Your suggestions please for teaching MODX for 4 days

Looks like Articles isn't particularly popular here!! I've been using it for blogs on Revo sites for a quite a while now and get on pretty well with it - so quick and easy to set up (just wish it didn't come with all that default styling and would just stick to the main content part - but it's not too bad to lift that out and stick it into my own template). Clients like it too. Would love to hear why you recommend against it's use? Heard similar messages at MODXpo last year but never followed up. What am I missing?

The good thing of articles is, everything does work out of the box without much extra configuration.
If you are looking for that, articles is great.

The bad thing of articles for me is, it does to much under the hood at cost of flexibility.

I prefer collections, because you have more freedom and I can put things together how I like it.
You can use any commenting-system (with articles you are forced to use quip internally).
You can use pdoTools (with articles you are forced to use getResources internally).
You can use any Tagging - System.
You are not forced to articles - FURLS
With collections each article is still a modResource - object and its possible to extend them for example with ClassExtender, which you can't with articles.
And more.

My Blog is done with Articles, but it's very simple. Bruno makes some excellent points. I don't think Collections existed when I started it and I'm too lazy to make the migration. If I were creating it today, I'd probably use Collections. but I'm not sure I'd recommend that for beginners.

Quote from: intandem at Apr 09, 2015, 06:25 AM

Looks like Articles isn't particularly popular here!! I've been using it for blogs on Revo sites for a quite a while now and get on pretty well with it - so quick and easy to set up (just wish it didn't come with all that default styling and would just stick to the main content part - but it's not too bad to lift that out and stick it into my own template). Clients like it too. Would love to hear why you recommend against it's use? Heard similar messages at MODXpo last year but never followed up. What am I missing?

My main reasons for choosing Collections is that it's under very active development https://github.com/modxcms/Collections/commits/master while Articles seems to basically be in maintenance mode https://github.com/modxcms/Articles/commits/develop.

When 2.3 landed there was a bit of a wait before Articles worked properly with it.

Also, Collections can be easily used for a lot more than a blog. We've used it for things product databases, job directory, event calendars that previously would have been done with the much more complcated MIGXdb.

Articles is to MODX as VisualBasic is to programming.

Thanks for all those interesting points (love your comparison, Susan !!). Tried to use collections before for a MODX shop with plenty of categories and sub-categories but didn't find it great once things went into sub-levels. But I can see the potential and will certainly give it a go for a blog next time around.

I feel though that for the purpose of teaching newbies it might be better to stick to Articles initially. We're taught the importance of having a blog on a website and if I am trying to stop students from going down the lazy Wordpress route as soon as they leave the course, I need to give them an alternative that lets them get going fairly swiftly and within the timeframe I have. I don't want to overwhelm them with too many add-ons. I can however point out to them that in order to maximise MODX's strengths in terms of flexibility and customisation, they should evolve with Collections et all., presenting a sample blog built with it and showing them the various components for future reference. Thoughts?

First of all well done to inTandem for giving-up your free time to teach the MODx course. How did it go?

Secondly I learned quite a bit just from reading this post. Thanks!

Thanks, Tony. Actually starting on Monday. Sitting here doing prep right now!