How to Update a Website from MODx 0.9.6.3 to MODx 1.0.0 – Screencast

In this screencast I will go over how to update a MODx Evolution 0.9.6.3 website to MODx Evolution 1.0.0 by taking one of my MODx sites and updating it while walking you through my process.

I don’t believe there’s a particular prescription to this, what I go through here is my own process. I look forward to your comments on how you do your updates, any suggestions on making the process smoother (if possible 🙂 ), and any ideas, questions, corrections and such.

More Reading:
http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/MODx096/Upgrading

MODx Evolution 0.9.6.3 and 1.0.0 Manager Backend Comparison

Welcome to my very first screencast ever 🙂 This screencast covers very briefly some of the differences between the manager backends in MODx CMS 0.9.6.3 and 1.0.0 and might be useful for anyone following the series of MODx tutorials who is using MODx Evo 1.0.0.

I recorded this this afternoon and will be very interested in getting your feedback and thoughts. Obviously I’m a complete newbie at this and there’s lots of room for improvement, but it was fun.

One thing I did notice is that there’s a bit of a time lag between the audio and the video especially in the second half of the tutorial, and even after a few takes I couldn’t seem to get rid of it, so any suggestions are welcome. I’m using Camstudio with the ffdshow Video Codec. This is best viewed in fullscreen format. You can also watch it on Vimeo (without annotations) here: http://vimeo.com/6521761

Need to Subscribe to Comments?

I have now addedSubscribe to Comments a plugin to allow you to subscribe to comments on specific posts if you’re interested in following the discussion or if you’ve asked a question in the comments and are waiting for a response  This way, you don’t have to keep coming back to see if someone has responded to your comment, you will be automatically notified of any follow up comments by email.

You can go back to any posts that interested you and subscribe without having to leave another comment.  Just scroll all the way to the bottom and enter your email address and you’ll be notified whenever a reply is made to that discussion.

I’m using two plugins to accomplish this: Subscribe to Comments by Mark Jaquith and Subscribe to Comments Now! by Daniel FrużyÅ„ski.

This is the first time I’m using these plugins so if you have any issues with the subscription feature or notice any glitches please do let me know.

Updates

schoolI know it’s been a while since I posted a new tutorial on this blog. The long and short of it is that I am finally officially matriculated into my graduate program so things have been rather hectic in my neck of the woods. I just completed my first week of classes and right now I’m trying as hard as I can to keep my head above the water and not get behind and swamped with reading and such. It’s the first week but the program has started with a bang!! It’s definitely going to be a hairy couple of weeks but things should settle down in the next month or so and I should be able to resume posting on a somewhat regular schedule (I hope, really really hope!)

For those who’ve posted comments on different posts and I haven’t replied, again I apologize. I’ll be making some time over the next week to get caught up on the comments and to respond to them. If you’ve emailed me directly with a question I believe I have responded to everyone. If not, please resend your email because I may not have received it.

I have more MODx tutorials in the works as well as Drupal tutorials. My plan is to finish out the beginner series and then delve into more intermediate and advanced stuff, and also just start making general posts on doing different things with MODx and Drupal. I haven’t completely charted out this part of it but I do have several ideas churning around in my mind.

I’m also experimenting with screencasting! 🙂 I’m a very visual learner and find screencasts to be very useful so I’m hoping to overcome my mic-shyness and start posting some screencasts on here soon.  I use a PC so any suggestions on programs to use (preferably free) are welcome. So far I’ve experimented with Camstudio and it looks good. But I don’t have a good mic and can’t really think about buying one at the moment, although I do keep checking ebay for good deals.

Thanks everyone for hanging in there with me.  Keep checking in, subscribe to my rss feed and follow me on Twitter so you can know when new posts and tutorials go up. And if you find this blog useful, please feel free to donate something small or big 🙂 to keep me going, or even just drop a note to say hello.

Building a Website With MODx for Newbies – Part 11: Adding Comments with Jot

Welcome to part 11 of our series of tutorials on building a website with MODx CMS. So far we’ve looked at:

Part 1: Introduction to MODx
Part 2: Installing MODx
Part 3: Working with Templates
Part 4: Introducing Chunks
Part 5: Introducing Snippets
Part 6: Introducing Template Variables
Part 7: Introducing Ditto
Part 8: More Ditto
Part 9: Adding a Contact Form with eForm
Part 10: Adding Search Functionality with ajaxSearch

As we work through this series we’re building a MODx resource site –  Learn MODx, adding functionality and expanding our knowledge. So far our website looks like this:

tut11modxcms

One of the core things that is desirable in any modern website is user interaction.  So far we’ve implemented a contact form to allow our visitors to contact us, but in this post we’re going to go a step further and create a way for users to comment on our library selections and share their thoughts about the books we’re recommending.  You can use this to add comments to a blog, or any other content type that you desire.

Continue reading “Building a Website With MODx for Newbies – Part 11: Adding Comments with Jot”