I think that Modx is great solution for small business websites. From developers or web designers point of view it is perfect.
But there are a lot of concepts in Manager that are way too complicated to a simple user like: to add a new article, choose a page / article template, edit the Template Variables tab. Few of my clients cant comprehend why and where add a new child = new article but in other case they have to add a new web document.
I would love a simple manager view for a certain group of users. with widgets / shortcuts like Add new page, Add new Article.
For a single document view , just add the template variables underneath the main copy, lock the page templates or just display 2 or 3 (left sidebar, right sidebar, full width).
So my questions are:
1. Is this achievable? To write a plugin like that to simplify the manager for user group?
2. Maybe already something like that exist?
3. If I would provide a HTML + CSS / LESS files somebody would attempt to write such a thing?
I think that configurable plugin would be perfect, so you could easily replicate it across new websites.
The possible use cases are so many and so different that I'm skeptical about the feasibility of a generic wizard for this.
OTOH, there are several ways to get what you want. First, you could use NewsPublisher and keep the users in the front end. You could have one NP page for creating new resources and another for creating articles. Or, you could have a single NP page and let the user select the parent page (one option would be the Articles container).
Another way to go would be to customize the Manager for a specific user group. You can hide most of the scary/confusing things by using a Policy that doesn't have the necessary permissions for them.
You could also create a fairly simple dashboard widget with a form offering your options that forwarded the user to either the create/edit Resource page or the create/edit Article page.
Making a package that could be transferred to new sites is more complicated, but definitely doable.
