MODx advice: Is MODx the right choice?

Hello everyone!
I need a little advice from experience users.
After extensive internet search for my next cms I came to conclusion that MODx might be exactly what I was looking for. But before I dive into a whole new cms, I'd like to be sure about some very important issues...

I'm a designer with solid knowlege of html and css and I prefere to build websites from the scratch. Now I have to rebuild a site with over 4000 articles. Some of them will stay on site 'forever' and some will be rewritten when the time comes. My main concerns and questions are:

- Is MODx capable for something like that?
- Is it possible to add multiple categories to each article?
- Is it possible to use those categories to show an article on different pages at the same time?
- Is it possible to connect a calendar with the events mentioned in articles? The calendar should also be used for date-based search...

Example:
An article is announcement of jazz concert in a theatre. Acorrdingly, that article must be visible in following pages on the site - Nightlife, Theatre, Concerts, Jazz.

Hope I was clear enough about what I'm looking for but if one needs some more details or explanations don't hesitate to ask.
Until then, thank you for reading this and thank you in advance for any answer or comment submited!
Best regards,
Bruces [ed. note: bruces last edited this post 12 years, 11 months ago.]

Yes, yes, and yes. MODx can easily handle those tasks.

Use tagging TVs to handle the categorization. There are plenty of existing add-ons to supply this kind of functionality. And there are number of calendar add-ons as well.

Thank you sottwell!
Now I can download MODx (silly me, I wrote 'MODEX' so many times and have no clue why!), and start learning the way it works. There's no rush, I have at least six months to get the job done so I can go slowly, step by step. I know there's a lots of resources I can use to begin but since you're the first person I 'met' here, could I leave you a PM from time to time, just in case I need some more direct explanation? Don't want to bother you, just, sometimes, tutorials and manuals were written with too much details so one (a beginner like me) could easily be misled or confused with informations that should come later, not when one just starts learning.
So, I won't ask you to solve my problem, I would ask for direction to solve the problem by myself. It's important for me to understand the fundamentals and logic of particular cms since I'm only a designer and I'm not capable of writing few extra lines of code to get me where I want to be. I can only use what's 'on the table', if you understand me.
Let me know if that's ok with you.
Until our next 'meeting', best regards and have a nice weekend!
Bruces

Hello Bruces,

If you haven't already you might want to check out http://codingpad.maryspad.com/beginner-tutorials/ the MODX Revolution beginner tutorials should help get you going. If you still have problems feel free to post on the forums, tweet your issue, or a combination of the two.

In regards to what you are trying to accomplish I would look into mxCalendar and Articles, the combination of the two should do exactly what you need. I'm building a status system with support articles around the two currently, so they are powerful tools.

Hello AMDbuilder!
Thank you for the advice! Haven't seen that site yet but I will check it very soon. So far I'm struggling with the basics because MODx is so different from my actual cms and I have to get used to new terms and logic... As the first step, I've tryed to import and tweak some free css template. All went fine except cufon fonts, they just won't load! But I don't care too much about it because I try not to use java unless it's absolutely neccesary and my fonts are usually webfont-kit.
I'll let you know when I get to plugins and modules, right now I'm not that familiar with it, still trying to become 'friend' with the core features. To be honest, official documentation was not written for absolute beginners and that's why I'll switch to the site You recommended. But if you can check if those two modules/plugins can do what I need that'll be great! Even huge!!!
Thanks again for helping me out on this and have a nice day!
Regards,
Bruces [ed. note: bruces last edited this post 12 years, 11 months ago.]

I have some tutorials on my site CMSTricks as well and some links to other great MODX tutorial resources on the sidebar

Thank you benmarte!
I'll check it out when the time comes. Right now I'm setting up my testpage with some raw html and css and learning the basics. Can't make TV-Image to work and this pisses me off! But I'll figure it out somehow. I already have a small collection of nice tutorials (thanks to guys above) and I'll add yours too so if I get stuck I check them all and find the way out.
I'll let you guys know about how I'm doing.
Tnx for help and hava a nice day!
Regards,
Bruces

Hello everyone!
I have created test site using tutorials provided in previous posts and all went fine and smooth. Now, I came to the most important part of my future site - Articles. And I'm, confused! And more, I went back to check the structure of the site and found more errors without any logic (to me, of course). Here's what happened...

PROBLEM #1:
Site structure and what it's all about (pages, subpages and what are they used for):

- Home (homepage, supposed to show 10 newest articles from all categories or subcategories)

- Nightlife (homepage to category "Nightlife", showing 10 newest articles from all of it's subcategories)

• - Theatre (a subcategory to "Nightlife", showing all articles tagged as "theatre")
• - Cinema (a subcategory to "Nightlife", showing all articles tagged as "cinema")
• - Music Pubs (a subcategory to "Nightlife", showing all articles tagged as "music pubs")

- Page 2 (pretty much the same as the page "Nightlife")
- Page 3 ...
- Page 4 ...
- Page 5 ...

At this point I'm using one template and one css for all of the pages and subpages. But subpage "Theatre" is not showing up in front-end the way it should! There is no css used but it should be! I have created this subpage as duplicate of "Nightlife" and then I have chosen "Parent Resource" to be that "Nightlife" page… Web developer tool is showing error - can't find linked css files. Css files are hardcoded in template <head> section but it seems this is not working with subpages. Maybe an Pretty URL issue? This is css call in <head> section:



PROBLEM #2:
Working with plugins…
Maybe I have missed something while reading tutorials or completely misunderstood something about plugins basics but I can't figure out how to achieve this:

- I wanted to place dynamic placeholder for Articles in Content field of my homepage. I did it and now I can see a list of titles of all of my Articles there. Then I wanted to use the same principle in "Theatre" subpage but only for Articles tagged with "theatre". And I just can't make it work… If I use



I get a list of the most commonly used tags within all of the Articles. Yes, I know it's a placeholder for showing exactly that list but since I'm not familiar with MODx yet, and I'll never be familiar with writing code, I've tried to use it with some tweaks but obviously I was wrong...

And of course, I wasn't able to find anything useful on this topic on internet, so... If you guys have some ideas how to solve this, please let me know.
Thank you in advance and have best regards from rainy Croatian coast!
Bruces

Quote from: bruces at Oct 15, 2013, 08:23 AM

<base href="[(site_url)]">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="assets/css/idemvantest.css">

Are you using MODX revolution? If so, the base element should be:



Quote from: bruces at Oct 15, 2013, 08:23 AM

- I wanted to place dynamic placeholder for Articles in Content field of my homepage. I did it and now I can see a list of titles of all of my Articles there. Then I wanted to use the same principle in "Theatre" subpage but only for Articles tagged with "theatre". And I just can't make it work… If I use

[[+tags? &tags=`theatre`]]

"tags" is just a placeholder in the code above. Maybe something like this will help? https://forums.modx.com/thread/84418/taglister-show-tags-only-for-resources-that-contain-a-specific-tag

Thank you pdincubus!!!
CSS are ok now in all subpages! But "tags" part are way over me right now... I was reading that article from your previous post and with every reading I understood less! Sorry, I'm nothing but designer and this coding stuff is something I'm really not very familiar with. You see, different clients have different needs and I use different cms's to meet their needs. And every cms is based on different code or at least different syntaxes and expressions so that's why I can't go deeper into coding. I just use modules, plug-ins and cms's logic to connect things in back-end. Every now and then when I figure out how things work in certain cms, I can tweak some details to get closer to what I want but right now I'm nothing but an absolute beginner in MODx so I can't go that far.
From my previous experiences, I can say there's a lack of useful informations on addons and plug-ins in MODx... Like documentation on all available parameters and how to use them. "Articles", for instance... User's guide is very narrow and for such an important module there should be much more details and examples so one could get the most of it, even if one is not a programmer.
Nevertheless, I'm bookmarking the link you have provided, maybe one day I'll be able to understand where it can lead me...
Thanks for help and have a nice day!
Best regards,
Bruces