Must-have extras for MODX Revolution - which packages should be installed on a new website

MODX provides an excellent basis for creating a website of any complexity. But to make development faster and more convenient, you can use the community extensions. Some of them are simple php snippets or plugins, and some of them implement complex logic with new admin interface elements. In this article, I will collect a list of basic extensions that will be needed on almost any website.

Packages providers

There are 2 main suppliers of packages for MODX: modx.com and modstore.pro. The first one is the main MODX community, the second one is the Russian-speaking community, where there may be more up-to-date versions of some packages. Some packages may be available from both vendors, some only from one of them.

sdStore

After MODX installation, only modx.com provider is available in the admin panel. To avoid adding modstore.pro manually, you can install the sdStore package, which will add the modstore.pro provider automatically. It is obligatory to install it.

Developer friendliness

Ace

Excellent code editor with syntax highlighting, hints, quick input, Emmet snippets and hotkeys.

I consider it a must for website development. A good code editor in MODX greatly simplifies writing code in the admin panel. Of course, it is more convenient to work in an external editor, like VS Code or PHPStorm, but when you need to fix something quickly - Ace comes to your help.

tagElementPlugin

Allows you to edit elements (chunks and snippets) by opening them in a popup window at the call point. Very useful plugin - I think it's a must install.

You can quickly edit the element in the template or chunk. And if the element is not found - tagElementPlugin will offer to create it.

modDevTools

Displays links on the edit page of a chunk, template and snippet. For example, for a chunk you can see in which templates it is used, which chunks and snippets are called in it, and a list of resources in which this chunk is called. Try it and decide, in my opinion it adds convenience in development.

dbAdmin

Package for managing database tables directly in the admin panel. Not necessary, but can be useful sometimes.

Automation

Some processes can be done manually, or they can be automated. As productivity geeks say, if a task needs to be done more than once - you need to automate it. These MODX packages will reduce the time spent on manual tasks.

pThumb, phpThumbOn, phpThumbOf 

Component for optimizing and cropping images using the popular phpThumb script. Allows you to crop images and resize them on the server, create image thumbs, apply watermarks and add various effects. For sites with images - be sure to install.

MinifyX

Allows to minify and glue JS scripts and CSS styles. This reduces the number of requests to the server and increases the speed of page loading. To optimize the loading speed it should be installed.

BackupMODX

Easily create backups in the admin panel.

filetranslit

Transliteration and removal of unnecessary characters from file names when uploading using the file manager.

Jevix

Content and typography filtering.

controlErrorLog

Error log management.

FixedPre

Automatically replaces MODX and PHP tag characters with their HTML codes within the tag so that they are not processed by MODX parser. For example, < in < and ~ in ~ etc.

This is to display them to the user on the page as plain text in the sample code. You probably won't need this extra feature if you don't have code samples on your pages.

SEO

Translitor

The component automatically transliterates resource aliases from the title (pagetitile) to the URI (alias). This is a handy addition, because when creating a page, even if you forget to specify the Alias manually, it will be generated based on the pagetitle.

SEO Suite

Combined the old packages SEO Pro and SEO Tab. Solves almost all tasks on search engine optimization of the site: meta tags management, indexing settings, redirects, sitemap, markup social networks. We put necessarily on sites that should receive traffic from search engines.

Functionality

pdoTools

This is a great package of several tools for creating menus, selecting and outputting resources, generating breadcrumbs, organizing page navigation on the site, displaying a list of users and xml-map of the website. We must install it.

MIGX

Allows you to create multiple TV fields, each of which will be like a table. You can create a slider, gallery, benefits block and similar things. Or you can create your own table in the database and quickly display it in the admin via MIGX_DB. Set as needed.

Collections

Component for grouping resources into a single collection. Adds an improved version of the container, in which nested resources are displayed as a table, and hidden from the resources tree. This greatly offloads the admin, especially with a large number of pages, as all nested resources are hidden from the menu.

It speeds up resource management, as you can edit some fields in the table without opening the resource page. Allows you to create collection templates and set some default parameters for child resources. It is useful if there are many resources of the same type: products, articles, news, etc.

Tagger

Create tags for resources, output tags of a specific resource or a tag cloud of the whole site. Used to create tags in a blog or online store.

Gallery

Create image galleries.

HitsPage

To create a page view counter.

SyntaxHighlighter

Adds the ability to highlight syntax in code blocks in stats.

FormIt

To create and process dynamic forms on the site. Load if the site provides feedback forms.

AjaxForm

Snippet for submitting forms from a website page via Ajax.

Administration

ClientConfig

A handy component from Mark Hamstra for editing your own site parameters on MODX Revolution. It is used for regular slogan updating, changing button color depending on certain conditions, storing contact data, etc. You can also store a variety of settings in it - image preview sizes, caching settings. 

frontendManager

Allows you to edit resources from the user area of the site. You can view pages and immediately edit them via iframe, if you are authorized in the admin area. In the manager menu you can also display links, for example, to the scripts and styles file, which is also very convenient - removes the need to enter the admin panel.

MarkdownParser

Allows to work with popular Markdown format. In the content of the resource all text framed in the markdown tag will be rendered as ready html. Perfectly friendly with ordinary HTML.

Similar functionality is provided by Vasily Naumkin's Markdown module, but it works as a snippet and accepts the whole text as input, while MarkdownParser allows you to use it selectively only in necessary places.

FastUploadTV

Easy file upload for TV fields.

tvSuperSelect

A type of TV that allows values to be entered "on the fly".

tinyCompressor

Automatic optimization of files downloaded through the file manager.

TinyMCE Rich Text Editor

A handy visual editor for content. We put it on all sites where you need to work with text formats - articles, news, etc.