RSS feed iconMark Kaplan

Mark Kaplan is a student from Southern California who joined the MODx project shortly after its inception. His quick support and exceptional work with snippets earned him a place on the MODx team. Since then he has developed Ditto, NewsListing and NewsFeed's successor.

  Mark Kaplan on 28-Jun-07Ditto Support Site Issue 

Today I realized that I hadn't received any documentation corrections in some time at the Ditto support site. Normally that would be a good thing, but just to be safe I checked the site. Somehow the submission page had become cached! I'm neither sure of when nor know how

  Mark Kaplan on 28-Jun-07My Favorite Mac Apps... 

I've been using my Mac now for a little more than a year as my primary computer. Over that time, I've tried quite a few apps, some useful and others not. Here are some of my favorites that I use, own, or know about. The list is grouped by categories with individual apps in alphabetical order (not in order of usefullness).

  Mark Kaplan on 02-May-07Ditto Documentation Debut 

Ditto's got a new home for documentation, tutorials, examples and everything in between. Check it out at http://ditto.modxcms.com.

  Mark Kaplan on 08-Apr-07Ditto 2.0.2 

Ditto 2.0.2 is a bugfix release and an essential update.

  Mark Kaplan on 18-Mar-07Ditto 2.0.1 

Ditto 2 is getting its first update, a brand new screencast, and an updated companion -- DittoCal.

  Mark Kaplan on 08-Mar-07Announcing Ditto 2 

Ditto, the snippet that aggregates documents to create just about anything, is getting its first major update since last July. The codebase has been completely rewritten and reorganized for maximum performance and customizability. This update coincides with the release of a new support site full of helpful resources. To find out more, keep on reading....

  Mark Kaplan on 06-Mar-072 days until Ditto 2 


Get a sneak before Thursday's release by trying out RC3 here

  Mark Kaplan on 10-Jul-06Ditto 1.0.2 Released 

Ditto 1.0.2 is a bug/performance release and is an essential update.

WARNING: This update is only compatible with the latest version of MODx as it uses several new API functions.

Documentation: http://modxcms.com/ditto_documentation.html

Download: http://modxcms.com/Ditto-1.0.2-0.html

  Mark Kaplan on 05-Jun-06Ditto 1.0.1 Released 

Changes in Ditto version 1.0.1 :

  • Numerous bug fixes including multi-call support and variable name typos.
  • Debug mode enhanced with template output.
  • Filter switched from slow foreach loop to faster array_filter.
  • Tagging support added.

Download:

[Ditto Download]

  Mark Kaplan on 12-May-06Announcing Ditto 1.0 

Announcing Ditto: the nimbler, faster, better-named and even more flexible offspring of NewsListing.

The fact is, Newslisting is useful for much more than summarizing and building archives of news articles. Coupled with the fact that a cornerstone MODx philosophy focuses on flexibility, and "News" seemed to syntactically restrictive. And boring.

Blogs... PodCasts... Press Release archives... File Download repositories... FAQs... Executive Bio listings...

Ditto now takes advantage of an external class, language files to work with multi-language installs, and uses templates extensively for the ultimate in output formatting flexibility and control. And while it has more than 40 configurable parameters in it's current implementation, you only need [[Ditto]] for great results (although telling it explicitly where to start probably wouldn't hurt Wink ).

Amongst the many cool things under Ditto's able and refined domain:

  • &mode parameter can disable sanity checks on variables and increase speed for production sites.
  • JSON format for AJAX applications
  • Access individual posts in templates via placeholders  (replacing ' # ' with actual integers).
  • Stop guessing with non-abbreviated parameter names in CamelCase convention.
  • Updated documentation and full parameter and placeholder lists.
  • xHTML Strict month-based archive output which uses templates for formatting.
  • Extensive sorting and filtering based on TVs
  • And the obligatory, "much, much more..."

Download:

Feedback, problems and praise: Learn about known Issues and resolutions as they surface.

  Mark Kaplan on 29-Mar-06Where in the world are we? 

MODx Frappr Although the MODx Frappr has been around for some time now, living out of a forum topic, its time to share it with the world. Thanks to some recent improvements in Frappr, I customized the color scheme and layout to be in more MODx fashion. If you haven't already added yourself, please do!

  Mark Kaplan on 14-Jan-06Snippet Time! 

As promised here are a few custom snippets I wrote for the MODx blog...

  Mark Kaplan on 12-Jan-06Designing the MODx Weblog 

A few days ago Ryan and I were chatting and one of us mentioned how MODxCMS.com needed a news section. Over the course of that discussion we mapped out our ideas and eventually decided to create a development blog. Guess who got called in to make it work?...