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Recap: Portland, OR (PDX) MODX CMS Meetup, Oct 6, 2015. US Bancorp Tower Oct 08, 2015

Kori Rush @frogabog arranged a MODX meetup in Portland's second tallest skyscraper!

MODX PDX MEETUP

MODX Community is truly amazing! I @hawproductions have said it before; nothing beats Open Source! It brings people together to collaborate on a shared interest, who else might never had spoken to each other.

Our diversities unites and empower us with more creative ideas and approaches to shared problems and challenges.

Me and my wife moved to Vancouver, WA from Sweden in August of 2014.      Freelancing have played an enormous part in my journey here. And for me freelancing is all about MODX CMS.

Since I discovered MODX in 2008      and started participate in forums, code and discussions I also started getting paid to troubleshoot and fix broken MODX web sites globally. While residing in Sweden I could travel to USA and be sitting at Starbucks working on a web site for the Australian Government! :)


Andreas Wettainen

My passion for MODX is a passion for web design! Ryan Thrash @rthrash Founder of MODX coined the phrase “Creative Freedom”. MODX is profoundly different than all other Content Management Systems (CMS) and web publishing software: MODX lets web designers use their own code, preferred tools and libraries.

It means that when you hire a MODX developer, you are hiring somebody who operates without restrictions and limits to what can be accomplished! This is NOT the case with other systems. Working with systems like WordPress involves a huge amount of workarounds      and hacking: “Creative Prison!”

I believe that in order to succeed online one has to succeed offline. Freelancing can be very lonely and 140 character messages aren't really that social. So I wanted to find local friends in my field of work. I contacted @frogabog - She is amazing and I'm forever grateful to her for making our meetup possible! :)     

On October the 6th a small group of MODX enthusiasts and interested newcomers meet in Portland. Here is a recap (and expansion) of the topics we discussed:

Information Security

  • Security - Top priority in the community.
    • Great example of Security Awareness is when members share code in the forums (or github) and professionals chime in with suggestions and improvements.     
    • By default we are alerted to MODX Security News RSS-feed when logging into the backend manager.     
    • Security is always part of a MODX presentation! :)          
  • MODX allows for core files to be placed above public root folder and renaming of the manager directory.     
    • MODX Revolution improved security in every way. Credit to Jason Coward @drumshaman MODX Lead Architect.     
  • Mark Hamstra's @mark_hamstra CVE stats (See tweet below)
    • WP and Drupal are both more popular and more used than MODX - In perspective "123456" and "password" are the most popular passwords being used. // WP DDOS-attacks:     
  • Securing User files
    • Jason Stump @StumpTownSolut discussed masking urls and file name hashing.
    • @hawproductions argued for storing files above root.
    • @frogabog reminded us about the benefits of using Static Resources.     

User Experience

  • Customization of the Manager Experience and some amazing MODX Extras
    • The power of Form Customization     
    • Custom Dashboard Widgets     
    • Understanding MODX Extended Fields and JSON      By Bob Ray @BobRay
    • MODX SimpleSearch      By Shaun McCormick
    • The power of MIGX      By Bruno Perner @webcmsolutions
    • NewsPublisher - Front-end Resource creation and editing      By @BobRay
    • UpgradeMODX - Finally lets us upgrade MODX from within the manager!      By @BobRay
    • MyComponent - Building a Transport Package - The Right Way      By @BobRay
    • VersionX - Version control      By @mark_hamstra
    • Promising (Premium) Extra: Workflow from extras.io      opens the door to Big Business and BI-requirements.
    • pdoTools      By Василий Наумкин @bezumkin
    • Collections - MODX Blog Management      By Jan Peca @theboxer
    • MODX Markdown Editor      By @theboxer
    • TinyMCE Rich Text Editor      By @theboxer
    • Ace Code Editor      By Danil Kostin
    • Formit - Form Processing      BY STERC @xtrasterc
    • Image+ - Crop and resize images      By Thomas Jakobi @thjakobi

    Many good ones missing - The goal wasn't to cover them all, just enough to prove MODX has your back! :)     

SEO And Performance


  • SEO
    • Text Browsers like Lynx      gives you a good picture of what search engine spiders see when visiting your web site - Can they navigate your pages?
    • MODX Friendly URL's are priceless for SEO - Make sure to enable this feature!     
    • MODX Tags, Resource Fields, Template Variables and Input / Output Filters     
      Let's say we have a default image for Social Media Shares:
      <meta property="og:image" content="[[!++site_url]][[++assets_url]]img/social.jpg" />
      We can create a Template Variable "blogImage" to override our default picture when it's being set and used by our Client or Content Publisher:
      <meta property="og:image" content="[[!++site_url]][[++assets_url]][[*blogImage:isnot=``:then=`[[*blogImage]]`:else=`img/social.jpg`]]" />
    • BigBrother - Full Google Analytics Integration      By Stephane @lossendae and @mark_hamstra
    • SEO TAB, SEO PRO, GOOGLE ANALYTICS DASHBOARD      BY @xtrasterc
  • Performance
    • Backend Manager Experience: Disable JS/CSS compression during install!     
    • MODX comes with built in caching - Make sure to utilize it!     
    • MySQL Caching (Persisting MODX Cache) from extras.io     
    • MODX SiteCheck - Full testing of your MODX web site!      By @BobRay
    • MinifyX      By @bezumkin
    • Use excellent services like GTMetrix to benchmark your web site!     
    • MODX Benchmark tags:
      <!-- MySQL: [^qt^], [^q^] queries. MODX: [^p^], Total: [^t^]. Source: [^s^] -->

EVO-REVO Migration, Commercial Support And Additional Notes

  • EVO-REVO Migration
    • GoRevo (Premium) Extra - Convert your Evolution sites to Revolution      By @BobRay
    • modx-evo2rev - Migration tutorial and scripts      By Wayne Roddy @dubROD
  • Commercial Support: MODX, LLC. - The Company
    • MODX Cloud - Website Hosting Designed Especially for MODX     
    • MODX Web Development     
  • Additional Notes
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