Congrats... But May I Be So Bold

Yes, first off, I’ve been using ModX for approx 5(ish) months now and I think it’s fecking great! So a huge well done and polite golf clap to those involved

I "came" from Drupal and whilst - as I’m sure ModX veterans would agree - they are different animals, I really do think ModX will be a serious challenger due, if nothing else, to its superior ease-of-setup, manager UI, ease-of-themeability, hierarchical menu creation (you don’t know how difficult that is in Drupal!), blah blah blah... and you’re not even at v1.0 yet (as opposed to Drupal’s v5.0)!!

I’ve recommended it in forums I frequent and moderate and have recently seen some of those members now recommend it too... so the word is spreading!

OK, here it is... But...

Hey, don’t worry, it’s not a big but - I appreciate the journey ModX is on.

The but is: One cannot help notice that a few Snippets feature large in ModX; most notably, Ditto, Jot, Wayfinder (and possibly one or two others that escape me ATM).

I humbly ask/suggest that names more apt to their use be used.

When I think of Ditto, my mind becomes foggy - What does it do?

Let me refine that - I want to do something within my theme template; I wonder what tools I already have that can I can use; my mind knows Ditto can do a lot (and is awesome), but the word gives me no guide.

Wayfinder, is a good name - I have no problem with it but I wonder if non-pilots would know what it meant quickly?

Jot - Again, not entirely sure how the name ties-in easily with it use/purpose.

I understand branding ’n’ all that but my argument really is user-friendliness.

I dunno, I’m thinking the same old tired but trusted names like: ’link-builder’; ’teaser-manager’, whatever... would help tremendously.

I can only speak personally, but, because I have to hunt down (in here) what tool can provide a particular solution to the task in hand, I have literally spent a few hours at a time with search and come away giving-up.

Sorry if this has been discussed before - just chalk this to another vote, if so. And apologies to the respective authors of those useful tools - It’s not your coding or their usefulness I’m getting at... I’m sure you know.

There’s a couple of other niggles I have with ModX but I’ll not push my luck I think it’s wicked - Just thought I’d come out of the shadows and contribute some constructive.

Just ignore the names and do your job

Quote from: TheWhippinpost at Jun 18, 2007, 10:29 AM

I humbly ask/suggest that names more apt to their use be used.

When I think of Ditto, my mind becomes foggy - What does it do?

Let me refine that - I want to do something within my theme template; I wonder what tools I already have that can I can use; my mind knows Ditto can do a lot (and is awesome), but the word gives me no guide.

...

I dunno, I’m thinking the same old tired but trusted names like: ’link-builder’; ’teaser-manager’, whatever... would help tremendously.

I totally get what you’re saying but this is also another key differentiator with these components... they’re incredibly flexible and you can really pigeon hole them into a single use. For instance on the redesigned MODx support site, Ditto will be used to build:

• an ad management platform for sponsor ads
• a FAQ
• a team bio page
• a multi-author blog
• a random quote display tool
• RSS feeds
• and probably a few other things

Ditto marks when used in writing mean "the same as what’s above" and that’s pretty much what ditto does ... show’s what exists in other locations in a different form. For more about Ditto, see http://ditto.modxcms.com/ a site dedicated to it and that shows some other applications.

Given that a lot of the way that Ditto is built is due to some short falls in the current API and core. Mark’s done a good job of addressing those shortfalls, but we’re hopefully making the core more robust so that resource-specific work arounds and extensions will no longer be needed.

Also keep in mind that these tools are written on top of MODx and are not part of the core application per se. We chose to incorporate them in our pre-1.0 distributions as examples of what can be done. In the future, the MODx installer will be more focused on setting up your environment and then you’ll be able to pick and choose external resources at will. You’ll also be able to package custom sets of elements (snippets/plugins/etc.) as well. So if you want to use purpose-built, highly optimized "link-builder" tool instead of Ditto, go for it!

I can only speak personally, but, because I have to hunt down (in here) what tool can provide a particular solution to the task in hand, I have literally spent a few hours at a time with search and come away giving-up.

Man do I feel your pain. This is part of what we want to get a better grip on with the new support site. It’s too hard to find resources, and the forum search frequently leaves something to be desired.

Sorry if this has been discussed before - just chalk this to another vote, if so. And apologies to the respective authors of those useful tools - It’s not your coding or their usefulness I’m getting at... I’m sure you know.

There’s a couple of other niggles I have with ModX but I’ll not push my luck I think it’s wicked - Just thought I’d come out of the shadows and contribute some constructive.

I really appreciate your feedback and welcome it with open arms. I think that MODx is really breaking ground that requires a lot of unlearning the way other systems do things. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains yet to be determined but I can bet you can guess where I think it’ll wind up.

We need lots of help in making our support site a better resource, more organized and more consistent across properties. I think this is the single biggest advantage that other options have compared to MODx ... but I also think it’s an area that’s a lot easier to address compared to changing directions in how a piece of software works.

Thoughtful post Ryan, thanks.

I don’t have much time but allow me to clarify the "search games" I mentioned: I really should have added that, yes, I have these tools (with weird names ) but not exactly sure which one will best provide a solution. Hence my search terms have to either be too narrow, or too broad - Where it might be too narrow, for instance, might be because I’m restricting the scope to, say, Jot, not knowing whether or not that is a good target ’cos it’s not readily obvious (from its name) what it does.

I totally appreciate the difficulty in, perhaps, "taqgging" a tool like Ditto. Unfortunately, I still don’t know enough about it yet to advise but from what you described maybe sommat like: The Content Slicer; Content Knife; Content Pipe (to borrow from Yahoo slightly ).

My take on ModX is it goes to great lengths to seperate content from the underlying logic - as a good CMS should. If there’s one thing about Drupal it’s that, even at the theming level you’re inevitably sucked into peering within the innards of the engine - It starts off with a little bit of this, a little bit of that but before you know it, to understand sommat that should be rather simple, you have to dig beyond to understand the chain... then you’re 3 months down the road!

ModX does a fantastic job of avoiding that in the main but - and it is only my oppinion - this "issue", for want of a better term, is a barrier to providing a quick roadmap to where I need to travel.

Hey... it’s all about familiarality and I’m sure the penny will drop - I guess you’ve all done such a great job of seperating the content from the logic that one doesn’t need to get under the hood so much, hence, when you do, the familiarality isn’t there.

BTW, I actually think a lot of the documentation is far better than most of Drupal’s, FWIW... but then, it has a longer history, which inevitably causes problems with legacy and such-like.

Now, I will take CoolGoose’s advice, and get back to work

Quote from: rthrash at Jun 18, 2007, 11:23 AM

For instance on the redesigned MODx support site, Ditto will be used to build:

• an ad management platform for sponsor ads

Ditto is cool, but why bother reinventing the wheel? Did you consider using OpenAds? (http://www.openads.org/)

Andy