MODx : a great Etomite Fork

hakjoon · 2006-02-06 20:08:53

I’ve been keeping an eye on it and even just the few changes made in .9.1 to the manager are a huge improvement.

Been meaning to do a local install and try building a site with it but haven’t had the time yet.

neutrino · 2006-02-23 02:06:38

@davidm

I’ve been poking around with ModX on a local install and crawling the Modx forums attempting to get my head around how it works. I have to say I’m feeling that surge of excitement building. I really like the TV idea—reminds me of Dreamweaver’s dynamic features (bindings and server behaviors). Very interesting. I haven’t seen anything like it. And from what I understand TXP could work from inside ModX?

I saw that you’ve launched a travel site. I wonder if you could give a gloss of what was different building with ModX versus our beloved TXP? Since I don’t speak (or read) French it’s a wee difficult to fully explore the site to find out on my own.

davidm · 2006-02-23 11:13:35

Yeah as you say, it need a lot of time to wrap your head around this one… it’s like Textpattern but with more degrees of liberty… Note that right now, we don’t have conditionnal tags though, that’s one major thing txp has over MODx even if lack of them is not as important as it would be in Textpattern. Let’s just say the new parser coming up in two months will add : conditionnal tags and… recursive parsing !!! (yeah, you read me : you can use a variable as a parameter in a snippet, or even use a snippet as a parameter in a snippet, module or plugin… pretty crazy, uh ?)

If you want a comprehensive take read Textpattern and MODx : a comparison. My take on this is here.

Template Variables are amazingly powerful : imagine any number of custom variables, which you can give any type to (text, number, RTE, dropdown, select…. etc) and which is associated to a tempalte (that’s the beauty of it too). Imagine also you can tell a page all its children should inherit certain chunks (amazing, uh ? it’s the @INHERIT binding). Imagine that you have a frontend editing module that allow your client to edit on the fly, without connecting to the manager, not only traditionnal content fields but also TVs…

That’s exactly why I needed MODx : to build a particular template for the travel catalog with TVs, so that the client can edit on the fly items of the catalog… it’s really powerful. But I’ll get into more details later, pretty busy right now…

Last edited by davidm (2006-02-23 11:17:47)

hakjoon · 2006-02-23 13:29:28

I finally got a chance to really play around with MODx and I’m pretty impressed. The manager still seems very confusing to hand off to someone like my mom, but I know that it’s being worked on. TVs and @bindings are crazy cool though. It seems to combine many of the great aspects of ez-publish without the slowness. It’s definitely going in the toolbox.

davidm · 2006-02-23 13:35:27

… and also it share textpattern flexibility ! I have been at it for almost four months and I still don’ have my head wrapped around it ;D

The concept of using chunks in CSS (like having the ability to insert forms in CSS : a time saver you build modular css on the fly) on top of having it parsed by MODx (thus allowing for server side CSS) is really awesome to…

About the manager : I now have an estimate from the dev team for the new manager (around 2 months, since there will be An Admin Template Handler and API on top of all the CSS rework).

Some people haven’t waited and done some new Template for the Manager

Last edited by davidm (2006-02-23 13:39:23)

hakjoon · 2006-02-23 14:37:50

Ohh admin templates. That solves it all right there. If you don’t like change it. Perfect.

neutrino · 2006-02-23 15:35:38

Thanks David. I’ll go read that now—never occurred to me to search for textpattern on the ModX forum. I’m really excited about the project as a whole. It just seems really smart from the rebranding to the framework/application functionality not to mention the data grid widget!

@hakjoon

So “theorectically” we could make the admin look and feel something like TXP-that’s what I love most about TXP. When I was in school I had an instructor who sang the praises of using a computer for writing (at the comand line on a PC). He cautioned though that we might be more comfortable with a MAC because “she” made it easy-“just crawled up in your lap and wrapped her arms around you.” TXP has always been the MAC for me-ModX “feels” like the PC—better access to the command line.

Last edited by neutrino (2006-02-23 15:37:10)

hakjoon · 2006-02-23 16:27:37

neutrino wrote:
So “theorectically” we could make the admin look and feel something like TXP-that’s what I love most about TXP.

That’s what I’m hoping for. From what I read of user, group permissions it seems that you could in theory create a “public” version of the site and an “admin lite” version that users say in a content creation group could see. So you could still have the current manager backend for when you need to really get under the hood, but you could use the friendly interface for day to day content publishing. Look at how they handle comments in teh blog tutorial and extend that to a full minimal admin interface.

It’s actually all there even without a full manager overall. I did something similar to this when I was using ez-publish so I didn’t have to deal with the backend all the time. You create a 3 tier approach: Site admins see the full manager create templates, TV’s etc. content contributors see a simplified interface geared towards creating content, anonymous users see the public site.

hmmm… modpatternX

neutrino · 2006-02-23 19:13:43

hakjoon wrote:

From what I read of user, group permissions it seems that you could in theory create a “public” version of the site and an “admin lite” version that users say in a content creation group could see. So you could still have the current manager backend for when you need to really get under the hood, but you could use the friendly interface for day to day content publishing. Look at how they handle comments in the blog tutorial and extend that to a full minimal admin interface.

Yes, that was my take too. The potential seems incredible. I keep reading “limited only by your imagination”. Gosh, my imagination is something else . . .

hmmm… modpatternX

hmmmm . . . I get you. I like it!

Last edited by neutrino (2006-02-23 19:14:22)

rthrash · 2006-02-24 19:42:07

Hi guys … I’d love to see any suggestions for reworking the manager; we love great ideas and well-considered suggestions. I think you’ve been too kind to it, honestly. ;)

Destry · 2006-02-25 10:44:13

neutrino wrote: I’ve been poking around with ModX on a local install and crawling the Modx forums attempting to get my head around how it works.

Yeah, me too. Been playing around with this locally and like what I’m feeling; though I knew it would be good if Davidm was behind it. This one goes in the toolbox too, though I’m not to the point where I would advertise it yet. I’ve been lurking in the modX Forum now and then but need to do some real digging.

Last edited by Destry (2006-02-25 10:47:14)

neutrino · 2006-02-25 12:40:43

@Destry

but need to do some real digging.

Yes. I am lured in and must spend some more time getting to know.

@rthrash

It has an engimatic sense to its potential. David was always very clear that we needed to look past the interface. As I’m not a coder that’s a bit of a challenge but TXP has prepared me well I think. There are many commonalities between these two pieces of software.

@everyone

I would love to see what some of our TXP admin facelift people (yoohoo Mary) would have to say about the MODX “facelift” while Ryan is soliciting opinions.

(FYI, one of my intitials issues with the interface had to do with a glitch in FF not showing the secondary menu—I had to (and continue to have to) reset the character encoding/auto-detect under Tools to “Chinese”, sounds weird yes but MODx is relatively young and I promise its worth checking out, if nothing else but to give you a new way to think about what you’re doing with webdev and more importantly, how.)

Last edited by neutrino (2006-02-25 12:41:28)

Inspired · 2006-05-25 18:22:13

In different reasons i was postponing testing MODx for so long… till yesternight. While i doubt i introduced myself to a half of features i guess i’m becoming a believer. What’s appealing is that “PHP Application Framework” definition and what i was trying to make out of textpattern.
What can i say, i kindof impressed and after a day playing with it i would wish to follow David to admit “MODx is the second CMS after Textpattern that I just LOVE” (though it might sound as if i’m saying it too early)

BTW, ~~i have been working on a variables plugin for textpattern~~ but i didn’t tell you, it was going to be a surprise :)

Anyways, thanks David, i read what you write here and there and it makes sense to me. Thanks for comparison with textpattern.
Best wishes

Last edited by Inspired (2006-05-25 18:23:36)

davidm · 2006-05-26 07:46:19

Thanks Inspired :)

MODx is sure gaining momentuum, partly because it has the same flexiblity as txp as fas as templating is concerned, but adds several other levels with template variables, @bindings and also, the ability to use the advantage of server side CSS (e.g use snippets, plugins since your CSS is parsed :D )

Plans for the future are very exciting, I’ll talk about it soon… :)

Shaliza · 2006-06-02 00:50:52

I tried both of them not too long ago & I wasn’t crazy about either of them. I tried countless of other CMSes, but TXP was the best one. It does exactly everything I want & leaves out the stuff I don’t want.

I’m not surprised it took me a while to find TXP. They do say that good things come in time…

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#16 2006-02-06 20:08:53

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#17 2006-02-23 02:06:38

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#18 2006-02-23 11:13:35

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#19 2006-02-23 13:29:28

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#20 2006-02-23 13:35:27

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#21 2006-02-23 14:37:50

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#22 2006-02-23 15:35:38

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#23 2006-02-23 16:27:37

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#24 2006-02-23 19:13:43

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#25 2006-02-24 19:42:07

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#26 2006-02-25 10:44:13

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#27 2006-02-25 12:40:43

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#28 2006-05-25 18:22:13

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#29 2006-05-26 07:46:19

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

#30 2006-06-02 00:50:52

Re: MODx : a great Etomite Fork

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