New kid in class with "is this the CMS for me?" questions...

[PhotoWebMax]

I am new here.

My name is Max and I am a photographer. I also do some web design for clients. I have pretty solid Photoshop, photography, HTML and CSS skills. I can not get my head around scripting languages though. I have tried and failed. So, I really cant code PHP for example.

Up to now I have been using MODx for my CMS needs. I see several MODx names I know on this forum. I like to design sites in Photoshop, then code the template from the graphics into clean HTML and CSS. I like how MODx handles the build your own template task. 

But lately I am feeling frustrated and left behind with MODx. I don't fiddle with my sites full time. I find that upgrading modules with the Packet Management system causes issues with my pages, and the templates that I made.

So, I am looking for an easier path. I want to edit my own templates and get the CSS to create exactly the layout I want. I then want to build basic pages and have an easy to use image gallery system on portfolio pages that allows me to control the layout presentation of the thumbnails. It would be nice to create more than one gallery (with groups of thumbnails) on a single front end page. I need a basic contact form, some light blogging structure and that is about it. 

I am hoping that Processwire will allow me to do all this without tripping up on PHP knowledge or the lack thereof. I doubt I will need to build custom modules or blocks of code. 

I like MODx but I am finding it heavy going with needing to master all the chunks, snippets, modules, snippet calls, parameters, placeholders, template variables, paths, etc, just to present the content (text and photo galleries) in the way I want. I long for a system that relies more on CSS for layout control rather than requiring coding knowledge.

So, to keep this short: is Processwire the new CMS for me?

Thanks!

[cstevensjr]

Welcome to ProcessWire.  I would look here first:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/3691-tutorial-a-quick-guide-to-processwire-for-those-transitioning-from-modx/

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/5221-case-study-significatojournalcom-migrating-from-modx-evolution-to-processwire/

[PhotoWebMax]

Wow, Kongondo was a huge positive force on the MODx forum. He wrote a very in-depth and definitive guide to MODx navigation using the Wayfinder snippet...

Thanks for the links!

Any pointers on some good template tutorials?

[Joss]

Short answer: Yes

Slightly longer answer

I do not have a dev background (actually a commercial composer and writer and occasional photographer) but I find I can work with this simply because the coding side of it really does start with html.

If you have lots of php knowledge the sky is the limit.

If you don't you can still design a solid, secure, client friendly website.

And that is what you need 90% of the time.

I am currently putting together a site with Edge Animate and the PW side will be very simple - but it is lovely to have it there!

[Joss]

Here is the fastest 5 step template tutorial, but it is how it works:

1, Create a file in site/templates called mytemplate.php

2. Go into admin, go to template and create a new one - you will see your mytemplate.php listed. Click the checkbox and save.

3. Go to pages in admin, click on home and click on New to create a new page. Select your mytemplate template and put something in the title field. Save and then publish.

4. Open your very empty template files and write the following

<?php echo $page->title; ?>

Save it.

5. Go to the front end of the site - if you have used just the default installation you will see your new page in the top menu. Click on it.  and you will see a very boring title on a very plain page.

And that is the totality of the template system - the rest is up to your html and css imagination!

Good luck.

[PhotoWebMax]

In my early days of moving beyond building static sites I must have tried about eight or ten CMS systems. In the end I chose MODx for its design flexibility and the helpful community. Well established systems like Drupal seemed too "heavy" with a zillion add ons and their forum was just to bloated from sheer critical mass. Since then MODx has split into two project forks, Evolution and Revolution. Add time, increased membership and much of the searchable forum content has become either outdated or irrelevant. 

I am not sure if I will move away from MODx totally but after stumbling onto Processwire I must say I am intrigued and hopeful that I will click with the system...

[kongondo]

Hey Max! Welcome to PW...Nice to see you in these neck of the woods!   

I hope you find PW to your satisfaction... . Like with all systems, you will need to know the basics of PW in order to use it, which means getting to know the very basics of the PW API and some (very limited) knowledge of PHP to get you started (as I explain in the thread linked to above). I hope these don't put you off. We (the forum) will also be here to help you every step of the way. Whatever you choose at the end of the day, it's nice to "see" you again and wishing all the best with your sites!

Edit:

Oh yes, PW is light and nimble - yes fast - very fast - and packs a very mean punch

Edited March 29, 2014 by kongondo

[PhotoWebMax]

@Joss,

Thanks for the basic new template creation procedure. So far so good. I guess the next step is to backwards engineer the default template and CSS and see how things are structured. I am ok with copying PHP code and massaging the main html within. I can edit and create my own CSS. I have an install running on MAMP and will play around with this over the next couple of days. 

@Kongondo,

Nice to "see" you again as well!! I see Mary is here as well! Small world. How deep is she into Processwire? Be great if she could create some tutorials and videos on Processwire like she did for MODx. Her tutorials with carefully chosen language was a HUGE help for many people who were learning the MODx system.

[kongondo]

Yeah, there's Mary and a number of others. Hopefully she'll find time to write some tuts. I "see" her here every now and then. I think she's really busy with clients and stuff.....

[Marty Walker]

@PhotoWebMax Short-answer, yes indeedy.

I'm going to reference my own (very basic) photography site as an example - there are plenty of others in the gallery too. I'll probably redo it at some point to suit what I'm doing - less structure and more style categories.

You can, of course, structure it how you like. There's plenty of people here to help and guide you. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

[Joss]

@Joss,

Thanks for the basic new template creation procedure. So far so good. I guess the next step is to backwards engineer the default template and CSS and see how things are structured. I am ok with copying PHP code and massaging the main html within. 

Actually, don't bother backward engineering anything - what I set out really is the complete templating system.

How you put those templates together structurally is exactly the same as if you were putting together a static site, with perhaps a bit of php to include the odd menu.

The default website is one way of doing it, but not the only way. You can add any css framework, for instance, in exactly the same way you would for a static site.

There is only one rule:

files created in /site/templates that have a .php extension are candidates for template files. If they are anywhere else, they are not.

The structure sort of works like this:

field > template (in admin) > template file > page

So, you create a pile of fields, add them to a template that is linked to a template file, then create a page with that template and view it in the front end.

The pages are part of a tree, so even without a menu, you can find them from the front end. If you create a page called mypage as a child of the home page, the address will be:

yoursite.com/mypage/

If you create another page as a child of the first one you created it will be

yoursite.com/mypage/myotherpage/

To display a whole page, the template MUST have a template file, which is a bit obvious, but you can create templates without files for other purposes.

Obviously, what you can do from that point on can get a lot more complicated, but that is the basis of it all.

I have a tutorial on the wiki (which is getting a bit out of date) but it will give you some basic sense of what is where and how it works:

http://wiki.processwire.com/index.php/Basic_Website_Tutorial

I really need to rewrite the damned thing!

Trust me, when I first played with ProcessWire, I really knew very little php (still do), but I decided to take one of my existing sites and rebuild it with PW.

In two days it was up and running. I haven't used Modx, so I cant make a comparison, but PW at a basic level is piss easy!

[PhotoWebMax]

@Marty,

Cool stuff. I have stayed in Katoomba before...

@Joss,

Thanks for the Wiki links. Heading over there now...

[Joss]

Warning, I think there is the odd typo in the tutorial, but others have managed to struggle through it!

[PhotoWebMax]

If this works for me (and it looks promising) then I would not mind helping with any documentation down the road. I have writing and forum moderation experience.

My view on creating documentation for stuff like this: I like it when you have two people doing the work or tutorial. One should be the expert with all the coding tools and knowledge. And then the other guy/gal: an enthusiastic participant who makes sure the language reads well for readers, especially newbies. 

I know catering to newbies is a chore than tries regular forum participant's patience. But the better the communication and documentation is the better the signal-to-noise-ratio becomes for everyone...

[diogo]

One should be the expert with all the coding tools and knowledge. And then the other guy/gal: an enthusiastic participant who makes sure the language reads well for readers, especially newbies.

So, Joss is the latter one . Will you be the former?

[yellowled]

I am hoping that Processwire will allow me to do all this without tripping up on PHP knowledge or the lack thereof. I doubt I will need to build custom modules or blocks of code.

Whenever someone asks me about the level of PHP needed to work with PW, I usually tell them that my PHP knowledge roughly matches the ability to speak English of a 2-year old chimpanzee. Which is kind of accurate.

Like you, I never managed to grasp the fundamental concepts of programming. There is a certain point to which I get it (if conditions, foreach loops, the easy things), but after that I just don't understand it. I'm constantly amazed by the ideas people in this forum come up with to solve template issues.

It's been the same with Javascript back in the day when AJAX was still very new and everyone was jumping on the JS wagon. Then jQuery came along and suddenly, writing JS code became a lot easier. This is where the PW API comes in – it's been designed to work for PHP like jQuery does for JS. And it does.

I still can't write a contact form script in pure PHP. Well, maybe I could, but it either wouldn't work or be very insecure. And yet, I find myself writing PHP templates using the PW API and actually having fun doing it. 

[diogo]

Yellowled's answer should go in the homepage of PW's site

[JeffS]

ProcessWire is easy to get the hang of. If your going to build sites for clients, you will appreciate the differences soon enough. Come on in, the water is nice. 

BTW: i just finished moving the last of my client sites off MODx (started on 0.95).  Most of them I converted on my dime. I did it because It saves me time and is easier for them to manage content.  No more dependance on custom modules to get my sites the way I want. Have most everything I need in the core.  Dumped drupal for many of the same reasons too.

I used to think lots of great third party modules for *some cms* saved us time. Not so. The upgrade problems alone cost us more than the coding in PW. 

Learn to code. It's a skill that won't be replaced.

[PhotoWebMax]

I managed to fix a number of issues with one of my MODx sites (that jump started the search for alternatives in the first place) so my immediate crisis is over.

I have checked out a couple of tutorials and watched several videos on PW. I really like what I see. I think the next step for me is to build a test site and just get in there and make the pieces fit. Some of the threads on this forum that focus on moving from MODx to PW are really helpful...

Thanks to all!

[einsteinsboi]

Hi Max

Welcome to Processwire, good to see you here

I know you will fall in love with Processwire. I've been meaning to write some newbie tutorials for PW but have been quite swamped with client work and have had some big projects going. But it's still on my to-do list.

Processwire is a fantastically flexible CMS to work with, and you can bend it any which way you want, depending on your needs and skills. I dare say it's a lot more flexible than MODX ever will be, and you never need to learn another templating tag in your life You can just fit PW into the way you like to work, which is what would make creating tutorials tricky, since a tutorial would only present one way of doing things

My advice is the same as everyone else's. Start with the docs, understand how template files work (http://processwire.com/api/templates/) and then get hands on. Come back to the forums and ask questions when you get stuck, and one day the light bulb will just go on and you'll be on your way

There are still things I find quite challenging in PW but I'm constantly learning and building my skillset here, and I'm hoping to very soon have time to document the things I'm learning how I'm learning them.

Just jump in, you can't go wrong

[PhotoWebMax]

Cool stuff Mary!

So glad to hear that things are going well and you have client work. 

One of the things I find frustrating about MODx is remembering all the little syntax differences with snippet calls and their templates. You have to look stuff up repeatedly if you return to a site project after any absence. 

I like the look of PW and how it seems to function, just smoother somehow. Time will tell once I create a test/learning project for myself...

Its really interesting to see how many MODx folks are over here using Processwire...

[Martijn Geerts]

When the switch from Evo to Revo happened, lot's of folks were looking around. Revolutions backend was slow, there were numeral bugs and documentation was scarce. And there you had that new kid in town called ProcessWire with lots of similarities between them. (a reason why so many switched if you asked me)

 

In my opinion ProcessWire is a better experience for the developer and the site editor. Then you're forced to use PHP, not some kind of `pet keeping` safety language. This insures you that learn the most used language of the web, knowledge what you can use everywhere, not only in the ProcessWire world.

[Joss]

This is what persuaded me to try ProcessWIre when Matthew suggested it to me - not being a programmer, and not having a huge amount of time to put to the task, I do not want to learn yet another way of doing things.

When I first worked on a complicated site back in 2000, the chap who helped me (who was a PERL guru) was very strict about not reinventing things that already existed. He felt, quite rightly, that it fragmented and complicated the process and, as a consequence, was almost inevitably a security risk simply because it did not have the support required. Actually, although the site was in PHP he did feel that it was a lot weaker and less secure than if it had been written in PERL - at that time he was probably right.

And it just makes things hard work!

It is notable that as a job he was not a web developer but a sysadmin and solutions developer for a multinational - very hard core and working in a world of very strict rules. He has left that world now and is joyously writing old fashioned game books.

[PhotoWebMax]

Joss,

I have done the three tutorials that you have on the Wiki...

Doing these tuts was so worthwhile. The quick experience of bouncing around Pages, Setup, Templates, Fields and their sub menus really establishes a working familiarity of PW in short order. I am quite impressed so far!

The Ajax user experience with the Admin is very cool and clean. I guess "clean" is the main word that I would describe PW. I like "clean" in website design overall and I appreciate it in the CMS backend experience as well.

Coming from MODx, my main CMS of choice, I see quite a lot of commonality, which I think is a good thing. Even though I am not a PHP guy I can see the direct advantage of using purer PHP syntax over the special sub language that MODx uses in its snippet TPL system.

Overall what I like about the PW admin system versus the MODx Manager is that there is just less of it. The same goes for the project support forums. I was initially drawn to MODx because the weight of the forum was so much less and more direct than say Drupal and Joomla for example. Since then MODx has become more complex to navigate, due mainly to the Evo and Revo development branch split. This causes some frustration with tracking down issue searches as much of the search engine links are either outdated or irrelevant in a way. I think many new "clean" CMS platforms suffer from this issue: over time the signal to noise ratio becomes a problem. 

The sites I have built so far have been mostly basic. Brochure sites, sites with nicely presented web photo galleries, streamlined blog or news lists, sites with private areas for registered web users (one with a system that allows only registered web users to post from the front end), etc. MODx really does not have a really good ecommerce/ shopping cart solution. I have not built a shopping cart site yet, but I want to.

One of the things I would like to do is offer custom sites to real estate agents that are looking for a more personal portal that relies less on the mothership MLS system. I know building real estate sites can be a major endeavor. One of the professional hats I wear is doing real estate photography. I used to also build custom sites for each house listing but these sites were built using static XHTML with no database or connection to private MLS components.

The next step for me is to take an existing MODx site that I have built and recreate it locally using PW. This should be an interesting self assignment...

Thanks again...

Max