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I feel like a broken record whenever CMSs are mentioned on DC, so please excuse me while I climb on my horse.  

• How is the plugin/extension system designed?

ModX is basically a framework, one of it's greatest features are the use of what they call chunks and snippets, a chunk is simply a piece of html and a snippet a piece of php code. These pieces can be inserted anywhere in to your template which makes life incredibly easy. Extensions/addons are usually just a collection of chunks and snippets. One of the features added for Revolution 2.0 was a transport system that means you can easily build a package that can be simply installed by the user.
Plugins, separate again, can be event driven, for example before or after a page is rendered. When the event happens, so does your plugin.

• How is the installation system designed?

Most CMSs I've had experience with are pretty much the same, you have a wizard based interface that does a few pre-req checks, gets the database info and then executes a sql script to create the tables and update any config files.
If, however, you go with their cloud offering (yes, they do have a free dev account), installation is done in seconds at the click of a button.

• How are users, and more importantly GROUPS of users represented in the database?

In Evolution 1.0, users and groups were a bit strange but in Revolution 2.0 they've gone for ACLs. It can be a bit much to get your head around when coming from the old way, which was strange, but simple. But I find that it makes more sense.
As for the database structure, to me it makes sense.
Users are in a table that is pretty much just username and password.
An attributes table contains the other bits and pieces like email, phone, etc.
Then a groups table that contains the groups you've defined
and a table that links users to groups as a user can be in more than one group.

• How is the permission system handled?

Permissions are a collection of policies, the policies define what a user can and can't do, like edit a document, view certain menu items.

• How is upgrading handled?

Download new package, upload to host, re-run setup, wizard handles the upgrade process.
Via ModX Cloud? click a button, done in seconds.

• How are hooks and events handled?

As mentioned above in relation to plugins. Certain events are defined, when you create or install your plugin you select which events will trigger your code.

• How is translation handled?

Revolution 2.x really went all the way with this. There is full lexicon management, you can change any word you like.
So to start with, all words are seperated into namespaces for various parts of the system.
In the lexicon directory you have a folder for each language and each language has a set of php files which define the value of each string... eg

[copy or print]
$_lang['help_title'] = 'Help';

On top of that any changes to the default lexicon are stored in the database, meaning you can revert any change quite simply and if you want to call documents Bananas, then go ahead and do so.

• How is logging handled?

The api has a logging method which logs to a file, you can call the method with flags like error/warning/info from any of your custom scripts. The log file can be viewed/cleared via the management intercace.

• How is security handled and what kinds of options exist for monitoring and dealing with problems?

This is more a process kind of question I'm guessing. The team seem pretty committed to squashing vulnerabilities, I'm not sure what monitoring goes on internally.

• What kind of support for versioning exists?

Out of the box, none really, but as with most things in the CMS world, there is an Add-On available.

• What kind of choices were made about what to build into core vs. what to write as extensions?

I like this question, because not every CMS can be for everybody so a line has to be drawn somewhere as to what's included out of the box and what gets bolted on afterwards.
First and foremost, ModX is a framework, what it does out of the box is give you incredible flexibility.
One of the things v1.0 did poorly, was blogging, out of the box, 2.0 is not too crash hot either (ie. it's not wordpress), but one of the lead developers wrote and add-on. Install it, and bam, now you have full on blogging.
Another thing left out of the box in 2.0, TinyMCE, because you don't have to use TinyMCE if you don't want to but it is the most popular addon download.

I hope that's piqued your interest, feel free to ask me more technical/direct questions on any part you wish to know more about.

All of this info is drawn from my personal experience, I'm just an avid user who's been developing web sites with all sorts of crazy requirements since I first discovered ModX in 2008.

kwacky1

I'd highly recommend that you check out ModX (www.modx.com), the admin side is one of the reasons I keep recommending it and using it for my projects.

Revolution has a built in Form Customization feature that lets you turn off various areas of the UI depending on the level of access the logged in user has and/or other criteria entirely.

Tab at a command prompt to scroll through the items in the current directory.

Don't forget with tab you can also use wildcards, eg. s* <tab> to scroll through items starting with s.

F7 to bring up your command history.

mouser, are you still looking for ideas?

I want to know how difficult it would be to create a simple app that just receives notifications. How complicated is the app itself, what infrastructure or services are required to push notifications to the app?

For example, much like you do for the RSS feed, every time you see a story of notice on DC, push a notification to the ipad app which of course has a cody icon.

anyway, food for thought.

Which is exactly the reason I came here to post that link.

All for you mouser 

Interesting show on Australian radio about the 'resurgence' of board games.

http://www.abc.net.au/rad...etense/2012-06-17/4065864

Hey Tim,

What do you think about having TAB perform the same as Enter?  I keep finding myself pressing TAB expecting it to go to the next line (maybe it's the table like layout).  I can't see that TAB has any other function in Fentwiss.

kwacky1

Nice work Tim 

PS. I'm 5 cents taller than you 

PPS. I won't ask about AUD 

Awesome!  When I first installed the Steam client (very recently) I thought Steam would do what you've described and I tried to import my games into Steam and failed miserably.

I'll keep a keen eye on this one.

Yes absolutely, web developer for the local community, all via referrals.
+1 Hobby.
+1 After Hours.

+1 for AutoIt, I use it every second of every day at work, I have 100's of scripts that I use all the time for all sorts of tasks (deploying software, managing active directory etc). 

I also use AutoHotkey but pretty much as MilesAhead says, only for Hotkey type things, but I learnt about AHK after I already was well into AutoIt (learnt AHK via the DC programming school!).

I also started way back in the day with GW-BASIC, mastered Turbo Pascal and dabbled in C/C++.  But nowadays it's all autoit/asp(vbscript)/php/tsql/mysql for me.

  http://www.head-in-the-cl.../2011/05/03/total-recoil/   

thanks timns, it's perfect

for those interested in the back story/request, basically that's me on the trampoline with my kids playing one of their favourite games 'woompah', where i just do my biggest jump to bounce them as high as i can, usually without twiggles' help 

 
My happiness has just increased to 150% and rising!

Here you go skwire, I asked them if we could use the feeds in your sWeather application, let me know if you want me to forward you the email.

This would be a private custom version just for you since that sites's RSS feeds are COMPLETELY different from Yahoo's.  In other words, I don't want to have to redo the entire sWeather interface to support multiple sites.  Hahaha...is it possible to hack one's own program?   

Anyway, post or PM your location ID or town code/name that you use for that site.   

Thanks for the offer skwire, but I don't want you to go to the trouble just for me.

kwacky1 

Hmm, localised versions perhaps? http://www.weatherzone.com.au/

From the ToS on their RSS feeds:

[copy or print]
The feeds must not be used for any other purpose (including widgets and
other applications) without the express permission of Weatherzone.

Oh well, I've asked for permission, we'll see what they say 

Here you go skwire, I asked them if we could use the feeds in your sWeather application, let me know if you want me to forward you the email.

Yes, this is fine, as long as there is clear attribution to Weatherzone as the source of your data.

Matt Pearce
Chief of Television Services
Head Meteorologist

Hmm, localised versions perhaps? http://www.weatherzone.com.au/

From the ToS on their RSS feeds:

[copy or print]
The feeds must not be used for any other purpose (including widgets and
other applications) without the express permission of Weatherzone.

Oh well, I've asked for permission, we'll see what they say 

Kwacky1,

I love the idea of your software--I've been meaning to search for something like this for some time.  Great idea with the photos.  The problem I'm having is that when I execute the program I just get a black screen w/ no images.  I'm running XP.  I downloaded both the large file and the exe file a couple times.  Do I need to specify where the photos are somehow?  Do I need a key?

Thanks for doing this.  My 16-mo old daughter is very interested in whacking away at the keyboard.  I can't wait to try it out with her.

Thanks,

James (Washington, DC)

Hi James,

Just make sure you've extracted/unzipped the files from the 'large' file so that you can see all the files inside. The exe is in there to, the standalone download was provided for people who'd already installed CLF.

You may also be interested in Babysmash by Scott Hanselman.

Let me know if you need any more help.

kwacky1
 

Thanks, kwacky1.  Sorry to hear about the location issue.  Which weather service do you normally use?  I may change up sWeather to use weather.com or some other site.

Hmm, localised versions perhaps? http://www.weatherzone.com.au/   

Your estimated happiness value from this prize: 100%.

110% in my case 

Thanks mouser!

Can you change the target in the header to be $13,838 instead of $15,000, to make it more tantalizing and less seemingly unreachable in the final days!?
 

Nice one skwire (yet again  )

Unfortunately Yahoo Weather don't have weather for my part of the world* 

*Note: The closest city to me in Yahoo Weather is a measly 60km away, however due to the difference in elevation  (~400m) it might as well be another world away.

dont know if im alone, imtrying to run the program on windows7 and it works fine for about the first 5 or 6 key presses then appears to freeze and no matter what button is pressed there is no sond or image, when exiting it shows on the task manager as not responding i have tried both the .exe in the zip and the update as well

Hi,

I haven't tested on Win7 as yet, but I will give it a go and see what happens.

kwacky1

40hz and JavaJones, this is what I like most about ModX it gives you complete control and flexibility, you still hand code the template and styles, ModX just gives you a framework to leverage features that might require a CMS.

For our project, the major requirement was for a system that was easy to use and update by a large number of users that had little to no computer experience, let alone website editing and ModX and Silverstripe fit the bill.

Anyway, that's just my .

What worries me more is the perception of donation ware over commercial software on sale

In general, people rely on a simple heuristic, or mental short-cut, when trying to evaluate the quality of a product: we assume that more expensive things are of higher quality. In other words, you get what you pay for. As a result, we automatically suspect products on sale of being faulty, or inferior

Which is why it pleases me to see the quality of donation ware like Transendence.

Some people don't realise that donationware is often as good as or even better than commercial alternatives (yes, I'm thinking about Screenshot Captor).   

I put in a second, highly recommended, vote for ModX, even on IIS.

I haven't looked a Silverstripe in a couple of years but when I was doing my CMS evaluation back then, ModX had a larger community.