MODX Revolution 2.2 is outdated. We're on 2.3.x. Get it here.
I've been working directly for MODX since around the time this post was last edited, in early 2012.
The author of Articles no longer works at MODX. The entire team has changed shape and there's a developer here, John Peca who is pumping out amazing stuff.
Kudos to Articles for forging the way on Custom Resource Classes in MODX, but by far the better solution for setting up a blog in MODX nowadays involves Collections and Tagger. You can still install Archivist or any of the other blog-related Extras separately. I don't really recommend Articles anymore, as it's too opinionated for my tastes.
For a peek at the power of Collections, check out my blog post on the official MODX blog here.
Update on MODX Revolution 2.2 site build: Articles Blog Engine. Want a full-featured blog site for free? Here's your answer!
First off, let me say again that this is a total game-changer for MODX and the blogging world at large. All the power and flexibility of the full-fledged Content Management FRAMEWORK that is #MODX, now comes with a one-click blogging solution. Once you start using it, you'll be amazed. It only works with MODX Revolution 2.2 and higher, which you can download here.
Once installed on your server, you can get Articles via Package Management within the MODX back-end. Official documentation for installing MODX is here.
Articles is a new MODX Resource Class, meaning it behaves differently from other MODX documents. When you create a blog container, it shows up in the Resource Tree with a cute little coffee cup icon (**I'm going to get a coffee right now - brb......Back ;) Clicking on it takes you to a whole new Resource Editing Screen (the screenshot above). As you can see, there are buttons for creating a New Article, Bulk Actions and Import Articles. Let's talk about the first and most commonly used: New Article.
This is a "normal" Resource Editing Screen, with all the familiar fields. Not much to report here, except that upon creating and saving the document, it doesn't show up in the Resource Tree, but in the consolidated blog post listing back in our parent, "Blog" Resource. This is great because it gives you a unified way of managing all your blogging assets - posts, settings, etc.
As for settings, there's a whole new suite of settings available just for the Articles Resource Class.
I'm just going to talk about two of the many tabs right now: General and Notifications.
The rest of the fields in this tab are essentially a UI interface for the getResources/getPage snippets that run the blog engine. Setting snippet parameters has never been so enjoyable!
At the moment, this tab just deals with Auto-Posting to Twitter, but I can imagine that in the future, Articles can be outfitted with a bunch of different posting services. Setting the dropdown to "Yes" means your posts will be sent to Twitter upon publishing. Before you do, you'll have to click the text link in the field's description (not shown in this screenshot because I've already done it) that takes you to the MODX Articles Twitter Authorization Page. At this page, login to the Twitter account you want to auto-post to, and voila! Your MODX blog is "connected".
**NOTE: there's a small bug in Articles right at this moment where it tries to include a php file that is mis-named in the package. To fix this, and make both PingOMatic and Twitter play nice, in your cPanel or MODX File Manager go to the folder: MODX_CORE_PATH/components/articles/model/articles/update/ and rename this file: "articlesupdateservice.class.php" to: "articlesnotifyservice.class.php" Do this only for the current MODX 2.2 rc3 release candidate and Articles 1.4.1. It will most likely be fixed in the very next release. Read this and don't mess up your site!