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Page Settings

Each page, or Resource in Modx language, will have a certain number of settings you can adjust. These settings will greatly influence how and if they display. Let's go through each setting, one by one.

  1. After logging in to your website manager, click on a page on your site tree. This will automatically bring up the settings options for that page.
  2. You will notice two tabs near the top of the window: General and Settings. Let's talk about the GENERAL tab first.
  3. First of all, each setting has a little help icon associated with it. Hovering your mouse over this shoutbox icon will give you a hint about what it does and how it is controlled.
  4. TITLE: This is the title of the page that will most likely appear in the "Title Bar" of your browser window. Look at the very top of your browser window and you will see the following title: ModxTraining.com | Page Settings. The title I chose for this page is "Page Settings". The reason ModxTraining.com also shows up in the title bar is becasue I set that up to show up on every page. Your designer/developer most likely did the same thing for you.
  5. LONG TITLE: This is used if you need to add an additional title. This is most often used for enhancing Search Engine Optimization so you might want to put some keywords in this area. Anything you put in the TITLE and LONG TITLE fields will show up as a blue link if your page happens to display as a result in a Google search.

    modx google results
  6. DESCRIPTION: Use this to type a description about the page. This can be used for just internal purposes for you, or your developer may have set it up to show as a meta description so search engines know what this page is about. Regardless, search engines don't really use this anymore for ranking purposes, so feel free to leave it blank or fill it out - it's up to you!
  7. URL ALIAS: This field is important because it determines the exact address this page will have on the Internet. This is the part of the page URL (address) that will show up immediately after your domain name. Rather than having an ugly URL such as http://yoursite.com/index.php?id=7, if you put about in the URL ALIAS box, it will be http://yoursite.com/about. This is much prettier, search engine friendlier, and easier to remember in case you or somebody else needs to type it in to a browser. Be sure to only use numbers, letters, and hyphens...NO SPACES ALLOWED!
  8. LINK ATTRIBUTES: Here you can enter optional attributes for the link, such as target="_blank" (to make this page open in a new window or tab) or to give it a special class or ID. This is pretty much for advanced users and should not be messed with by novices and beginners.
  9. SUMMARY: Type a brief summary of this document here. It could be used any of several ways by your designer/developer so consult him/her for the specific use, if any, it has on your site.
  10. USES TEMPLATE: This drop down will present you with a list of design templates that you can apply to this page. Your designer/developer will have at least one template loaded plus a blank template.
  11. MENU TITLE: This field is important because it controls the name of the page as it appears in the menu on your website. If this particular page does not show in the menu, you'll still want to fill in this field, just in case you decide to include it in the website menu in the future.
  12. MENU INDEX: Determines the position in the menu this page will display on your website. It should be a numerical value. For example, if you want this page to be the third item in your main navigation menu, place a 3 in the box. It's used for sorting your navigation menu.
  13. SHOW IN MENU: Simply check this box if you want this page to show up in the main navigation portion of your website menu. Unchecking the box will hide it from the menu, but you'll have to link to it manually for the general public to be able to access it.
  14. RESOURCE PARENT: Use this to set parent page, if any. If you want this page to be a sub page of another main page, click the icon that looks like this parent icon and then click on any page in the site tree to make it this page's parent. For more information on parent/child pages and page hierarchy, view the Page Hierarchy tutorial.

Go back to the top of the page and you'll see a second tab named SETTINGS. Here's a breakdown of all the options within the tab SETTINGS:

  1. PUBLISHED - Checking this box will make the page live on the Internet. If you uncheck this box, it saves the page in your Modx manager, but it is not accessible to the public on the Internet. This is useful if you are creating a page that you want to publish later, or if you have a page that is only needed for a period of time, you can Unpublish it if you think it will be useful down the road. Then you don't have to create it all over again.
  2. PUBLISH DATE - If you want to set the page to be published automatically in the future at a certain time, set the publish date and time by clicking the calendar icon in the text box. Be sure to choose a date and time. Doing this will keep your page "hidden" or inaccessible to the public, until the publish date and time.
  3. UNPUBLISH DATE - This works just like publish date, except it's the opposite. If you want to make a page inaccessible to the public at a future date, you can set the unpublish date to do so automatically.
  4. RESOURCE TYPE - If you are making a regular page, choose Web Page. Web Link is the other option. A Web Link is useful if you want to create a Modx "page" that automatically redirects users to another page or link. You can type any URL (website address or file) into the Web Link to redirect users to. It can be a page or file within your site, or an external page or file on another website. This is useful if you have multiple links on your site pointing to an external file. Just set up a web link in Modx, and if the address that your web link points to changes, you only have to change it in one place, as all the links in your Modx site point to the Web Link instead of the actual external URL.
  5. INTERNET MEDIA TYPE - This is for advanced users, so unless you know what you are doing, keep it set to the default, which is text/html.
  6. CONTENT-DISPOSITION - Use the Inline setting if this is going to be a regular web page. Use the Attachment setting if you want the end user's web browser to automatically download the link to the resource when they click on it. For example, if you are creating a Web Link to an mp3 file, you would select ATTACHMENT so that when the end user clicks on the link to that resource, the browser will prompt them to download the mp3 file instead of doing some other action (such as playing it within the browser).
  7. CONTAINER - check this box if you want this resource (page) to be able to have children pages underneath it.
  8. RICH TEXT - check this box if you want to enable the Text Editor. If you don't check this box, when you go to edit the page in your Modx manager, you will only see the HTML code that makes up the page, not the WYSIWYG Text Editor. This is useful if you have iframe code or embedded flash code in your page as the Text Editor may reformat the code incorrectly.
  9. ENABLE STATS TRACKING - Checking this box will enable you to log the number of people that visit that page.
  10. SEARCHABLE - Checking this box will enable the Resource (page) to be searchable when using the modx built-in search box. If you don't want a resource to be displayed when a user performs a search on your site, un-check the box.
  11. CACHEABLE - Checking this box will allow the resource to be cached. Cached means that modx will store a copy of that page on the server so the next time a visitor visits that page, it will load faster. If you update the page, be sure to check the box right below it, EMPTY CACHE. This will ensure that your website visitors will see the updated page the next time they visit the page.
  12. EMPTY CACHE - Leaving this box checked will ensure that your site visitors see the most recent version of your page, and not an old version.