Settings

Three MODX system settings, area parser:

Setting	What it does	Default
pageblocks_elements_path	Directory of file templates for @FILE and file:.	{core_path}App/elements/
pageblocks_file_elements_only	Read templates from files only, never from database chunks.	false
pageblocks_fenom_auto_reload	Recompile a template when its file changes.	true

The same area holds a fourth key, pageblocks_default_chunks, which is not yours to fill in: it stores the sha1 of every shipped default chunk so an upgrade can tell your edits from ours. Emptying it only makes the next upgrade treat every default as edited.

The path is absolute, not "relative to core/"

The value goes into a filesystem path verbatim, so it has to be absolute. MODX expands the {core_path}, {base_path} and {assets_path} placeholders itself — that is what the {core_path}App/elements/ default relies on. Writing App/elements/ does not work: it resolves against the current working directory, the directory is not found, and MODX logs [Fenom Init] Template directory does not exist.

pageblocks_file_elements_only

The flag means "elements from the database are forbidden" — not "read an unprefixed name as a file". For projects that keep elements in git rather than in the database.

• view() / &tpl with an unprefixed name is an error, with the fix spelled out in the log: file elements only mode is on, so 'card' has nowhere to come from: name the source - file:card;
• inside a template the default provider becomes the file one, so {include 'header'} looks for header.tpl on disk;
• the template: provider is not registered at all;
• default chunks of the component keep working — they are resolved past this setting on purpose, so a snippet called without &tpl still renders.

Why an error rather than a silent substitution

Because otherwise the same call means different things on different sites: a copy-paste from this documentation would stop working with no explanation, and a designer who created the chunk in the manager would have no way to find out why it was ignored. A global flag that silently rewrites the syntax also makes a mixed project impossible.

pageblocks_fenom_auto_reload

Turning it off in production only makes sense where templates do not change between deploys: with it off, editing a .tpl has no effect until the cache is cleared. In pbFenom the freshness check is cheap — realpath() was taken off the hot path, and a page with {extends} plus twenty {include} costs 7.6 µs against 4.5 µs without auto reload — so there is not much to save here.

Fixed in code

The rest comes from View::init() and is not configurable:

Option	Value	Why
compile directory	core/cache/pbfenom/	cleared together with the MODX cache
force_include	true	{include} is compiled into the parent's body
force_verify	true	an undeclared variable is an empty string, not a warning
force_compile, disable_cache	false	the artifact is written to disk and reused
disable_native_funcs	not set	see PHP functions

Clearing the cache

Compiled templates live in core/cache/pbfenom/. Clearing the cache from the MODX manager runs:

View::clearCache();

Clearing the directory by hand is not needed — with auto_reload on, editing a file already triggers a recompile.