Our sites - thinking about changing from CMS Made Simple to MODx

Big trees can load slowly yes but it depends on several factors like the browser but mostly the config and power of your server (I have a site with 600 documents which loads decently fast e.g <1.5 seconds but I have a dedicated box with decent RAM & speed and only 10 sites on it). I’d be curious to know what box you’re running this website on...

David, it is shared hosting, but not bottom end.

The site in question used to run fairly well on Wordpress on the same host’s budget package. (I got a link or two from people wanting an example of Wordpress being used to run something other than a blog).

The new Modx version is on a more expensive "business" hosting package that is supposed to run on lower contention servers. I have had good experience with the host in the past, and the site is loads reasonably fast as long as I do not use the manager.

a new tree structure algorithm/engine with selective preloading/caching would speed up things for massive document structures i think. Something for 097 or 1.0 maybe? I mean a tree that first only loads and shows the top level, and only starts loading the deeper levels of a certain branch when the user clicks on the top-level document to open that branch.

Olaf

Olaf, will that help with sites with a flat structure?

Obviously one can avoid a flat structure and have lots of layers of folders, ut:

1) This is a barrier to moving existing sites to Modx
2) For some sites the flatter structure is natural, and the CMS should not dictate structure.

The current performance of the manager is certainly sub-optimal but varies greatly from one browser to another. Things have improved from 0.9.2 in the js department : 0.9.6 is way faster in this regard ! But not fast enough for high document counts... A good server compensates but not everyone has a dedicated box, and for now high document counts website suffer from performance penalty

I know it’s frustrating, but the work being done for 0.9.7 manager is a total rewrite (admin will be themable - thanks to smarty) with focus on speed and usability. The document tree’s code will most definitely change (possibly with some ajax goodness) but I’ll let the dev team expand on what is in the hopper and when change can be expected...

To get back to the topic of the thread:I far prefer Modx to anything else I have looked recently (CMSMS, Drupal, Wordpress with a CMS theme). It is very easy to get it to do what you want. I might consider Drupal, and I would use Wordpress for what it is good at (a fully fledged blog), for everything else there’s Modx....

As for my issue. I decided to stop whinging and do something constructive. I have a stop gap solution (far from perfect and only meant for those for whom the slowness of the manager is a show-stopper). Download (very small) and instructions here.

I agreed the performance of the manager is actually an issue if you have a large number of items that need to load in the tree. I know from reading across other areas of these forums, that it’s a fairly common complaint. Solution is either to wait until a newer release resolves this issue - or write a fix for yourself.

We’re in the process of building an unofficial celebrity news & gossip site.

Once you build up some significant content - in our case, more than 1,000 celebrity names & profiles - it certainly bogs down the manager nav tree in a big way. Best solution we found (at this stage) was to modify the workflow & how the nav tree is used. Ie, our developers wrote their own work-around.

Longer term, I’m hopeful the modX core resolves this issue

1000 docs shouldn’t be an issue, the current inherent "limit" is rather around 5000, but it depends on your server.

Anyway, 2008 is the year of 0.9.7 which will bring a big improvement in that department, check the MODx Next forum and if you’re adventurous, check SVN (see this thread).