I’m not even gonna try to mask this: I’m questioning the legitimacy of this plugin. What can this plugin do that can’t be done in a more sustainable (and architecturally sound) way using other plugins, TVs, or Snippets?
In my opinion, one of the strongest points of MODx architecturally speaking is its use of templates. The templates contain no logic, so they can’t break. This not true with many other CMS’s -- most CMS’s put loops and if statements and actual code in their templates (!!!) making it MUCH easier to breaks things and MUCH easier to destroy any illusion of separation between display and logic.
I’ve cleaned up enough badly codes sites (most of them were not MODx sites) where logic had crept into the display layers, or where display chunks were strewn throughout the logic portions of the code. In short, that approach destroys the site’s maintainability... in a word, it kills everything that’s good about the MVC architecture pattern.
Now, I think there probably are some legitimate uses for PHx, but after looking through a number of sites that use it, I think it’s just too easily abused. It’s like crack cocaine: it’s simple, it’s easily used, but in the end it destroys you.
Whereas before your template was something simple like
<html>
[*content*]
</html>
with maybe a few Template Variables, with PHx, that simple content becomes a dizzing mess of if/elses. In short, it’s a mess. No designer wants to touch the template anymore because it’s got code in it. No coders want to touch it because it’s got HTML/CSS in it. It’s the worst of both worlds.
I might get flamed for this post, but I’m standing my ground: destroying the MVC pattern destroys a site’s maintainability, and PHx lets you do that far too easily. Use it with extreme caution.