MODx Revolution-alpha

And you thought it was never going to happen ...

The MODx Team is proud to release a public preview of the long-discussed MODx-Next. I personally want to express a huge debt of gratitude to Jason Coward (OpenGeek) and Shaun McCormick (splittingred) for putting so much heart and hard work into this. I don't think anyone has any idea the amount of research, rewriting and energy that went into this effort.

The under-the-hood changes and capabilities tremendously belittle what the 096x to Revolution version bump implies. This is a ground-up rewrite, free of legacy baggage, that provides the foundation of much bigger things yet to come.

-Ryan Thrash
MODx Co-Founder

Where Can I Get It?

Right here: http://modxcms.com/downloads/

The normal version has all the files extracted, whereas in the advanced version all the files are packaged into core.transport.zip and can be extracted via the setup program.

Make sure to check out the Fresh Installation page for common questions when installing Revolution-alpha. *Also*, make sure to read up on Package Management for installing the 3rd party components.

New Features

• New Core  - Revolution sports a completely new core, written from the ground-up. It uses the database modeling framework, xPDO.
• Completely configurable - run multiple sites on one core install, install the core outside of webroot, pick any name for the manager and assets directories, change and restructure every manager menu option.
• New parser - fully and infinitely recursive without using regex and no more eval().
• Improved caching options - goodbye 5000 page limit, hello any caching system you so desire to implement. This makes MODx an even better candidate for larger sites with lots of traffic. Also, any Element can now be specified to be treated as a cached or non-cached. There's even a clean path to completely override the default caching system to implement large-scale caching code like memcached.
• Override everything & lose nothing - as implied by the previous bullet, you can now extend or override any part of the MODx core cleanly and simply, all the while maintaining a clean upgrade path for future releases.
• New Transport Packages - Installing just got a whole lot easier. Create custom distributions and more.
• Contexts - this allows developers to assign different views of your site based on pretty much any criteria. This means native multi-sites, subdomains, running the core outside of webroot
• Core logging - Provides various error levels and output targets including ECHO, HTML, and FILE. You can also use it in add-ons for audit logs, error logs, debugging, or other logging needs.
• Unified, simple tags - supports calls to MODx resources broken across multiple lines, cached calls within cached calls, and allows PHx-like modifiers to be attached to any Element (Snippet, Chunk, TV, Etc.). And yes, the upgrade system for legacy sites takes care of changing over the old ones, in case you're curious.

Needs Testing

• The Manager is MODx - we've created the new Manager for the MODx system by using the MODx API, ExtJS 2.1, and Smarty templates, as a demonstration of the flexibility of the new core and API.
• Completely new user system - all permissions are now handled via a robust. Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) security model. There is built-in emulation of the old security model and your existing security setups for both the manager and webusers should be ported over fine during upgrades.

Still in Development

• Remote Transport Packaging - Install resources by downloading them from custom providers - either MODx-driven or 3rd party - from directly within the Manager.
• New Static Resources - now you can manage files on the filesystem (even outside of webroot) within the Manager.
• New Symlink Resources - exact clones of other resources in your site tree in as many places as you'd like.

Wait, what's an Alpha?

It's important to note that this is MODx Revolution-alpha, not Revolution-final. Basically, what that means is:

• There Will Be Bugs - Don't worry; we're not going to "drink your milkshake" with tons and tons of problems, but let it be known that bugs will occur in Revolution-alpha. Jira already has a few listed, and we welcome and encourage you to report more.
• It Looks Ugly! - Yes. We know. Styling of the manager interface hasn't happened yet. We also need help in this area.
• Is It Slow in FireFox? - Make sure you have Firebug off. Firebug tends to eat up resources - especially when AJAX is in play. When you turn of Firebug, you'll notice a massively significant performance increase.
• We Recommend Not Using in Production Environments - Ideally, Revolution-alpha would work flawlessly. But as is well known in the programming world, ideals often fizzle at the first sign of reality. The MODx team recommends that you do not use Revolution-alpha in any production environments, unless you're okay with possibly having problems.
• Certain Features Won't Work Yet - Yes, we know a lot has been promised for Revolution. But those things are promised for 097-final, not the alpha. We wanted to get you all a good first look at Revolution and where it's going with this alpha. And that meant not having everything perfectly done and finished in the alpha. Don't worry - we're working on those features. And keep those requests for new ones coming.
• Wait, Everything's Blank! - Yep. The alpha comes in entirely blank; no demo content yet. You'll have to create stuff from scratch. We apologize for this, but creating demo content is usually done right before a final release - not in the alpha stages - so we're concentrating on the more important matters right now.
• Where's My Third-Party Resources? - "Where's all the 3rd party resources 0.9.6 had?" is probably going to be one of your first questions. We're asking that too. Basically, because the change between 0.9.6 and Revolution is so great, a lot of those components are going to have to be revised or rewritten. That takes time, and some of those developers are already on task to do it. However, you can get some of them at MODx's Web Transport Facility and install them as packages.
  

I've Found a Bug!

Great! Again, this is an alpha, so we expect some bugs to pop up. For now, if you're having problems, either:

• Report them on Jira, our bugtracking system. From there, we'll be able to directly assess and work on your issue, all the while keeping you up-to-date on our progress.
• Post a message on the subforum, MODx-Next. From there the community and developers can help you address your issue, where you'll also get more community-oriented solutions.

We Need Developers!

Now that there's a fixed preview point, it's time for those developers who've been lurking out there to start contributing. Along with the preview, we're also unveiling our new development infrastructure, centered around a full Atlassian stack:

• Crowd Single Sign On technology to manage access
• JIRA issue and bug tracker (replacement for Trac)
• Fisheye Subversion browser
• Confluence enterprise wiki - we need contributors!
• Crucible for painless peer code and anonymous patch submission reviews
• New PHP API Documentation - Detailed explanations of the new xPDO-based core.
• Coming Soon: We're working on integrating with forum accounts, but for now you will need to maintain two logins.
  

 Make sure to read the How to Become a MODx Contributor page.

Also check out:
Development and Testing Notes

How to upgrade an existing site

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How to work with Transport Packages

For information on the installation of packages, see Package Management.

Contributing to the Code

Please read the Want to Contribute? Heres How... page.