MODX 2020 Follow-up Article #3: Pages

As is subtly indicated in the title, this is article #3 in a series of my follow-up articles based on my article MODX 2020.

Here are links to Article #1 and Article #2.

This article could have focused on what I think the MODXpress Media Manager should do, but to be honest, it’s not my highest priority in what would make MODXpress a wonderful thing, and I don’t have any nice screenshots for that yet, so I’ll save it for later when it floats higher in the outstanding list of articles.

Instead, I’d rather write about how Pages should work. First of all, note the terminology “Pages” rather than Resources, the latter being the proper name for MODXers, because we can serve up a lot more than simply web pages. But to the target market of MODXpress, Pages is correct: the vast majority of people new to our world build web pages, not REST-ful APIs. When they hit web development adolescence, we can explain to them the birds and the bees in this regard, but for now, let’s just stick with Pages.

When they first load pages, they should see a list of pages they have on their site, like the sample below:

At the top of the page, we can add new, and toggle on/off those items in the Recycling Bin.

In the main body of the page, I keep it to what I think are the main things that I think a MODXpress user would want to see: the “human” title of the page, the alias, the template used, and the last time it was modified. Putting more post-screenshot thought into this, I think “Never” would make more sense than a Last Modified date of 1969 (and prevent people feeling they had found old web pages from many years before the birth of HTML).

Astute readers will quickly note that by the looks of things, there’s absolutely nothing one could possibly do with these pages. Upon a quick mouse-over, you’ll see that there are indeed some hidden gems.

Right away, we see the options that apply and which one comes with (potentially) dire consequences.

Editing a page will take you to a structure of your page with options to edit (which you’ll see later in this article). Viewing the page, as you’d expect, opens a new tab or window and shows you what the page looks like. Deleting the page asks the user to confirm and then puts it in the Recycling Bin. If you have the Recycling Bin items toggled to display, delete would be replaced by “Delete Permanently” and “Restore” buttons.

Now let’s take a look at adding a new page.

Looking at this screen, we have a Simple and Advanced mode, each with their own tabs.

In most cases, we can give the user the ability to get 90% of the types of pages they may want in the Simple Mode. Clicking on a type shows you a description of the type of page along with a Create Page button. Clicking on that button walks you through options to customize.

In WordPress, when you customize a theme, you have a menu on the left hand side which categorizes properties. Each page being edited or added in MODXpress should have this same simple intuitive set-up. I didn’t do up a mock-up of the About Me page, but I have faith in your ability to visualize.

For the MODXer who came from WordPress, there would understandably be some discomfort in the idea of these static settings, but remember, this is for a different market that prefers structure and ease over the unlimited freedom that MODX provides. As well, since MODXpress still uses the MODX core, every MODXpress page is still a MODX page.

In Advanced mode, you have more freedom and more choices.

You’ll quickly note that this is a half-assed attempt to put together some basic pieces. The idea is that the user would click on a section and then be given choices of some generic pieces and/or have tools on the right hand side to drag and drop.

So, yes this is limiting, and yes, when a person gets to the point that they want to have more flexibility, they can go into MODX itself. Of course, there is the danger that we might just have a small set of functions available and then say, “Go to MODX” but the idea is that for the 80%+ of the types of pages, we should give them enough options so that they won’t be jumping into MODX proper 10 minutes into developing their first site.

So this wraps up Article #3. In Article #4, I’ll be talking about security. This is a fairly big topic, and probably the most controversial.

Thank you for reading.