Newbie questions about MODx

Hello,

I am a web developer who is just started to look at using a CMS for some of my future projects. In the past, I’ve avoided packaged CMS systems and just did everything with custom code, but then I stumbled upon MODx and it looks like it might be a lot better than some of the CMS systems that I had looked at in the past.

I am thinking about using MODx for a small site that I will be putting together for a client, and I wanted to see what the MODx community thinks about how well this CMS will work for my project.

The site needs the following features:

- A news section on the front-end, that shows news items (date, heading, article text and/or link to article on the web) and an admin feature that allows the client to create new news items. Also, the ability to present these in archives based on year on the front-end.

- A photos section that will shows photos with dates and captions and an admin feature to upload new photos and provide captions. These should also be archived by year on the front-end.

- A Q&A section. On the front-end, users can read Questions and Answers, and submit their own Question. On the admin side, the client can respond to questions and decide if they should be visible on the front-end.

From my brief look through the forums, I’m thinking that the news section would be possible to implement using Ditto 2. Is this correct? How about the photo section? Is there a built-in photo gallery module or any good custom modules for this?

Also, there are a couple of other features on the site that I will be doing a custom database and coding to implement. Based on the description of MODx, it seems that I should have no problem writing some type of module/chunk or something similar that will allow me to put my own PHP code that accesses a database other than the MODx db into a MODx page. Is this correct?

Thanks for any comments or suggestions. I’m looking forward to trying out MODx if it is going to fit the bill for this project.

You’re correct on Ditto.

You could use MaxiGallery or the Gallery2 module for your gallery. Or create a gallery using Ditto for that matter.

Not so sure about best way to handle the QA section off the top of my head, but I’m sure someone will chime in with a good workflow.

For your custom database stuff you could use either the DB API or xPDO (see xpdo.org).

Thanks for the reply.

If I already have my own custom DB classes, can I use those from inside a MODx module, or do I have to use the DB API? I guess my basic question is if there is any type of constraints or limitations on the PHP code that you can insert.

blake

Quote from: blake06 at Apr 20, 2007, 01:19 PM

If I already have my own custom DB classes, can I use those from inside a MODx module, or do I have to use the DB API? I guess my basic question is if there is any type of constraints or limitations on the PHP code that you can insert.

There are no restrictions on PHP within MODx. If you can [tt]include()[/tt] the file, it will work.

Of course, there’s the usual limitations of not being able to duplicate function names, class names, etc. but if you name it right, you shouldn’t have an problem.

Something to keep in mind however is that there is no point in duplicating code. I would first look at the MODx DB API and see if it satisfies your needs. If it doesn’t, then you can include it. The more code that’s parsed, the longer the request will take

Welcome to MODx!