Looking for Advice on web admin front or back?

Hello All,

My background is with using joomla and I am having a lot of fun working with ModX and trying to create a site with same. I am having trouble converting something from a joomla concept to a ModX concept and was looking for advice?

I will first describe how I would go about doing this in Joomla which for some probably wont make a lot of sense but I will try to explain as best as I can. If I had a site that had listings and I needed to create / edit / modify these listings I would normally create a custom component that would show a tabular spreadsheet of all the listings that I could choose from click on it and modify its content or click on new to create a new one (with this I would be restricted to how the page would show up on the front end as well this is basically just creating a page to modify data in the database that the front end page would then parse the database and based on the link criteria would show the right listings. How do I go about doing this in ModX I wouldn’t think that I would create a new document for each listing as then I couldn’t restrict how it shows up on the front end however that is basically what I want is a new document for each listing. I am also not the person that will be create / editing the listing so I cant guarantee they will stick to the specifications laid out which Is why I need a template page to do this.


Also I was wondering if I should just create an admin webuser group and create a special page that allows front end editing of the listings based on the page they are on.

I guess what I am asking is what is the ModX equivalent to Joomlas component feature which is a rich front and back end component? Would this be a snippet?

Keep in mind that I still want to be able to AjaxSearch the pages like they are content pages ext..

How many records are you anticipating being in the "pages"?

In the 100’s

If 200-250 or below, I’d tend to lean towards making each page a document, using TVs for each custom column of "data". That way there’s no hacks needed for the search and you have a simple interface to editing each "record".

Above that you’d need to make a data manager module for the backend, and modify AjaxSearch to work with your tables as well. Not nearly as clearcut, but entirely doable. Susan (sottwell) has a great tutorial to get you started found here: http://www.sottwell.com/articles.html

Great! Thankyou for the input. I will definatly look over the tutorial as I have a feeling that is what I was looking for

Now when you say make each page a document and use TV’s for each column do you mean what I am thinking below:

Ok so how my database would be broken up would be Main Location (root) then Sub Locations (area’s) and then specific locations (property)

so I would make 1 document for Main Location and then 1 document that would be the template for the sub locations and 1 document that would be a template for the propertys or would it be that each property would be its own document.

Each property would be its own document ... wouldn’t need a custom database at all.

Ok so custom it is then! The only thing I have against doing it where each page is a new document is that the end user cant be trusted to make sure all pages look the same

I take it then that modules are similar in ModX to Components in Joomla?

If you set up your Templates properly, the only thing you need to trust users with is filling out a form completely using TVs... they’re not touching the layout at all. It really sounds to me like you’re making a lot of extra work for yourself; the built in search will not work with custom database tables and it too will need to be modified and extended.

I have zero experience with Joomla components, so I’m not going to be able to offer advice there.

Ok Ok So what you are saying is create a new document for each property and use tv’s at the bottom to populate the fields required and tell the client to ignore the Document content part of the page or can you hide that?

So do I create a custom template for those pages then or just create a snippet to make the data show the way I want on the front end?

You’d use a custom template for each of those pages. Something like your "Property View" template.