Template Files

Can I edit the template files directly to a page and just FTP the pages and have MODX pull them in?

Just like how Wordpress does it? This is a feature I liked in WP that I feel is a huge timesaver.

If it's MODX Revolution, you can set the Templates as static. Then the Templates' content exists as a file and you can do what you want with it.

Quote from: BobRay at Apr 24, 2013, 08:14 PM

If it's MODX Revolution, you can set the Templates as static. Then the Templates' content exists as a file and you can do what you want with it.

Thanks Bob. I had seen that before but guess I never tried clicking on it.

You just need to turn off "cache_resource" in system settings. ( http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/cache_resource ) Do not forget the end of the development process to return the setting to its original position. You can make yourself a reminder directly in the file, for example: <!-- Partial Resource Cache is Off Now -->

Hi All !!

I wana ask what is the actual platform of MODX Revolution like Php or HTML5 ??

Quote from: sean456 at Jun 04, 2013, 10:53 AM

Hi All !!

I wana ask what is the actual platform of MODX Revolution like Php or HTML5 ??

The backed is PHP and the front end is whatever you make it. My sites always use HTML5 and Javascript. A good place to start is http://html5boilerplate.com.

Hope that helps.

WordPress templates are always files, and you can lose a lot of time because you don't know which template file is being used to generate a given page. Several holes in my wall (and head) are branded by WordPress because of this "feature": it may save time while setting up a site, but it always costs time when you have to troubleshoot someone else's work and you can't find anything.

MODX stores template HTML in the database OR on the file system, and for each page, you can select a template from the dropdown list (it's what's available for WordPress *pages* -- posts do not have the ability to select individual templates). As Bob mentioned: you can create a template as a "static" resource, i.e. save it on the file system for easier editing, but as leelondon warns, you need to watch out for caching. MODX has a thorough caching engine. Out of the box it uses a fraction of the function calls to generate a page as WordPress does, and once you start using MODX caching, it quickly leaves WordPress in the dust (yes, even with WP's caching plugins -- I did an A/B test on this in my MODX vs. WP book that's due out this year).

Re the platform: check out the requirements: http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Server+Requirements

One of the things that distinguishes MODX is its freedom for front-end designers. It is the easiest CMS I know of to work with as a designer: you can literally take any HTML and import it into MODX. The templating practices implemented by WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are pretty much same same same: they use a maze of PHP files, so you end up having to debug them, and good luck if you're using a bunch of plugins that may have molested your template dynamically at runtime. Designers don't want to touch PHP themes because they've got PHP in them (sometimes lots of PHP). Developers don't want to touch them because they've got HTML in them. MODX templates can get messy too, but generally they are clean and any designer quickly understands the placeholder syntax. I worked on one project where we needed to import working HTML wireframes into a CMS. The backend was already in Drupal, but the lowest bid I got for the task in Drupal was $10,000. The same task cost $300 in MODX. Pretty unbelievable. Anyway, I'm ranting.

Quote from: Everettg_99 at Jun 04, 2013, 04:12 PM

WordPress templates are always files...

Thanks for all the info. My main issue with MODX is really not the system itself its setting up of sites or making them go live or moving them to other servers that always seems to be overly complicated. I follow the instructions the MODX teams puts out but things NEVER have worked out the way they should and I loose a lot of time over it. So no matter how great I think MODX is, this little caveat which is actually HUGE is a show stopped on certain levels.

I'll check out your book once its available.

Man... if you want to talk about complicated migrations, WordPress is the poster child of what NOT to do: it hard-codes URLs and paths in the database as serialized data and it is the only CMS I know of that does not use configuration details for the site's path and URL info (!!!). So you end up having to do a find-and-replace on the raw database dump (*facepalm*), and because the data is serialized, it gets corrupted if the character count changes. It's extremely painful. Even when you know what you're doing, it's a pain: the bottom line is stuff like that forever limits WordPress to non-production status.

I wrote the doc @ http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Moving+Your+Site+to+a+New+Server -- I realize that migration seems overly complicated, and to be fair, it is harder than a typical web app because some of the configuration details are stored in the database. But the newer versions have alleviated some of that pain (specifically re the workspaces). If you're on the command line (i.e. SSH), it's the same song and dance as any other web app system out there: you zip up your files, you dump your database, and you're good to go. For my employees, I have them practice this a couple times and after a couple stumbles, they usually get the hang of it quickly. I will say that a good host/server makes life much easier for this. It's much more painful if you've only got FTP access: that's always prone to error.

Another tool that has proven quite helpful in certain cases is Provisioner: http://modx.com/extras/package/provisioner
That basically works a site copier -- it's great for migrating between Evo and Revo too.

I think what most people love about WordPress is the streamlined manager, and to be fair, they have done a great job with that. But under the hood, the WordPress code is a tangled mess: you can polish the UI all you want, but nothing short of a total rewrite will fix the core. MODX is in a much more promising situation with its clean codebase/core and good architecture that allows you flexibility to develop whatever UI you want.

Quote from: Everettg_99 at Jun 05, 2013, 05:04 PM

Man... if you want to talk about complicated migrations, WordPress is the poster child of what NOT to do...

I've use your instructional sheet to launch sites just about every time I launch a site. I think it all just comes down to preference. MODX is super buggy when it comes to the things I mentioned. Not that WP doesn't have its issues but I know what to do with WP whereas with MODX its never that straight forward, or at least not on the sites I have worked on.

Don't worry though I will keep using MODX and someday all the issues will get worked out.

Oh one last thing you once sent me a link to help with MODX installs and I thought it was pretty cool but it told me to make a change in the config file which ended up being something that tripped me up for hours later on. It had to do with telling it what kind of database it was. I had in there "mysql" and your page said it needed to be titled "mysql5." I switched it and a few other things but when at the end of the day unlesss it was set to be "mysql" and not "mysql5" it wouldn't work.