Need some advice: web user OR manager user for client updates?

I am stumped. I think that I have been going over this too long and can’t reach a decision so I ask for some advice...I am sure others have had dealt with this before.

Here is the situation: I am in the final stages of developing a site for the economics department of a university. One of the requirements is that the faculty members (@30 individual members) be able to update their own pages as well as create new pages and delete or unpublish old pages. The faculty pages are made up of one profile page and as many extra pages as each professor needs. I believe that I have two options:

1) Manager users: I could create manager users for each faculty member and allow them to update their own pages with quickedit and allow them to use the manager to create new pages. The advantage here is that the user could use quickedit for most of the work, however they would need to go to the manager to add new pages and this could be confusing.

2) Web users: I could create web users for each faculty member and use a front end editing snippet like NewsPublisher or FDM (most likely FDM since it is more complete but still in beta). This seems like a good way for going about it but I prefer using quickedit over any of the front end editors since it is...well, easier and works well.

This is my first client project using MODx so I have not had to make this decision before, and I do not have any experience with any of the front end editors to fully understand if this is a good idea. On my previous projects I do all the management so I just use the manager for everything.

I have gone around the bush with this and have lost confidence that I can choose the best method. At first I was sure it would be web users, now I am wondering if it would not be better to have manager users. Can anyone help clear me up on this and suggest a direction to take?

I personally have clients use the manager for most maintenance tasks, and then use QuickEdit for "polish and cleanup" duties. Given that though, I’ve never implemented FDM, so I can’t speak to that with any degree of experience.

Thanks for the reply. The way you describe seems best, I guess that is part of what the manager is for. I will first try it out the conventional ’manager’ way, if for some reason I have some issues I will try the front end way.

Well, one advantage of FDM is that you get a workflow (you can define who can moderate, publish, even limit edit to the author... etc). I didn’t have the time to check this thouroughly, but I am thinking it could be something I’ll do for some clients provided a workflow is required...

Yes this is a tough question. I am still not 100% sure what to do. FDM has some other cool advantages, like being able to create new pages based on models is great, in the manager you may be required to change template acording to the page (in case the sub page has a different template than the parent). Another very cool feature is that all the configuration is handled in the call, so that we could keep all the pages as public and select the moderator rights directly in the front end.

For the webmaster the manager is ideal, but in my case where we need to allow a number of professors to update and add pages to their own section, the manager could be more than is needed...but quickedit is the cat’s meow ant that would be very cool to offer. Another issue is that if they have a private area then we would need to create manager users + docgroup as well as web user + doc group for each professor. If we go with front end editing them we will only need web users.

I read about people synchronizing the web and manager users so that they would have the same username/password. In this case the user could login regularly as a web user to enter the private area, and then login with the same user/pass to the manager to edit stuff. This sounds like a great idea but I have no idea what is involved.

I believe that there is a plugin or snippet or something that actually makes the same login work for both front and back end at the same time.

I believe that there is a plugin or snippet or something that actually makes the same login work for both front and back end at the same time.

I found what I was looking for, the Web2Manager snippet. If this works it will synchronize the manager user with a web user. I think that is what I need.

http://www.modxcms.com/Web2Manager-828.html

Although I am still not secure on the way to go, think that I have been thinking too much about this.

I’ve taught fairly naive users to use the Manager to edit and create documents by sending them a single e-mail message. Like you, I was worried that they’d need a lot of support and, at first, they wanted in-person training.

I stripped down the version of the Manager they would see, sent them the message, and didn’t get a single question. They’ve been maintaining the site with no trouble.

I did use NewsPublisher to let them create new articles but they often go back and change pub. dates, edit, and re-write summaries through the Manager. When they’re logged on as web users, they see a more extensive menu with stuff like: Create a New News Story, Create a New Photo Gallery, Upload Newslettter, etc.

They log as web users with a username (e.g. "JimW") and as managers as "manager+username" (e.g. "managerjimW" using the same password for both.

Bob

I work at a university as well and have my content managing folks as manager users. I just have them in a role with severely limited permissions This has worked well for us for several years.