I am an idiot (Installing the Demo Site is a great way to learn MODx)

Coming from a Joomla background, whenever I installed Joomla I would always avoid installing dummy data. I did the same with MODx from the get go and failed to learn the nuances. I would have gotten more sites going from the ground up had I done so.

I’m an idiot, but I learned. Just sayin’.

admin note: title edited for clarity

The sample website is a great way to learn MODx indeed, since it provides examples of how you can build templates and use tags, take advantage of snippets and plugin to build a menu, display news... etc.

MODx does not belong to the YAPS (Yet Another Portal System -> Ryan invented this one) category. It’s not a "black box" as Joomla might be, where you can afford to "click and install" your way into adding features, but you’re not supposed to look under the hood and can’t (easily) customize.

MODx is build upon the opposite logic : the "flexibility principle", and that can make it hard to understand at first. Especially if you start from scratch ! Installing an addon won’t do anything by itself, you have to learn to use tags in templates, use snippet parameters, understand the power of using chunks as templates for addons output... etc.

You’re right emphasizing to newcomers that it’s important to start with the sample data.

And no, you’re not an idiot, just used to something else and suffered from making assumptions which would generally have been right but not in MODx’s case...

I am pretty sure you’ll enjoy this new freedom

You definitely have to un-learn habits taught by other systems before MODx tends to click for you.

I ran into this way of thinking years ago when coding for graphical interfaces (DOS was still king, Windows was nothing more than a fancy graphical interface for DOS). It seemed to me that the graphical interfaces all severely limited what one could do from the command line, since they only allowed for the options that the interface programmer put in. Fine if you don’t want to do much, but really hinders you if you find you want to do something "unusual".

Likewise I found the portal-type CMSs gave you a lot of nice clicky interfaces, but very little flexibility. With MODx I can do whatever I please wherever I please, and usually in at least three different ways.

Quote from: sottwell at Jan 16, 2008, 09:03 AM

It seemed to me that the graphical interfaces all severely limited what one could do from the command line, since they only allowed for the options that the interface programmer put in. Fine if you don’t want to do much, but really hinders you if you find you want to do something "unusual".

And that’s why I love Mac OS X so much : you get a great GUI combined with the power of the command line when needed (though I still struggle with that I confess...)

May MODx be the OS X of CMS

Indeed, I find OS X to be the best of both worlds, and this is after more than 10 years of Linux experience, starting with installing Slackware from floppies on a 386 laptop with 4Mb of RAM. I have my GUI without having to think about it, and if I want to I have my iTerm to play on. Plus several different ways of scripting things that I tend to do frequently. It’s almost as much fun as writing assembly language utilities using Edlin! I still use vi a lot for editing my local .htaccess file, since OS X doesn’t let you work with "hidden" files without a small hack that then has ALL of the hidden files in your face all the time. Easier to open up iTerm and run vi. Oh, by the way, one huge advantage of iTerm over the bundled terminal app is the ability to copy/paste to and from the command line! Having my cake and eating it too 

I have to check that iTerm thing, so many Mac appz I don’t know of !
(BTW, copy and paste works for me with Terminal, only not with keyboard shortcut but right click)

Ah, maybe it does now. I’ve been using iTerm for years, since 10,2 in fact, when it didn’t.

Hey, you’re hijacking my thread!

It’s all good. Thanks for the feedback. Now who is going to help me out by developing a custom Snippet? Up to $500 or more awaits the person who can help me "do what I want" with regards to creating a carbon calculator. See terrapass.com for an example. I posted the details this morning in the commercial area.

I’m on OSX as well. I started on computers 20+ years ago. ’85 was a sweet year: I used our non-profit status and got myself started on everything Apple. Thanks for the iTerm tip. Do you happen to know how to set up Ruby on Rails as a local environment? I’m focusing on MODx for content sites, and RoR for much narrower items, such as the plant database I want to build.

Peter

Quote from: rthrash at Jan 16, 2008, 08:51 AM

You definitely have to un-learn habits taught by other systems before MODx tends to click for you.

Thanks for that. I think most people have a lot of un-learning to do.