Hey! You can support MODX Digest project and all work that I am doing for MODX using my Patreon page. Thank you in advance.


MODX Digest #4

Fresh news about MODX. In the release: the MODX Club site closed, progress with the conversion of processors, active work on documentation, notes and updates to add-ons.
Enjoy reading!

News and Events

Shutdown of MODX Club

“There is no more of your MODX-Club”, Nikolai Lanets wrote a few days ago and announced the closure of the site modxclub.ru, while the old articles will still be available on the new site of Nikolai’s project — prisma-cms.com.

MODX Development

Documentation

Ivan Bochkarev wrote a short note on the current status of MODX documentation — “MODX Docs. New site. Translation into Russian”. And I should say, the activity with which the work on the documentation of the last weeks is being conducted is simply amazing. You can see this for yourself — here are the statistics for the month. 129 commits, 1501 files and 57995 lines added and 14470 lines removed! Powerfully!

You can see how the site with the documentation looks, it is regularly updated. And you can join here and here. Or ask Ivan Bochkarev or Mark Hamstra, they will tell you where to start.

Refactoring

Work on refactoring the MODX 3 core continues, but not as fast as we would like. The reason is exactly three people involved: I (Ivan Klimchuk), Joshua Lückers and directly Jason Coward, so before you criticize, first consider how you can help.

Since work is being done on one large pull request, the changes have to be sent to Jason's fork, because of this, in the main repository, all activity is not visible. However, the result can be seen here — here already closed (converted processors) requests.

News from GitHub

  • #14558 — Sergey Shlokov discovered that in the MODX database schema there is one interesting index that is essentially useless, and in some cases even harmful, and suggested removing it.Removing something is always perceived with caution, so the discussion on the appropriateness of this action continues on GitHub. However, the evidence is very obvious and the garbage should definitely be removed from the system.
  • #14559 — Ilya Utkin discovered a regression of changes, which is expressed in the missing animation of checkboxes on the resource page and corrected this misunderstanding.

Interesting notes and articles

  • Mat Dave Jones in a blog on modx.com wrote a good article about choosing a CMS for the site (from open source solutions), which you can use to communicate with potential customers.
  • Personal pages of MODX Revo users — Kirill Korovin wrote a note on his website on how to organize personal pages for users registered on the website. You should decide what to put on these pages yourself, but the general approach to implementation is described well.
  • Several paid applications have become free — Andrey Stepanenko decided to make several of his add-ons free. On the one hand, this may please someone, since there is no need to pay money, but at the same time, these extras are now delivered as they are, without guaranteed technical support and development.
  • Under an article with the news about the closure of the MODX club Roman Voropayev shared an interesting opinion on the current status of MODX. Also, no less interesting answer from Sergey Shlokov. If you have something to say on this topic, you can join the discussion. It would be interesting to see the detailed opinions of people on this subject.
  • Translitor as an alternative to transliterating aliases — Nikolay Savin proposed his improved class for more “correct" transliteration of aliases, the implementation of which was peeped in a similar solution from the world of Laravel. Similar behavior can be achieved with standard tools by changing the system settings, but may be the possibility to install the package in one click will be simpler to someone.
  • The use of predefined templates for TinyMCE is a note about the capabilities of the TinyMCE editor, which is often used in MODX. Exactly, how it is possible for the editor to prepare in advance the blank blocks, which at the time of editing can be selected and inserted into the document. Almost like ContentBlock, only simpler and free.

New and updated add-ons

  • modRetailCRM-2.5.0 — updated the package for integrating MODX with RetailCRM service, which now supports full-fledged work with modifications from msOptionsPrice2, and also it can export goods with all properties in XML-format. Nikolai Savin, the author, wrote a short note about the update.
  • AdminTools-1.15.0 — Sergey Shlokov updated his component with a set of convenient tools for MODX Manager; added an indicator of unread messages and several bugs were fixed.
  • Twilio-0.0.2-beta1 — is a package for integration into MODX of Twilio service for sending SMS from YJ Tso (sepiariver). The author has posted documentation of usage on his site.
  • instaFilters-1.0.0-pl — is a terribly simple component that adds a filter to the image shown in the parameter, as in Instagram, but on pure CSS. It is free, motivation and examples of use in the author's note.
  • mChimpX-2.1.0-pl1 — Anton Tarasov updated his component, which itself is a hook for FormIt, which allows you to add a user to the Mailchimp mailing list at the time of sending the form. Mainly updated translations, added translations of some error messages and just fixes of bugs.
  • msTimeStamp-1.0.1-beta — Andrei Stepanenko published his free extra, which allows you to remove statuses of goods (new, special or popular) after passing some time. It works without the need to install tasks in the crontab service. Read more in the author's note.
  • altHelper-1.0.1-beta — Pavel, after his note about solving the problem of automatically filling out alt-attributes in pictures, put his decision in a free package. Please, use.
  • amoCRM-1.2.1-beta — Mikhail Voevodsky has released a large update package for the integration with amoCRM. I wanted to list all updates, but they are specific and in fact, there are a lot of them. BTW, all fixes are diligently listed in the package' changelog.
  • msPre-2.2.20-pl — a large component update for bulk editing of resources (or even products). Of the new features — favorites resources and filter on them for faster catalog management and also the rapid creation of groups of products through the miniShop product links. More details in the author's note.

Thanks for attention!

If you noticed a mistake  —  please write to me.
Write questions and suggestions in Twitter.
You can send a link to the digest through this form.
More news and comments on the MODX Digest Telegram channel.

Version of MODX Digest #4 on Russian language.

← Previous episode

Do not forget to say thanks to the author!