo but you can provide access to only those things you want people to see, you can create custom dashboards (as of 2.2) and you can rename nearly any field in the manager either through form Customization or editing the Lexicon. In addition you can use custom field names like Product Name or Author Name to replace the "Title" field label too based on Template or Parent or other criteria using Form Customization.
• 4. Locking in the manager is designed to prevent 2 people from accessing the same document at the same time. The locks are session based but also time based and expire after a set interval which can be updated in System Settings. It's not recommended to turn locking off but you can certainly set a short time limit on it. The default lock duration is 20minutes. In most cases your clients will not get errors unless someone has recently edited a document and has (as you put it abandoned the session by closing the browser) This method for locking is about as good as you can get balancing the protection of edits and ensuring no frustrating barriers to editing.

I hope this answers your questions. If you are interested in previewing what's coming in MODX Revolution 2.2 you can download and install our nightlies at http://modx.com/revolution/download/nightlies/

Hi, Jay, and thank you for the great answers!

One last question. Can I create custom edit pages for my customers? Now the edit page has tabs like "Create/Edit document", "Page Settings", "Template variables" and others. This doesn't mean anything to a regular person and it's very frustrating to a person who only needs to edit some content type related fields like "product title", "product category" and "price".

Also I need an easy multilingual content management. 90% of the websites I make with Drupal are bilingual and my clients always complain about the method of multilingual administration. What I want to deliver to my clients is a CMS that provides bilingual content editing on just one edit page. I want every field to be shown twice, one time for the first language, and second time for the second language. Well, to be honest, not every field, because for example if the field is "image field" I want to show it only once for both languages. For example this is what I want when user creates or edits an item of type "product" (or template in MODx):

Title (English): iPhone mobile phone
Title (Bulgarian): iPhone мобилен телефон

Product Description (English): iPhone test description
Product Description (Bulgarian): iPhone тестово описание

Product Picture: iphone.jpg

Price $: 599

I don't want any other fields like "Uses Template", "Resource Alias" or "Link Attributes". I only need the fields that my clients need to modify and I want them in one page, not in different tabs with labels that doesn't mean anything to them.

Is this possible and easy doable with MODx?

Thank you one more time for the great answers!

You might take a look at NewsPublisher. It will let a user edit or create a document in the front end, showing only the fields and TVs you select, in the order you select.

If the second-language fields are all TVs (e.g., Pagetitle-Bulgarian, Content-Bulgarian), you can show all of them in the form with the appropriate captions. Rich-text editing with TinyMCE is also an option.