Book Image

MODx Web Development - Second Edition

Book Image

MODx Web Development - Second Edition

Overview of this book

MODx is a content management system and PHP web application framework rolled into one. With the ease of a CMS and the extendibility of a framework, MODx allows you to develop professional-looking, intricate websites with its easy-to-use interface and flexible architecture. MODx provides reusable code fragments called snippets, most of which are so generic that, without any modification, they can serve multiple functionalities. The generic nature of the snippets makes it possible to get the perfect customization that is so hard in other CMS. This book will get web developers up-and-running with MODx. With step-by-step examples and illustrative screenshots, you will be guided through installation, configuration, and customization. By the end of the book, you will have created a powerful, dynamic website by using the individual elements of MODx, without the need for programming know-how. Starting with a walk-through of how to install MODx, you will quickly learn how to develop your site without having to use any programming language. Logical, step-by-step instructions will show you how to create your own unique site by adding and editing documents using the inbuilt TinyMCE editor. You will change the look and feel of your site by creating your own templates using HTML, CSS, and widgets. By following the example of a blog site, you will learn how to extend your templates to allow rich user interactions through comments, posts, and forms. The book teaches a few code snippets such as Ditto and Wayfinder in detail. These powerful and flexible snippets will enable you to add multiple functionalities to your site. The book will also introduce you to many more snippets that will help you build some of the commonly required web functionalities such as forums and image galleries. You will manage your users with authentication and authorization and make your site user-friendly with user groups, forums, and the use of PHx notations to embed logic in templates. Through following this easy-to-use, step-by-step guide you will, by the end of the book, have a fully functional, feature-rich MODx site with professional-looking, dynamic web pages that are totally customizable.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
12
SEO, Deployment, and Security

Security


In this section, we will discuss the permissions on filesystems that have to be set in order to make sure that your site is safe. Also, we will discuss captcha and the mod_security module for Apache, which can cause certain issues arising from security concerns and how to solve them. When using a content management server, unless you are writing snippets yourself, there is not much to worry about. There are a few things to keep in mind though, for MODx, and they are mentioned next.

File permissions

It is a good practice to set read-only permissions on all files except folders that will be updated by MODx. In Linux, you can do this through chmod 0644 * -R within the MODx directory. Some folders must be made writable by using chmod 0755 folder. The following is a list of such folders:

  • assets/cache

  • assets/files

  • assets/media

When you are using an external snippet that requires you to store files in a separate folder, make sure that you make those files writable too. For example, the gallery...