Rethinking MODx

mmm... flexible. (borrowed from the moscow circus page...I saw them in Hartford many years ago with my kids)

Sure, but can she write a XHTML/CSS web standards based site like that?

Quote from: identity at Nov 04, 2006, 05:16 AM

It seems there are systems for the non-developers... don’t need to know anything, just pick the modules and whether you want them on the right or the left, and there are systems for the developers... add this and write some php code and you can do whatever you want. Perhaps my view is colored by my still needing to really learn php/mysql, but I like the idea and really see MODx as being able to "play" in that magical middle ground, which I think could be an incredibly powerful position to dominate.

That’s exactly what I meant a few post earlier, when I said MODx allowed designers who don’t know much PHP to do some slight to medium customization provided they have a good general understanding of how things work and a fine understanding of snippet, plugin or modules. In this sense I think MODx is a great enabler for webdesigners with none or little coding skills (I should know, I belong to that category).

Over time MODx is also a nice incentive to learn to code PHP. Once you start enjoying customizing websites, and you see what people who code can quickly accomplish writing MODx snippets, it’s just damn tantalizing ! I mean I have seen many php coders write a snippet, plugin or module just a few days or weeks within their registering there. I know PHP is not supposed to be hard to learn, but while I am mainly a self-taught guy, I failed to get started on my own. That’s exactly why I invested in a one-week PHP training next december... once you have somewhat mastered what you can do with MODx without knowing PHP, you have a grasp of what you could do with PHP skills, which is : pretty much anything you can imagine

Really, I don’t know if I would invest 2000$ in a PHP training if I had not dug into MODx code. I mean, the whole concept of a framework is the best incentive I can get to learn code : I wouldn’t dare dream code something from the ground up, pretty discouraging thought to know you’ll have to wait a few months or even years before accomplishing anything significant. But now with an API and dbAPI, it seems to be a lot easier to learn (I’ll tell you this once I have acquired the training ), and accomplish nice things without being a full blown geeky whizz codeboy...

Quote from: identity

With my limited experience in looking at various CMS’s and a fairly brief play with Drupal, I am still very impressed with Drupal and I think there will still be great things to come there, but I also think they need to move beyond and crush the "Drupal, for developers" position that it seems to have earned. I think there are those there that are working to change that so it is still possible. Likewise, and hopefully even more so than Drupal, I think there is a strong enough presence with MODx of non-developers to help maintain a nice balance.

Drupal has always been, in my mind, the only real MODx competitor on the PHP/MySQL open source CMS market... It’s flexible, not locked into a design pattern like other CMS, it’s quite fast, has load balancing, is built upon sound grounds, has powerful custom fields module, i18n... Personnally, I did not click with its somewhat particular logic. Never liked template engines, and phpTemplate is really more of a tool for the php savvy which make template way less readable than those of Textpattern, CMS Made Simple or MODx for instance. I know there is a tradeoff performance wise for a tag based language but nevertheless, I think it’s a blocker for many designers who click better with hmtl-like tags.

Anyway, I have tested Drupal 5.0 beta1 and I must say they have done a lot of work trying to catch up as far as admin usability is concerned. Garland (the new admin theme), is really nice despite the fact it doesn’t really break with the logic of 4.x.

If you want my take on things, Drupal won’t change its underlying logic despite all the improvements. It will still be "Drupal for developpers". I don’t see change happening in the future. Part of it has to do with the fact that most systems which have been laying around for quite some time (Typo3, eZpublish, Joomla ->who inherited Mambo, Drupal...) are bound by past architectural choices and a big number of existing extensions, templates... etc. Changing would mean rewriting the application itself with a different logic and that would basically mean creating a new application.

It’s also the reason why I think MODx "real" competition is not the old-school branch but the newer frameworks or web applications or the yet-to-come CMSes and CMFs. I think right now, MODx has a unique place between pure web application frameworks, content management frameworks and "mere" CMSes. With the new codebase from 1.0 MODx will become even truer. I’ll let Jason contradict me if I am wrong (only expressing my understanding from bits here and there), but I think the next gen will be somewhere between CMF and web application framework.

Quote from: identity

What really excites me about MODx, why I think it is worth pursuing, and why I feel very strongly for its success is because of passion. The development team is very passionate about what they are doing, (...) This is the foundation that great things are built on.

Yeah couldn’t agree more, you can quickly feel the vibe here and it a big turn on to get involved (least it was for me !). Also, from day one on these forums and the first minutes testing MODx, I knew I was on to something big.

It might not be clear to everyone yet, but I strongly believe that it will !

Quote from: identity

MODx... changing ways in which you develop and design... so woud that be MODxD²?!

Hmm, I think we’ll stick to MODx short and sweet, sounds better doesn’t it ?
Though I like Tattoo very much

Quote from: davidm at Nov 04, 2006, 06:00 PM

Anyway, I have tested Drupal 5.0 beta1 and I must say they have done a lot of work trying to catch up as far as admin usability is concerned. Garland (the new admin theme), is really nice despite the fact it doesn’t really break with the logic of 4.x.

Well you are ahead of me there. I’ve been excited about what I’ve heard, but I’ve also been more focused on wrapping my head around MODx to go looking at the new Drupal beta, and because it is still in beta, I think I’d just as soon wait.

I agree, while they are probably more likely than any of the other major players, completely rewriting the foundation is a big jump. But if it can happen, it is probably there.

But I definitely like the templating in MODx better. I think Drupal is also probably infinitely powerful, but I agree that I think it requires a bit more coding knowledge and understanding.

The best advantage right now is MODx being so young... there is still a lot of room to plan for the future and to look at systems like Drupal to pull best practices from while also maintaining the flexibility and essence that is becoming MODx.

So I’ve been reading scanning this thread because I am interested in developing a snap-together application system on which I can base a number of types of sites in particular niches. My personal opinion is that the documentation must be done in conjunction with every version regardless of the version The wiki is painful as are the forums for documentation because there seems to be little or no organization. I don’t ike scouring forums for usage info. I don’t ming scouring them for troubleshooting but how to use a module, plugin or snippet should be documented in a document format. I am a noob to CMSs but I have reviewed Joomla, Mambo, and Elxis and this is the one for me. It does all the things I want it to do and more (I either need more money or skills.)

What I would like to see myself is a more concerted effort to simplify the manager (the terms used, layout and behaviours) to make it less thinky. Usability should factor into the manager. I don’t know why we can’t come up with better names than Template Variables, Snippets, Chunks and Modules. I don’t understand why when you click on the top level menu all it does is make visible the second level menu (Should go to an index because on the internet clicking a link has the expected result of a page load not just a menu load). I would like to see less places to learn about MODx. Currently, I have to go to the documentation on the main website, then scour the forums, then check out the resources pages, then possibly the site of the component developer. There should be a project team whose job is nothing but migrating info to the Wiki and documentation.

I would also like to see some focus on the integration with other apps. While MODx is a very good framework, the future of the web is integration and synergies not reinventing the wheel. It doesn’t make sense to me to not have an easy way t integrate external apps into the frameworks. I would personally like to be able to integrate WordPress in a meaningful way, Zen Cart, osCommerce, OpenRealty (although I think I could beat this with a module or some sort of formatted entry system.) I would also like to be able to create data entry templates in the manager for the end user. Entry forms that extend or expand the capabilities of he Document Editor so that end users can add information that has a predetermined format.

Just so you know this post may be influenced by Guinness but I still mean it.

All the best,

Jay

Acknowledge and appreciated Jay. There’s been multipage discussions on the internal team boards about every point raised and more. The fact is though, we still have some basics (in our minds) to address. Please see my signature.

Quote from: smashingred at Nov 05, 2006, 12:42 PM

My personal opinion is that the documentation must be done in conjunction with every version regardless of the version The wiki is painful as are the forums for documentation because there seems to be little or no organization.

Don’t you think your judgment is a little harsh (or quick) there ?

The wiki is fairly new (a few weeks) and under construction, and I have no doubt in time it will become a valuable resource to MODx users. It’s meant to enable everyone to contribute to the documentation effort, and in time improve the existing online documentation.

As for the forums, it’s not meant for documenting MODx (thought you’ll find some pretty helpful bits in the forums, the Tips and tricks board comes to mind). Forums are there for support, and I think the MODx forums are not only very friendly but boast a pretty fast response time and rarely if ever do I recall someone being left stuck with a problem no matter how singular it is. Of course, there are always corner case issues but those are usually adressed through the bug tracker and solved at some point.

Quote from: smashingred

I don’t ike scouring forums for usage info. I don’t ming scouring them for troubleshooting but how to use a module, plugin or snippet should be documented in a document format.

And I agree with you there.
Yet, I am not sure I understand this since at least 90% of MODx resources *are* already documented.

Snippets usually include : a sample call, a list of available parameters, when needed : requirements and cache directives (some snippet have to be called cached or uncached to work).

Plugins usually include : a list of system events you need to configure the plugin to listen for, sometimes a specific plugin configuration string.

Modules usually include : installation instructions, sometimes a module configuration string, and how to use it.

Quote from: smashingred

I am a noob to CMSs but I have reviewed Joomla, Mambo, and Elxis and this is the one for me. It does all the things I want it to do and more (I either need more money or skills.)

FYI, Elxis is a Mambo fork.
I certainly can understand the reason for choosing a all-in-one - one click install - prepackaged CMS. As I often say, it all depends of your sets of requirements for a project and how specific your needs are. For "standardized" websites, those CMS are probably the safest bet to build something quick and easy. I sure would have gone for Joomla instead of Mambo or a Mambo-fork, since Joomla has brought a lot of improvements over Mambo. One thing I am not sure I understand is how choosing Elxis fits a "niche strategy" as you seem to need for your projects. I would have thought you’d need a least some degree of customisation, something for which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a prepackaged CMS... but that’s another debate entirely.

Quote from: smashingred

What I would like to see myself is a more concerted effort to simplify the manager (the terms used, layout and behaviours) to make it less thinky. Usability should factor into the manager.

I am very much in agreement there. Usability most definitely is one area where CMS are lacking. Be sure we are working on this and have plans to make a significant leap with MODx 1.0. I don’t know if you checked the OpenUsability project and more particularly the CMS User Interface Guidelines, but we did and we’ll definitely have and will give a lot of thoughts about this. I’d very much like to involve a usability expert at some point, and I happen to know one of the best guys around in France (Fred Cavazza, his blog is one of the top 10 french blogs and organizing the french World Usability Day -> I’ll be there in Paris on November 14th) which I’ll hopefully convince to give us a hand there.

Anyway, if you did test 0.9.2.1 and the latest 0.9.5 RC1 you’ll notice great changes already. These are incremental changes since we can’t at this point rebuild the manager from scratch, but I do think we already have a manager which compares well with competition

Quote from: smashingred

I don’t know why we can’t come up with better names than Template Variables, Snippets, Chunks and Modules.

Naming conventions is one very much debated issue in a lot of web apps forums... I don’t think MODx is particularly more esoteric than other CMS. I mean, since you’ve chosen Elxis, like Jeffrey Veen said, "The last system I evaluated had something called "mambots" which, to me, sounded like robotic assistance for breast feeding." A bit caustic humor, but I think Mambo and its forks are really not setting any example there...

I think Template Variables are quite descriptive of what currently lies within. Chunks are what they say they are, chunks. But no matter which term we discuss, when you learn a system you always go through learning the sytem’s lingo. But as Jeff Veen puts it "Please just use simple words to describe the things your system does." I think we did not do such a bad job there, but that’s just my opinon.

Now, it does not mean there is no room for improvement, just that again, I think we didn’t do that bad.


Quote from: smashingred

I would also like to see some focus on the integration with other apps. While MODx is a very good framework, the future of the web is integration and synergies not reinventing the wheel. It doesn’t make sense to me to not have an easy way t integrate external apps into the frameworks. I would personally like to be able to integrate WordPress in a meaningful way, Zen Cart, osCommerce, OpenRealty (although I think I could beat this with a module or some sort of formatted entry system.) I would also like to be able to create data entry templates in the manager for the end user. Entry forms that extend or expand the capabilities of he Document Editor so that end users can add information that has a predetermined format.

I’ll let the devs go into details about that, but my understanding is integrating an application relies as much on the integrated application than it does on the integrating application. Meaning if session management, user management and the API is poorly written, integrating will be a real hell to achieve and (maybe more important) maintain.

About that OpenRealty bit, you can most definitely achieve something nice with MODx with a bunch of TVs, smart use of Ditto and/or Maxigallery I guess... or even writing a module like Susan did with ShopX.

Quote from: smashingred

Just so you know this post may be influenced by Guinness but I still mean it.

And mine was influenced by a nice 1998 Saint-Estèphe (a red bordeaux), I confess, but I also mean what I said

Ryan and David,

I may have understated my real experience and understanding of CSS HTML and PHP. While I may be a relative Noob to MODx, I am not a noob to website development and certainly not to HTML and CSS based design. I have been designing this way for nearly two years solid and I have developed my own static php site framework but when I found MODx I was dumbfounded as I had never seen a CMS like it before. I see that I can incorporate my designs and sites into the framework and have tremendous freedom to do it in a way that I see fit.

I may criticize a lack of progress in a particular area or another because I am passionate about how MODx is going to change my whole way of working and allow me to offer a CMS to all my clients new and old.

Now that I am not talking with the beer filter on, I may have been a little harsh and dramatic about my feelings. I really love MODx and I have never been so excited about a piece of software in my life. I mean that! I want to be able to do everything with MODx and I am willing to help in any way I can. I want to help take it to places where other CMSs all pale (which in most cases has already happened). I know that there is a lot still happening with MODx and that there will be a huge number of changes to come. I guess I should stop bitching and start working of solutions. I am just so excited to see where MODx is headed and to be able to get hold of what is coming next.

I will begin by getting my hands dirty. I just need to shut up and dig in.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies and consideration. This forum is one of the other reasons that this project is so good. The core team and active development community.

All the best to all,

Jay

Dig in alright, but please don’t shut up

We need to have our assumptions challenged, and we sure need every passionnated people !
Sure we too are pretty passionnate about what we do here, and this also means (at least on my part) passionnate answers (but, hey, I *love* debate)... I wouldn’t want to make that taste for debate a motive to deter anyone to dig further into MODx or get involved and express what they have in mind.

Anyway, your posts are most appreciated.

This last bit sure helps to put some context to your previous post and understand how things were meant... thanks again for taking the time to detail your ideas, and helping us further explain what our take on things is and what we have in the hopper. I really do think debate in the best way to help us articulate better what we are about and what we mean to accomplish.

I am one of those that should produce stuff instead of writing stupid posts, but I feel I just have to express my opinion.

When reading this and other similar threads it is easy to get the feeling that many (most?) new users think the documentation is not what it should be.

Exactly two month ago I made my first post ever at MODx forums (this one is #101). I had then been evaluating MODx for two days after comming from Mambo.

I’ll quote some parts from my first post:

Fantastic! I used Mambo before, and comparing to Mambo, MODx is like having a new Ferrari instead of a Trabant (old east european car) from the 1972! The MODx manager feels more like a local application than a html page on a server on the net. Again: Fantastic!

What I have been looking for is a system to use as a start for building sites, not a ready done solution. I don’t want to start a new site by setting up document handling, user handling and security and such. I want to concentrate on adding contents, functionality and stuff without being locked to... anything! MODx seems perfect, I have not yet found one single thing that wouldn’t be possible to create and/or integrate to MODx. With Mambo I had to give up lots of ideas just because it was either impossible or to complex with the need to hack the core.

And there are lots of MODx documentation to read, but I still think it’s really hard to understand all about how snippets, chunks, modules, TVs and all that fits together.

Templating is incredible easy! At least the steps required to set up a small test template, I used my old template from Mambo, and it took only 10 minutes to port it to MODx!

I felt so then, as a complete newbie, and I feel it even more now.

So as you can see not everyone thinks the documentation is bad! There is always the risk of that only those who thinks the docs are not so great express what they think, while the (majority?) who thinks the docs are pretty ok sits quiet.

As I said I came from Mambo. I had read their documentation, I even bought my self a "learning Mambo" book! After all that reading and working I still had *big* problems when doing stuff that was not right out of the box in Mambo. To be honest, I still don’t know exactly what the mambots do in Mambo!

After just a few days reading the MODx docs I knew how to do everything I wanted! Not in detail, but what path I needed to take was pretty clear. This was not the case after several months with Mambo.

So I guess my point is: The MODx documentation is pretty good as it is! Of course, when you want to do more advanced stuff in MODx than is possible with Mambo (or other) it takes more time.

It will never be possible to document all the stuff that you can do with MODx. What can be in the documentation is an over all description over how MODx works, and how to get started.

As long as MODx aims for the more experienced, the current docs are (more than) enough to get started. Of course it can get even better, and I think it will.

Sorry for taking up your time, I’ll shut up now!