Your suggestions please for teaching MODX for 4 days

Your expert suggestions are requested ...

I am going to be teaching MODX in a local community college for 4 days in May. Students on the course will have spent 4 months learning HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver and Photoshop and will have completed a project building their first own website. All editing takes place through Dreamweaver and they have no other CMS skills. I am coming in at the very end of their programme on request from their course tutor. My pay is negligable .... this one is simply in the name of MODX!

The participants are a mixed bunch, with some genuinely interested in pursuing a career in web design but others are there realistically just to collect social welfare payments for the duration of the programme. My interest lies in helping the interested one obtain the ability to produce commercially-viable websites, so that they can freelance if they can't find full-time employment. And spread the word about MODX of course!!

So I am looking for your advice and suggestions. I am hoping to use a very basic theme to teach them the core principles of template, chunks and tvs and a bit on placeholders. Then there is the question of some introductory extras. I don't want to overwhelm them with too many, but just enough for them to grasp the power of MODX and to get them excited about turning their own project websites into a CMS-driven system. So perhaps just stick to:


[li]Wayfinder
getResources
getPage
(or pdoTools instead of the above?)
Articles
FormIt
MIGX
TinyMCE
CodeMirror
GoogleSiteMap


Other ones could be based on specific requirements for individual project websites or questions students ask. Or perhaps the above is already too much for web design beginners (e.g. MIGX)??

Perhaps some of you have done something similar before and have other suggestions and advice? I would appreciate any input!!

Thanks
[ed. note: intandem last edited this post 11 years, 6 months ago.]

Day one: What is a CMS? - start with a basic installation, I'd start with just pdoTools and Ace. Definitely not Articles! How to port a simple template with just a few chunks, maybe the Copyright snippet, and create a few resources, including one or two weblink resources. Introduce the file browser. Encourage use of the Forums and the RTFM.

Day Two: Customizing the CMS: Introduce System Settings - site offline, error_page, friendly URLs. Install a couple of extras, like FormIt, setting up SMTP for the email, create and test a simple contact form (maybe use QuickEmail for testing an email connection), and a blog using Collections and pdoResources. TinyMCE if you want to, or use System Settings to make Ace the editor for resources.

Day Three: Template Variables, in increasing complexity: a simple image TV, then a simple MIGX gallery. Again, push the RTFM. Keeping things organized - Element categories, as well as in the file system. Media sources, demo the Amazon S3 driver if you have an Amazon AWS account. That's always impressive.

Day Four: Users - Install Login extra, create Unauthorized page and set the System Setting, create a front-end Members user group, a Members resource group, and a couple of protected Members resources. (anonymous) users are users too, with permissions - need Load Only permission to get Unauthorized page instead of Not Found page. Touch on contexts, just the difference between 'web' context, 'mgr' context.

In addition to "What is a CMS," (or as part of it), a quick explanation of how MODX works would be helpful.

See that section of my book.

I think this is still good as well: http://bobsguides.com/modx.html

Personally I would recommend introducing them to MODX with the original extras instead of the pdo* variations. That's not to say the pdo* variations aren't useful and in some cases definitely faster, but as someone who thinks he knows MODX a fair bit I have gotten stuck trying to get documentation for some of the pdo tools. Eventually I just end up reading the code and that is not something you can or should be teaching to students (unless they're also interested in learning PHP, in which case, go for it!). Documentation has been improving, but compared to the tons of information and examples for the other ones available if you want to give them something they can figure out at home as well, that's what I'd do.


Given they have no CMS experience whatsoever, I would also take a step back and start the first day to talk about CMSs in general. Why would anyone want to use a CMS? What is the benefit to the developer/designer and the client? What CMSs are there? When do you use which one? Why have you chosen to work with MODX and why should they consider it too?

I don't know if you have 4 full days or 4 classes of an hour each, but if you have 4 full days that should give enough time to let them get their hands dirty.. give them the tools and let them get some real experience. The trickiest thing may be getting them to set up a localhost if they haven't used that yet, so perhaps something like MODX Cloud can help with that.

• I start with review of other CMS;
• strengths and weaknesses of MODX (templates, modular way of chunks for build, high security level, scalable MVC structure, easy things make easy vs. a high barrier to entry if you are not a programmer, difficult model of ExtJS for create custom extensions, etc.);
• what is it chunks, snippets, tamplates and TV's
• fast start: create MODX-adaptive singlepage site from any HTML/CSS/JavaScript template with pdoTools, FormIt

When I was trying to decide whether or not to jump into MODx, InTandem offered some very encouraging feedback. And when it came to learning some of the basics, InTandem responded to my pestering emails with tips, pointers, and a list of must have add-ons.

All in all...very supportive, helpful and enthusiastic about MODx. I have no doubt that you will be an excellent teacher!

Thanks for all of those suggestions, really appreciated and incredibly helpful!!

Mark, it's 4 full days so plenty of time to get their hands dirty I want to show them everything via a basic sample site and then let them try their hands on MODX with their own projects which would be fairly simple sites as well I'd say. That's a good point regarding documentation for pdoTools - might be off-putting for a newbie whereas once you're used to Wayfinder and getResources, it's not too difficult to move over at a later stage.

Is it four consecutive days, or one per week for four weeks?

Here's how I'd structure an introduction into MODX.

Start with a pre-made static html/css/js template ready to go and show how super fast and east it is to turn it into a multi page CMS website.

Then by just using chunks to break down the template using just *content.

Then, introduce TVs by showing that any other parts of the page can be dynamic as well. Perhaps use a sidebar and a featured image to demonstrate different input types.

Then, introduce the idea of snippets by using wayfinder to turn the static navigation into a dynamic one based on the resource tree.

Then, use getResources to show how snippets can pull content from other pages by adding some "latest news" items to the homepage.

Then Introduce Collections (not articles), by showing that news article documents can be grouped and presented in different way making large lists of any type of page you want really easy to manage.

Alternating between "show" and "try it yourself" for each step could be useful and by the end of it they will have built your demo site and have their own code samples to refer back to in the future.

I'd consider any form system and MIGX to be more advanced topics that should only be introduced after these first few are well understood, maybe you could present some of the limitations of MODX and then show different Extras that solve those limitations like MIGX, a form system, an cart system etc.

Another great goal would be to have the students really familiar with looking things up for themselves in the manual by the end. Make sure you include the right amount of RTFM jokes.

Quote from: BobRay at Apr 08, 2015, 01:55 PM

Is it four consecutive days, or one per week for four weeks?

4 consecutive days