Our local guy Sinisa Vrhovac introduced us to Belgrade during its first MODX meetup that we organized there! This was the perfect opportunity to reconnect with our MODX colleagues from Russia and to meet many new and familiar MODX enthusiasts from Belgium, Serbia, and Switzerland. In six talks, we shared our knowledge of MODX, gained new insights, and discovered how to use MODX’s full potential. Discover below what we have learned. Want to watch the entire meetup again? You can do that too: https://youtu.be/CETrqOBz9-4
Talk 1: Build your client base with standardized MODX websites and webshops.
Gerhard de Vries told us how Heibel built their client base with the help of their standardized MODX product. Most websites cost too much for small and medium-sized businesses. By working with a fixed set of content blocks and making adjustments in style and functionality per client, they help over 400 customers with a beautiful website or webshop.
Talk 2: 15 webshops in one year.
DiHouse is a distributor of brands from around the world. In 2021, the company decided to enter the retail world. That’s when they received the task of building 15 new webshops in less than a year. And that with just two developers! Each webshop had to be linked to a CRM, an ERP, and have its own payment and shipping methods. They also had to set up an API to track the number of orders. Dmitry Redkin explains how they achieved this:
- Front-end is outsourced. No major design changes are made, and only HTML and JS are allowed;
- For the backend, the same file structure was used, and identical snippets and plugins were stored in a shared core folder.
Then, for each new webshop, only a new context needed to be created, minor adjustments made in design and functionality, and that’s it! With this plan in place, they even managed to build the last five webshops with just three days per webshop.
View Dmitry's presentation slides here.
Talk 3: Make MODX even more powerful with Angular and RESTful APIs.
Using Angular within MODX? Absolutely! Miomir Dančević from AVS Solutions showed us how to do it! Because Angular is a framework, it already has much more functionality compared to libraries like React, Vue, and jQuery. Combine Angular with the MODX CMS, and you get an even more powerful CMS. With this integration, you can use the same data across different platforms and allow people outside your organization to make changes to the entered data. This makes MODX much more flexible!
Talk 4: Modern MODX Extras with Composer.
Each MODX Extra has its own dependencies to function. What those 'dependencies' are exactly for each Extra varies per Extra but also sometimes per component within an Extra. The result? Conflicts that cause Extras to not work (well). To remedy this, Vasily 'bezumkin' Naumkin tells the one true solution: installing MODX Extras with Composer. Composer is already present in MODX3, but developers must also use it to get the most out of the functionalities and avoid collisions between dependencies.
View Vasily's slides here.
Talk 5: 20 websites in one MODX installation.
The multichannel power of MODX is often used for multilingualism but can also be used to manage different products in one CMS. Steffan Blockx from culd. tells how their client Regionale Landschappen in Vlaanderen (Regional Landscapes in Flanders) manages the websites of the 20 different regions, each with its own content but also shared content, in one MODX installation.
The installation now contains a total of 3,500 pages, of which 2,700 are shared, and the remaining 800 are unique content distributed across the different landscapes. Events, publications, and walking routes are displayed on different websites through Tagger.
The last thing to note: each site's content manager has their own unique rights, allowing them to make changes only within the site of their own region.
View Steffan's slides.
Talk 6: Get MODX work around the world.
Over the years, Sterc has met quite a few international MODX enthusiasts. During MODX events in Munich and Minsk, we started our first collaboration with international colleagues. Now, 9 years later, at Sterc and Heibel, we have several full-time colleagues working from home - in the Netherlands but also Russia and Serbia. With our experiences as the foundation, we have set up a platform where the demand for and the supply of MODX developers come together. At www.workwithwander.com, MODX developers can enroll in our database, and organizations can submit their projects. Then we search for the right MODX developer for that project. Remote working doesn't have to be difficult at all!
View Gauke Pieter's slides.
We had an amazing time in Belgrade, especially at the MODX meetup we got to organize with our Serbian colleague Sinisa. Of course, we want to thank the sponsors of the meetup: culd., AVS Solutions, Heibel en Sterc. A special thanks to Leonard Tolsma for creating the aftermovie and recording the MODX meetup, and to Andre van der Meulen for his beautiful photos. Looking forward to the next MODX meetup in Brighton.
