MODX & Wordpress

Hi,

I've been developing on Modx for a while... haven't actually released a site just developing a huge one One thing I absolutely LOVE about it is the ease with which you create a theme. Grab any static html and insert some placeholders, tada. Also high on my list are how I can create TV's for each type of page.

I'm having a BIG however moment though. There are two things in Wordpress (other sites I have) that I can't seem to find a way to replicate in Modx and I'm hopeful someone can point me in the right direction.

1) By far the biggest, is plugins. Specifically, one plugin called SNAP (Social Network Auto Poster). This is a plugin that when you publish a page on your wordpress site, it automatically publishes a link on your FB, Tweets about it, Pins it (Pinterest) and adds it to Google+. This is absolutely critical for today's websites, especially with search engines like Google saying this is important. I HATE the thought of leaving MODX or anything for a stupid plugin, but this is important. Seriously important. Suggestions?

2) Another Plugin - SEO by Yoast. Hugely popular it basically ensures all pages you publish are optimized for search engines before letting you go ahead and do something stupid like publish when they wouldn't rank for anything.

Does anyone have solutions to these problems? I don't want to abandon modx - particularly since I have spent significant time developing other plugin like features to ensure my site will rank the living **** out of Google once launched.

Help!

Greg

I'm pretty sure that there are some similar social add-ons for MODx. There are certainly some SEO add-ons.

As far as SEO goes, all the tricks in the world aren't going to trump good planning and relevant content. My two favorite references to such matters:

http://modx.com/why-modx/applications/search-engine-optimized-seo-cms/
http://impress-design.com/how-to-dominate-your-local-or-niche-market

Hi Sottwell,

Thanks for the reply. Point taken and acknowledged about content. I can manage without any kind of SEO plugin however writers who will be producing all my content might need a little more guidance.

However with the social aspect I'm having a hard time swallowing this. I can't imagine posting on FB or Twitter manually every time some new content is published?

The only possible method I can see at the moment is some integration with Hootsuite API and using Hootsuite to publish to said networks... not sure how involved that will be though. Definitely above my pay grade :-(

I can't imagine posting on FB or Twitter manually every time some new content is published?

You could install a RSS package and then use something like TwitterFeed to populate Facebook and Twitter, it also give stats on clicks etc so good for tracking what sort of articles are being read ;o)3r

http://twitterfeed.com/

No, I'm pretty sure that there are some social networking add-ons. I've never actually worked with that aspect, so I don't know what they are. Hopefully somebody else who does know will post here.

This looks like it might be what you're looking for http://bobsguides.com/notify-tutorial.html

Hey All

@Paulp - I was actually just a few seconds ago talking about that with my buddy. Apparently Hootsuite can pull data from RSS feeds which would allow me to effectively get my required data over to a platform which will automatically manage all of my social accounds - going to give that some thought and have a look.

@Sottwell - It looks like Notify is more Twitter oriented - it says it won't actually post to twitter and runs through a 3rd party service. I'm unsure how well that would work with posting images to a Facebook page but I will take a peek.

Ultimately I think the third solution might be having a WP blog in a /blog/ directory on the server where I can post cool stuff like shout outs about every page on my website. Going to have to put some more thought into how to do this.

Blogs
I recommend for your blog using the Articles extra for blogging as opposed to having a whole separate site for such.

SEO
SEO should not be considered a plugin. There are basic things you can do to be sure your site gets noticed, but one thing you will always hear... content is king. There is far more that goes into such. Also, SEO changes on a regular basis, so unless the developer of any plugin is keeping up with the changes, you're likely to have issues where you shouldn't. SEO requires fine tuning for each site. The idea behind MODX is having the control over your output as you mentioned.

One thing I absolutely LOVE about it is the ease with which you create a theme

Title, description, and social media meta tags (you can forget keyword meta tags), making sure your textual hierarchy is in order (heading titles are consistent and your content is readable without keyword stuffing), and relevant content is a good starting point. With such, just use MODX's placeholders in your template or chunk (pagetitle, longtitle, desciption, etc), and you don't really need much else in the way of a plugin. If you have a client that needs to have easy-to-fill options, just use Form Customization to clean up the forms. This way you have control over each page, the options you want, and putting them in the right places. Don't rely on a third-party developer with a free plugin to stay on top of modern SEO or content strategy.

Social Media
Once again, make sure your meta tags (Facebook Open Graph and Twitter cards) are optimized for each page. Also, be sure to provide a thumbnail (with a TV), and set a default in case there isn't one used. As far as automatically posting, I recommend doing this by hand. I would go as far as using Facebook's Debugger to validate your URL to make sure everything is in working order. One way to speed things up, add the Facebook Link or Share and Tweet icons for yourself. This way you can customize in your meta tags exactly how you want it to read when they're shared. This also doubles as a way to debug or test it for end-users. Maybe an article uses tags... why not make those hashtags on Twitter along with any related @usernames? You may want a wide image on Facebook for some articles, but a small image for simple pages or categories. Give yourself the flexibility to control your social media campaigns rather than relying on something to work universally. It may save you a minute per article, but unless you're posting 100+ articles a day, it's not a major time saver. It can actually be a headache down the line, costing more time to fix (if there's a typo, an API is broken, or a wide array of possibilities.) That's what makes MODX powerful... it gives you more room to customize the final output without a bunch of hacks that are expected to work for every page the same way.

On posting to social networks automatically, this is not a good idea. Not only does each channel have different users, there may be a need to develop slightly different or altered headlines or images. Technology should not be used to solve problems that require decision making. In the case of the MODX blog, we do use Schema.org and OpenGraph for social as well as Google Author meta as well. This is all in place for those who share links of our site but when it comes to posting about our blogs, I use Hootsuite to publish different messages to different networks. Twitter for instance, really deserves more than one tweet, generally, 3 or 4 over 24 hour period and I often use more than one headline. This can't be automated, (though I do schedule it). This can be solved by making sound recommendations to your clients and offering a best practices checklist for publishing for greatest impact.

Sterc's SEO plugin takes many queues from Yoast's WP plugin and helps guide the user and offers field limits and keyword checking. I don't use it but as a veteran web professional, I know what works and frankly don't care about keyword counts but creating valuable content, focused on a single topic.