How do I: SQLite, SVN, Usermanagement and speed

Hi there,

sorry for the long(ish) post.

I recently found modx and pretty much like the way it is done. Especially the part where it leaves me the freedom to handle the frontend completely free. I already bought Bob Ray's 'MODX: The Official Guide' (and an extra bag to carry it with me ;-))

There are a couple of things I couldn't get my head around (yet), though:

1. SQLite:
When I first read about xPDO, I though 'hey great, so I can use SQLite'. But no - there seems only a patched version of the modx-core on GitHub.

Are there any plans to support SQLite officially? Or is there an easy way to include it?


2. SVN:
Which brings me to my second point: I am a big fan of moving my website(s) from server to server, without caring about MySQL, etc... That's one of the reasons I love SQLite, since it moves with my folders.

Also, I tend to upload my projects to a SVN-server (you do that too, don't you?). Using mysql, I have to do extra steps (or use a shell script).

Is there a backup mechanism (except the Databackup package), which saves the WHOLE modx-Installation (for one-click restore, much like when using SQL). I don't talk modx-cloud which is a different thing to consider...


The next one is more modx-related:

3. User-Management with profile
I just try find out how I would create a system, where users can register and create a profile. The users are restricted to their own profile/assets.

Just think like a photographer/model system, where registered photographers can select from registered models. Both should be allowed to manage their own profiles.
But only the photographer can search for models (other way round makes no sense).

In an (unstructured, non-cms) way, it wouldn't be that hard to accomplish: Just create a small microsite-management for every user (from folders or whatever) and let each user edit the included content.

How would I do that using the modx-way? Use the modx-usermanagemant (using different roles)? Or can I handle a separate database for the user-management inside modx? I was looking around, but couldn't find any examples in that area. Is modx the wrong tool for this? If I look at Joomla for instance, there are dozen of examples/templates for this scenario.
Are there any modx samples available as well?


4. Speed
After following some discussions on the InterWebs, I installed ClipperCMS alongside mods on my local machine (iMac 27" quad core 2,8Ghz / 12GB RAM, OSX 10.8). Clipper's manager is roughly 10-20x faster than mods? What does that tell me?
Anybody else experience this? Does this affect the front-end?


Sorry, if some of those questions are answered in the book somewhere - but it's just to huge to get scanned through in a moment ;-)

Any info appreciated

Cheers

Andy

Clipper is a fork of the MODx Evolution codebase. Clipper forked when it looked like official MODx development had stopped at 1.0.6 or so. Evo (MODx 1.0.10 at this point) and Clipper have a much simpler core and Manager, and are, indeed, much faster in their Manager.

Thanks - yes I know that it's a fork (I read their blog-post ;-))

But in fact, not only the Manager is much faster. Also the pages load much faster (even after caches are created). I tried with the - very basic - Flexibility template from the package manager. If I export this to static HTML, this is very fast. If I run it from within modx, it's *quite* slow... The ClipperCMS-demo page initially loads quick.

I am really concerned about speed, since that was one reason I abandoned CMS years ago and went with static HTML and some server-side frameworks.

Can you point me to a website running modx, which is considered as 'fast'?

thx

andy