Modx vs Wordpress

Hi I was just about to start building my personal website using wordpress when I came across modx which also seems to be a great candidate, are there any write ups highlighting the differences between the two systems? I would like to see which one is the most suitable for what i have in mind thanks!

Well the biggest diffrence in my opinion is that Wordpress is an excellent blog tool but very restricted on anything else. Too many hacks and tricks to implement if you want something else than blog or very basic site.

MODx on the other hand is truly a content management system. It manages any kind of content in any form without any restrictions. It’s not out of the box solution for anything but it’s still solution for everything.

So which one to choose for personal web site? If you want to upgrade your skills or are perfectionist by nature choose MODx to have full control of everything. If you are in a hurry or just lazy and want something half-baked take Wordpress.

I’ve also noticed that their Text Editor/New Post-Page interface is a tad bit slower compared to the fast speed I usually get from ModX.

MODx rules it should never be compared!!

Once v1 is out then it in it’s own league.

Yeah well, maybe let’s not get to cocky here : of course we’ll get compared and that’s only fair since making a choice often involves reviewing different candidates

The WordPress vs MODx thing depends, as Lammikko says, on what you want to accomplish.

Are you planning on building a pure blog with a few static pages, and possibly a galery ? Then WordPress might be a good choice. I consider it one of the good blogging systems out there along with Textpattern, Expression Engine and DotClear. But so is Ditto, MODx all purpose snippet ! (and Trackbacks are coming too)

But if you’re planning to do a bit more than blogging and need the ability to go further at some point, then definitely choose something else like Drupal or MODx. Try them out ! Visit opensourcecms.com and get a feel of the interface. Then give a look a sample website to see what those are made of.

MODx has some unique features that set it apart from others, and one of them is template variables (how about custom fields, unlimited in nature or number, that could can set default value for and tie to external data source, plus being easy to insert in your templates ? Cool uh ? Well, that’s TVs).

Most of all, it’s probably the most flexible open source content management system. Period.

Now we’re not going to lie to you, it means a bit of learning but not so complex that you’ll give up.
All it takes is curiosity, and a taste for experimenting. If you got that, let me tell you, you’ll even have FUN learning MODx ! I know I still do !!!

Why ? Well, it empowers you. You got control over design (no limitation whatsoever, and standard compliancy is a given), but also over content structure (see TVs above). And, last but not least, a friendly (and possibly fun) community

I’ve gone thru at the very least 200 CMS’s. I have even developed for ThatWare (no longer - was a PHPNuke like system). I’ve been trying to get my main news site back up for years - and I have some specific needs. WordPress almost won... Then I discovered Etomite becuase of a new job I took. And I’ve been developing my new site w/ ModX. Currently my problems are not dealing with ModX . I can do things in ModX that would normally take moding the core files of other CMS’s(which would be messed up on an upgrade), but just do it in the back end. As a PHP developer I find it to be the best. All the HTML/CSS designers that introduced them to it - have abandoned everything else and gone with ModX.

Non of that Smarty Template stuff. The only thing I would like to see is ShopX =)

I would say that davidm has it right. If you are doing a blog only with a couple or less static pages or your site will depend on some obscure but handy Wordpress Plugin I would use word press. If you are weighing Wordpress as a CMS though, I would go with MODx. WP is a great blog tool but even so it is not as fast as it could be for devs who have to rebuild templates from scratch. I find it time consuming (but I charge a lot) to do integrations with WordPress but I find it faster to do templating in MODx.

TVs don’t win the argument for me as you can use the Custom Tags /Meta Fields in Wordpress for a lot. I made a number of different uses of this seldom used part of WP for things such as multiple authors or extra Dbfields for a Real Estate Blog. That being said MODx could do even more if you were so inclined.

While I have just undertaken a new project that will include Ditto and Maxi Gallery I will still produce a busines blog based on WP as it suited the purpose. (Ryan, yes I know we still need to talk about this).

I think as time goes on and more Modules appear for basic blogging a feature by feature comparison will be of value and someone will do it.

Until then...

Jay

thanks for the tips, well now i have a clearer idea of what i want and it seems that wordpress is definitely out of the question as i want to have more than some pages and a gallery, in fact i want to build a booking system as this is a tourism site. what caught my attention was a suggestion to try modx AND drupal. another very important thing to me is search engine optimisation, which led me to move away from joomla, the only cms that i currently know well, as modx seems so better in this regard. however i have not played around much in joomla and would love some more information on how to make my choice between modx and drupal

I have been using Wordpress for over 3 years now. I only just discovered Modx so I am looking forward to see what can be achived with it.