What are your thoughts on FRED?

I think Fred is an amazing tool - good work! I'm all for "content first" publishing and page building tools in general - so it's spot on in this regard. Although i'm surprised that another tool has entered this space considering how small the MODX ecosystem already is. Having said that, competition and choice certainly isn't a bad thing to have. I'm also excited about the potential of Blueprints - but my immediate excitement stops there because...

What's more important to me and my clients at this moment in time is that the MODX project is still moving forward, gaining interest from all stakeholders and that MODX 3, since being announced in 2015, lives up to peoples expectation.

I guess when I think of MODX, I still think of LLC as driving and leading the project forward.

Our priority is to move the entire MODX ecosystem forward as quickly as possible. We hope Fred will contribute to that.

Surely as a top priority if you're looking for return on investment in moving the MODX ecosystem forward it should be focused on modernising the core, implementing MAB recommendations and shipping MODX 3 - those will have an ever lasting impact and reignite the buzz everybody so much desires for the project.

So, I also have to echo the points raised made by Mark, Graeme & Peter. [ed. note: jonleverrier last edited this post 5 years, 9 months ago.]

Fred or no Fred, it doesn’t change the speed of release for 3.0. Again, it’s not either/or, it’s both.

Quote from: rethrash at Jul 10, 2018, 12:38 PM

it’s not either/or, it’s both.

Thank you for clarifying, Ryan.

It sounds like a miscommunication on the most part which is where frustration has stemmed from. Either way looking forward to moving forwards together as a community to bring MODX3 into frutition and having the almost personification of freedom (Fred) to help anchor everything and win new developers into the CMS.

For me as an independent self-developer without the ability to rationalize a subscription service this is pretty exciting. Now that I feel comfortable with most of the basics I will give it a whirl and see if it will help in my future projects. Staying on the front-end has a lot of benefits, but I agree its project specific.

I also think its good to have some bells and whistles that can attract developers, useful of course not window dressing. The fads change but ignoring them is rarely the best plan.

@Erica: i'm first of all curious, but I'd also like to know if it's "safe" to jump on the bandwagon (with the project I'm currently working on) or if I should ignore it and do things the old fashioned way (which I'm currently trying to figure out how to actually do).

https://echo5digital.com/blog/7-reasons-page-builders-suck/
Good read!
I could come up with 20 reasons, but what the heck ... this guy already wrote something

These are seven good reasons to consider before using any thing that builds anything for you.
This is the kind of stuff I read all the time...
Helps me make my extras suck just a little less

Here is another one
https://teamtreehouse.com/community/is-it-a-bad-habit-to-create-websites-with-wordpress-using-plugins-such-as-page-builders

Granted the links are WordPress-based, but the scenario matches every now and then.

Fred's usage is gonna be really project-based. So plan well.

I just felt bad that the OP's answer was still dangling ...

Just wanting to clarify that this was not part of MODX3 and no MODX3 funding went to Fred. Fred feels and looks like a solid tool and there is some overlap with ContentBlocks, but they definitely have their own use-cases IMHO.

On MODX3 progress: the project features are finished and we ended up with way more new features and improvements than expected. We now need both testing and bug fixing now. We expect a lot from both the community and MODX here (where we, Sterc, is also part of that community). Luckily we've seen growing activity on the 3-branch in Github, but more is needed. Also, we're far from reaching the required funding (see budget on https://modx3.org/funding), unfortunately, so please help fund on modx3.org or contribute on github.com.

Steps towards 3:
- Finish and release 2.7
- Merge 2.7 in 3 (one hell of a job)
- Continue testing/fix-bugs in 3
- 3 release

Quote from: donshakespeare at Jul 10, 2018, 09:52 PM

@Erica: i'm first of all curious, but I'd also like to know if it's "safe" to jump on the bandwagon (with the project I'm currently working on) or if I should ignore it and do things the old fashioned way (which I'm currently trying to figure out how to actually do).

https://echo5digital.com/blog/7-reasons-page-builders-suck/
Good read!

...

I just felt bad that the OP's answer was still dangling.

Thank you!

Its all about templates and Fred making it easy to build it without too much coding. <3
Long Live Fred.

What I don't understand is the relationship between 2.7 and 3.0. There was an update on modx3.org saying 2.7 would be ready in about two weeks; that was four weeks ago. 2.7 won't break anything, and I desperately need some of the features in it for several of my sites. Is any of the work on 3.0 taking time away from getting 2.7 out? It sounds like Fred development didn't take time away from 3.0 development, but how about 2.7?

1. I Love FRED for 100 reasons, one is that it is open source, and open source in the aspect of being FREE. I have never used The premium extra "modmore contentblocks" but I have recommended people to check it out and advertised it for free. I personally have no interest in using premium tools, It's an open source passion of mine. I have seen some really sweet subscription based CMS's out there. But I haven't seen one that can beat MODX yet and probably will never do. Because MODX loves Creative Freedom like no other system.

2. To cry about FRED being released makes me hesitant what the intentions are among the MODX3 developers who spend a lot of time pushing their premium extras. Is MODX3 too much tied into a "premium extras first"-mindset? When I see 2.7 being mentioned above (by the LLC), it gives me PEACE and COMFORT that my sites hopefully won't be in alpha stage functionality on the next upgrade. I'm not saying I don't want to contribute or have anything against MODX3. But if MODX3 holds a gun to my face and say come this way now and do nothing else, it's EVIL.

3. It is sad that a thread about FRED got hijacked to be a discussion about "modmore contentblocks" - is this how you want to advertise your product & services? [ed. note: mrhaw last edited this post 5 years, 9 months ago.]