Comments on: Modx CMS In Action http://www.andrewseltz.com/2006/09/21/modx-cms-in-action/ Your Online Information Consultant - Ready to Help You! Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:29:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 By: Andrew Seltz http://www.andrewseltz.com/2006/09/21/modx-cms-in-action/comment-page-1/#comment-701 Andrew Seltz Sun, 01 Oct 2006 06:29:36 +0000 http://www.andrewseltz.com/2006/09/21/modx-cms-in-action/#comment-701 This comment is in response to a question asked by Kam in a comment to another article. He asked what the hardest part of working with MODx was: I found MODx very easy to use. I installed the sample site and spent some time examining the way things were set-up. When you start this way there are a bunch of useful Chunks and Snippets preloaded into the installation. The blog setup required the most effort to understand. With tools like Wordpress everything just pops out in working order. I had to get my head wrapped around the way you set everything up. There are a couple of components you have to include to get everything working. You also don't get all of the ping and trackback tools that come pre-built in blogging specific software. Another thing that I had to get used to was the fact that the content of some of the content pages in the site is code calling a Snippet to perform some special function. Working with a blog tool you get used to content being text and images and code being hidden away in a template. The downside of a highly flexible tool is that it requires more effort to customize. Maybe the MODx community will develop some installation pre-set packages that will create default installations for different website categories? I had to read through the DropMenu Snippet’s documentation a few times to figure out all of the settings I needed, but was quickly able to reproduce the exact menu design I wanted. I was really impressed at how easy it was to integrate - 100% CSS design, no compromise. Overall, I spent much more time creating the design of the site and coding the CSS than I did integrating the results into MODx. This comment is in response to a question asked by Kam in a comment to another article. He asked what the hardest part of working with MODx was:

I found MODx very easy to use. I installed the sample site and spent some time examining the way things were set-up. When you start this way there are a bunch of useful Chunks and Snippets preloaded into the installation.

The blog setup required the most effort to understand. With tools like Wordpress everything just pops out in working order. I had to get my head wrapped around the way you set everything up. There are a couple of components you have to include to get everything working. You also don’t get all of the ping and trackback tools that come pre-built in blogging specific software.
Another thing that I had to get used to was the fact that the content of some of the content pages in the site is code calling a Snippet to perform some special function. Working with a blog tool you get used to content being text and images and code being hidden away in a template. The downside of a highly flexible tool is that it requires more effort to customize. Maybe the MODx community will develop some installation pre-set packages that will create default installations for different website categories?
I had to read through the DropMenu Snippet’s documentation a few times to figure out all of the settings I needed, but was quickly able to reproduce the exact menu design I wanted. I was really impressed at how easy it was to integrate - 100% CSS design, no compromise.

Overall, I spent much more time creating the design of the site and coding the CSS than I did integrating the results into MODx.

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