Status of Project ?

[Chris Kelley]

Hi Everyone,

I just joined the group and look forward to helping the project out!

I'm total newbie to modX but I am embracing this CMS to go forward
with my company's web development. I run an ecommerce site www.ca-cycleworks.com
& I have written a lot of my own php and mysql code in getting to
where I'm at now (10 years of business). I'm wanting to find a way to
minimize re-creating others' work. I've got 2 testing servers at my
office running ubuntu and have almost free reign with my hosting
company to do what I need to make it work.

My current reality is this:
- my own db tables for products and catalog organization.
- my own catalog code, static html pages generated by php tool reading
from the db.
- php catalog tool is all hand made and is like 5,000 lines of code
across a doxen files.
- my friend's cart and checkout (that I've patched a few times).
- customer information from each order is imported into quickbooks via
php and qodbc driver.
- the rest of the website is wordpress, completely independent of the
catalog, products, etc.
- I created my own local db to store and print orders, but have not
worked on any management of the customer or order info.
- missing: there is no back-end to the order process; work-flow still
uses e-mails and printed paper.
- missing: ability to edit orders and record changes
- missing: customer accounts
- missing: proper integration with UPS, usps, or our payment gateway.

My goals:
- have cms and products integrated well enough that visitors can
search and get results from my CMS articles as well as products in one
easy query.
- I expect to create my own catalog organization and presentation with
the target to emulate how bestbuy.com or tigerdirect.com work.
- bulk item import
- customer accounts with history*
- full back-end to track changes and make notes on customer accounts*
- integrate with LAMP-based accounting package (still unchosen) so we
can remove quickbooks and the virus it requires to operate upon.
- enable the workstation at the shipping counter to automatically read
from the scale for reporting to the back-end while processing
shipments (already tested and operational, but off-line as it is not
yet utilized)
- integrate with UPS* and payment gateway* (both were tested from the
LAMP server in house and proven to have communication with their
servers)
- meet pci requirements by storing credit card info on separate in-
house server using gpg encryption (already had successful testing)

*- denotes a functionality that already exists elsewhere and should be
integrated rather than written. What I'd like to know are things like:
- the payment gateway module from ______ works and has well defined
classes.
- the customer account interface from ____ gets compliments from
users.
- the admin back-end from _______ project is easy, intuitive, and
efficient.
.... and then work would start on integrating these.

I have just installed kiwi and plan on adding test products as time
allows in the near future... I have some non-computer time pressures,
but meeting these goals are required for my business to grow. I have
been coding on the back-end to my site for over a year towards getting
our products into the database as well as the catalog organizer tool I
created.

What I really don't yet know are how modules should be integrated with
modX... like "make the scale reading code a chunk" (or snippet, etc)

If anyone reading (looks like Richard!) could reply with a bullet list
of works, doesn't work, what's next -- that would be great. If given
direction, I can write some really good code... only I'm absolutely
dumb about modX, so I'd need the aforementioned hand holding about how
it fits in.

I'm looking forward to the future here!
Chris

[Richard Northcott]

Hi Chris

Welcome to MODx and Kiwee.

As you have guessed I'm the one that has taken on the developing of Kiwee (not that I'm an expert in either MODx or Kiwee :) )

You sound like you have lots of experience and it will be interesting to hear what you have to say - its usueful to hear what people think is good or bad to help the project move forward but its also a question of how each others ideas correspond to one anothers and whether there is a uniform approach/understanding or not.

Not quite sure what you mean by "make the scale reading code a chunk"? Any piece of code will be either an internal chunk/snippet or external php file. I've certainly come to prefer large pieces of code that I have to continously tweek to be external., whereas smaller code that also is less likely to be changed and/or acts as a bridge can be kept internal.
I wish I could provide a list of what does or doesn't work but I can't. When errors/issues arise then I try to deal with them and the version i'm working on gets tested and changed if required to resolve the issue. But on top of this are the new features/functions and revisions of code that are also happening at the same time. As it is prinicpally just myself and the existing information, error list, etc on the Google Code page relates to v1.0.2 and v1.0.3 there is no proper logging in place for what veriosn I have created.
I would like Kiwee to become stable on a basic gateway (Paypal and Google) integration level with all the features and functions working (even if that means restricting or removing ceratin aspects), and then from there it to grow with a good direction that will include higher gateway integration. I have been lucky (or unlucky) too have lots of time on my hands and thus lots of time to devote to trying to move Kiwee forward but at some stage this will not be possible as i need to find some proper work :) but while i can i will still be trying to move Kiwee down a path in the best way that i can.


Richard

[Chris Kelley]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for writing back.

Ah, I was talking about the various theories about including php
functionality within modx ... like if there are so many lines of code,
create a snippet which has an include() to the php file containing the
meat of the processing?

Argh, I need to get caught up in the workshop so I can start spending
real time with kiwee. :)

Thanks,
Chris

[Richard Northcott]

Hi Chris

Yes thats pretty much what i'd aim to do - set out your snippets as a central means to traffic calls to the required code and where there is a large amount of code then put that in an external file with an include call from a snippet.

I will help you with any questions about Kiwee and try to help with MODx but my knowledge on that is just what I have picked up and its always a good idea to check out the MODx forum.




Richard