DEVTRENCH: Web Development from the Front Lines

I added a new tool today for MODx users that turns a MODx snippet call into a snippet call using the MODx API function runSnippet(). It’s a pretty simple tool, but I made it because I hate doing this manually (it’s just too tedious). Enjoy.

MODx Snippet Call2PHP

So I was looking at my Google Webmaster Tools this morning for devtrench.com and I throught it was pretty funny to see that this site ranks #1 for “modx sucks“.

Just for clarity I wanted to write this post to let everyone know that my opinion is that MODx doesn’t suck, but that there are few sucky aspects of MODx. In fact, I would say that MODx is the best CMS out there when you consider how easy it is for regular people (non-geeks) to use. If you’ve never used MODx and are slowly killing yourself by using Joomla or some other piece of crap then I urge you to try it. I’ve quit looking for a CMS, because MODx does everything I need for client websites.

Since writing my MODx sucks post, I’ve worked a lot more with it and have concluded that one thing that could make MODx not suck as much is better documentation. Under the hood of MODx there is a database api and a document parser API whose usage is not documented very well, not documented at all, or out of date. I think most users of MODx would agree that MODx needs better, more up to date documentation, especially now with the new Revolution version coming out. Seems that the developers have always written documentation as an afterthought when it really needs to be at the forefront.

I really think that bad documentation is the reason that I didn’t see MODx as a better framework when I wrote the old MODx Sucks post. I still don’t think it’s totally a framework like symfony, but it’s much better than what I thought before. I realized this after diving into the code more and figuring out things on my own. Open up the documentParser class and have a look at all of the undocumented functions.

Honestly though, this problem plagues most open source software and programming in general. It’s just difficult and extremely time consuming to write good documentation. I know I hate to do it. So perhaps a solution for MODx would be to make a call for better documentation from the community and see what happens. Oh wait…they ask us to get involved on both wikis. Hmmm.

I found out last month how to use Wake On Lan (WOL) to start up my Linux development computer and I think it totally rocks. Now I don’t have to get up and walk 10 feet to turn it on. I showed it to my wife and realized I had entered a new level of geekdom that I should really learn to just keep to myself.

Basically the steps are:

1. Set up the BIOS on the computer you want to wake on lan. The bios has to have the ability to do this as well as your network card.
2. Set up the system to wake on lan – I use ubuntu, so i followed these directions.
3. Make sure the computer you want to wake up was shut off properly. A computer that didn’t go though the shut down process will not wake from lan.
4. Use a packet sending tool from any computer on the same network to wake it up. If you are using wol.exe, all you need to do is type wol 0a0a0a0a0a0a where the 0a0a0a0a0a0a is the mac address from the computer you want to wake up.