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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T19:44:17+00:00

I have several large CSS files and making a change can sometimes take a

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I have several large CSS files and making a change can sometimes take a few minutes just to find the right selector to change. I would like it if there was a nice ModX editor for CSS, but I haven’t been able to find one. I am willing to settle for splitting up my files into parts, as long as my site still renders. Can I do that and how? If there is a nice editor (plugin?) instead, where can I find one?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I guess the real question is what kind of parts are acceptable for you. If you follow this question, you can begin the process of allowing ModX to manage your CSS. Once this happens, your options open considerably. Your CSS editing will then become easier and less time consuming depending on your level of expertise with ModX. This answer will be pretty simple, as it will show simply how to add a given selector as a resource. Other further development can be intuited from here, though.

    CSS as a Resource

    Once your CSS is being managed as a Resource (which takes about 15 minutes), you may utilize Templates, Template Variables, Chunks, Snippets and Plugins. Thisis actually pretty amazing, but setup can be a bit of a pain. You will basically be investing some time to save a lot of time in the future. The next logical step is split your Selectors accordingly, but you don’t want to break what currently works. Having a fluid understanding of the getResources addon will be crucial to further development.

    How to do it:

    1. Create a new chunk

    Click the Elements tab, and click “New Chunk”. Name it “css-selector”. Set the content to:

    [[+pagetitle]] {[[+content]]}

    It’s as simple as that. Don’t forget to click “Save”! This will let you set a Selector as a resource. It will use the title for the selector and content for the rules. You can forget about using those braces any more. Your new chunk will handle those from now on.

    2. Adjusting your Template

    Now, we just have to convince the template that it nows how to read parts, as well as not forget the whole. Open your CSS Stylesheet template (the one that says [[*content]] for its content). Adjust the code so that it has the following:

    [[!getResources?
  &parent=`[[*id]]`
  &depth=`1`
  &tpl=`css-selector`
  &includeContent=`1`
  &sortby=`menuindex`
  &sortdir=`ASC`
  &limit=`99`
]]
[[*content]]

    Again, click “Save”. Let me explain the Template real quick. If you have child, they’ll get rendered first depending on their menu index. Further, it will render the contents of the document that are not children afterward. This will allow you to only make new resources for your most important selectors, while keeping the stuff that will never change in the main resource.

    3. Create a new Template

    This is so that your selectors don’t do anything funny and just render the content. Create a new Template named “CSS Selector”. Set its content to:

    [[*content]]

    4. Create a new Resource

    Create a new Resource. Set the title to the selector for the css statement you want to manage. Then set the content to the rules without the braces. For instance, if your css statement is: div#header .logo {border:0;}, you’ll set the title to div#header .logo and the content to border:0;. Set the resource alias to whatever you want. I use numbers for each one. Set the template to your new “CSS Selector”. Important Now, set the Parent Document to your Stylesheet. Click Save.

    5. Testing the Stylesheet

    First, Right-click your new resource and choose “View Resource”. This will just make sure that the statement was rendered correctly. It should simply say your rule in CSS format.

    Next, Right-Click the Stylesheet resource and choose “View Resource”. You should see the Selector at the top and all of the other rules below it.

    Final Considerations

    Observations

    • You’ll notice that your child resources do not have to be changed to “CSS” for Document Type. Only the parent stylesheet has to be. This allows for some neat stuff as your expertise with ModX grows.

    • You can change the order of rules by simply changing the menu index of them.

    • The number of rules that can be done this way is based on the &limit variable in the getResources statement in your template. &limit applies to each stylesheet, so in this example you have 99 statements per stylesheet that may be separate resources.

    A Note on Server Load

    This will place load on the server as the number of resources goes up. For development, keep the “do not cache flag” (!) on your getResources statement. Once you are done, remove the exclamation mark and let it all be cached. This will save a ton of load.

    Further Development

    • I added an isEnabled template variable to mine so I can turn on and off each rule as I pleased.
    • You may possibly begin to manage your CSS on the front-end utilizing FormIt.
    • Custom Manager Pages may even be a better option for you.
    • Further abstraction might allow you to create Groupings of statements for even further organization.
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