MODx ManagerManager Plugin

MODxI just came across the MODx ManagerManager plugin and WOW! The flexibility of the MODx system and contributions of it’s community continues to impress me even now. One of my limitations with MODx, up till now, has been that I didn’t have a good method for specifically presenting selected fields and only those fields to an end user. If someone wanted to go in and edit a page driven only from a few fields then they had to wade past a lot of unnecessary fields including an unused content area in order to get the the Template Variables (TV), which are presented at the bottom of the document. Well, no more.

Documentation

First of all this is a very well documented and powerful plugin. The documentation is very thorough and clearly delivered. Once you download the code just navigate to assets/plugins/managermanager/docs and it will walk you through the installation and quickly move you forward to “How it Works”.

How it Works

This is intended to give you an idea of the ease of use of this plugin. As I mentioned above all you need to know is fully covered in the documents accompanying the download.

Once you have everything installed in MODx you will be presented with the option to create rules. Creation of rules is what drives the control that this plugin provides. These rules can live in either a chunk or a document within the plugins directory (assets/plugins/managermanager/mm_rules.inc.php). I attempted to utilize the chunk approach, but had no luck affecting changes until I directly edited the mm_rules.inc.php file. Once I chose that route everything worked exactly as described.

Manager Fields

One of the components that has an immediate impact for me is the ability to affect changes to the default fields within the MODx manager. These changes can be applied by user roles and by the template being used (very cool). With this plugin you can: rename fields, hide one or more fields (including TVs and the content field), change the help text, hide templates, tell fields to inherit parent document’s value, provides a default value for specific fields in new documents/folders, and synchronize the values of specified fields at edit time.

Additionally you can affect changes to tabs, widgets and sections within the MODx manager.

I am not sure that I would recommend this plugin to someone just starting out with MODx, but for a well-traveled user it seems to provide a lot of potential. It’s definitely worth getting to know.

10 Comments. Posted by on Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 8:14 am.

Filed under CMS, Development.

  • Geron

    Thanks for the info…would you mind posting an exmple of how it can be used?

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    Let's say I have a template that has 5 template variables associated with it. I will use the plugin to hide the rest of the normal fields that would otherwise show up (longtitle, alias, summary, content, etc…). So when the end user goes to update that page they essentially see a form specific to that template, no extraneous fields. You basically hide everything you don't want them to see. Does that make sense?

  • Geron

    Thanks for the info…would you mind posting an exmple of how it can be used?

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    Let's say I have a template that has 5 template variables associated with it. I will use the plugin to hide the rest of the normal fields that would otherwise show up (longtitle, alias, summary, content, etc…). So when the end user goes to update that page they essentially see a form specific to that template, no extraneous fields. You basically hide everything you don't want them to see. Does that make sense?

  • dextersl2

    Hi Gregory, I love your site very informative. I have been looking for a way to have a default template used when a new resource is created by an end user. For example i tried this:

    mm_default('template', 'template_name', '4')

    also tried:

    mm_default('template', 'template_ID', '4')

    Wondering if you know a work around?

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    I don't see in the snippet docs/fields.htm documentation page where the mm_default supports that function. I have always used directories to manage this since once created the children will inherit the template of the parent. I will usually take the template field away from the user through ManagerManager too. Other than that I don't know of a more direct method for assigning a default template.

  • dextersl2

    Great, thanks for the reply, your idea gives me something else to try.

  • matt

    Hi Greg.

    I'm trying to figure out how to customize modx to hide all the unneccessary fields from an end user. Your article is useful, but I'm new to modx, and I'd love it if you could provide just a little more detail.

    I'm playing with 1.0.3, which has mm installed by default. However, there is no mm directory under assets/plugins. Do I simply create that directory, and put in a file containing rules within that directory?

  • http://www.gregorysmart.com Gregory Smart

    if you are running 1.0.3 there should be an assets/plugins/managermanager directory, but you don't need to go into that directory.

    In Elements->Manage Elements->Chunks there will be a Demo Category with a chunk named mm_demo_rules. This is where the ManagerManager plugin is pointed to by default in it's Configuration. Just place your rules in that chunk. There's a little bit of a learning curve with ManagerManager, but it's completely worth it since you can use it to customize the administrative side of MODx.

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