I love MODX as a CMS, it’s fantastic. Revolution (v2) marked a massive step forward for us MODX developers, except the backend.
I hate the MODX backend. I willingly tolerate the extJS generated manager interface because it's OK. Sometimes the buttons don amp;#8217;t click register clicks correctly. Often it's ever so slightly laggy, not enough it interrupt, but enough to make you realise that this isn't an HTML backend. All this is fine because there is so much goodness to be gained from using MODx.
Something that hasn't been stopping me from posting more often is the MODX Manager interface. In reality it isn't a barrier, if there is something that I really want to post I can. I only ever log into the manager to tweak functionality or post completed articles or links. Articles are written in Markdown so I can take my time writing them, then at the last moment published. It just takes to much effort to post link items. The steps are
- login
- create a new document
- select the linked item template
- pick the parent folder
- switch tabs
- paste the URL into the template variables field
- write a title
- write a description
- write something witty about the link
- publish post
What I needed was a quick and easy method to post articles from my desktop. A quick dive into the MODX documentation and it looked easier than I thought. So I fired up Xcode, built two forms in an application, an asynchronous network class was ripped out of an iPhone project (reusable code kids it's the bomb), and some dirty PHP thrown into a snippet inside MODX.
You end up with:
This will not turn up in the App Store any time soon, it will not win any awards but it does work on only my blog. Total took me about 4 hours, including some stupid time where I wasn't really paying attention. Next job is to port it to the iPad and iPhone because I can.
The reality is that I would like an iPad app to replicate the Manager interface, not every use case needs to be looked after. Viewing, editing and posting documents for the moment would be enough.