I am very new here so I can share your enthusiasm.
MODx is worthy of study. Its not plug and play though. You will need time and patience.
First off I would look to taking your static home page and build your new MODx template page on that. You will need a new folder within the templates folder. Inside that folder will go your CSS folder for your design. There are a couple of template design tutorials on the Wiki page I would read.
My suggestion though is make sure that your existing static page(s) code is clean, that it validates, and that it works with all the current browsers. Adding pages with existing code issues will cloud the issue once you pour them into MODx.
I would go slow, and avoid adding every snippet available. I would get your basic template working and make sure it works well with multiple browsers. You will then want to create as many chunks and TV’s as you can as having these repeated items as chunks etc makes your code easier to understand and also makes it easier if you need to make site wide changes on content that appears on every page within your site.
The other thing I suggest is being upfront about being in trouble and try to ask detailed, pointed questions. You will get better responses and the question & answer could help others down the road. For example: "I need help!" is not as useful to everyone concerned as "how do I add multiple email options to my eForm snippet call?"...
One of the best things about MODx is this forum. I tired several CMS systems but this forum was a major influence in my choosing MODx in the long run...
Max
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MODX Staff
- 12,272 Posts
From a structural perspective, if you’re just working on a single site and not some sort of template gallery or showcase thing, here’s how I prefer to layout my files on the filesystem. It seems to work well and gets rid of what I perceive is a lot of extra file path typing:
assets/base.css -- general reset css file
assets/site.css -- site specific css file
assets/js -- all your JS and Ajax libs here. May have images/css specific to those libs in there too
assets/images -- where the px go
Also, if we are working on a site with custom applications, say a 9000 product catalog, I tend to put those items into specific directories under assets as well:
assets/catalog -- catalog-specific assets directory
assets/catalog/i -- catalog specific images
et.
When 097 comes around, I think I’ll be changing up my directories a bit to shorten them even further (assets -> site, images -> i, and so forth).
Ryan Thrash, MODX Co-Founder
Follow me on Twitter at @rthrash or catch my occasional unofficial thoughts at thrash.me
Project done, Thanks MODx!
