Need Help: Modx vs. WordPress Talking Points

I need good--and fair--talking points for Modx vs WordPress. For some inexplicable reason, high-level executives have started questioning our marketing department's choice of Modx (which has been working great, btw) in favor of WordPress (I know . . . crazy, but I need to respond intelligently and without emotion even though I suspect that "someone knows someone who knows WordPress" is a motivating factor).

I've developed sites in both WordPress and Modx.

A few benefits of Modx as I see them now:

• Contexts (yeah, you can do multisite in WordPress, but it seems much harder and limiting)


• Not limited to a thematic directory structure. I find "themes" extremely limiting.


• Quick filtering of chunk and snippet data.


• Less reliance upon plugins which can cause site instability

Please provide me with some more, but I need better responses than "WordPress is a blogging system, not a CMS." [ed. note: aesop1 last edited this post 9 years, 11 months ago.]

How about security? Wordpress isn't highly secure, because (1) its so popular so many hackers will target it, and (2) it uses a lot of plugins made by third parties and therefore doesn't have so much consistency.

Been in the same situation a lot.

I've found this happening more frequently as more senior management are exposed to WordPress through their own personal blogs or their golf club website etc etc. It trickles down into a demand for marketing because management are comftrable using it.

The best approach for me has been to mention points about

- security
- blogging tool vs "proper" CMS
- simpler templating (less expensive for client)
- simpler redesigning and changes (less expsnive for client)
- more customisable SEO
- community involvement

etc etc
I can't elaborate on those right now but I've found they "get through" to Management better than your bullets which are more about benefits to you.

Good luck with it

You can go with a bunch of technical explanations but our argument is always customization and scalability which when using WordPress, can factor into increased cost.

We usually say that WordPress is great if all the features you need now and will ever need are covered by standard plugins and themes. Need a blog and only a blog? Great. Use WordPress. Articles is close but it lacks a good tags as separate from categories model, has lacked it for over 2 years, and will probably never have it.

If needs are not met by existing WordPress templates and features, costs will increase as theme development is more costly and complex and customization is more costly and complex when using WordPress.

If you have a WP site and you need some particular functionality, you may have to recode much of the entire site again, and then again, and then possibly again to accommodate features that are not available or are not quite a fit for your needs.

The problem with arguments based on customization and scalability is it requires long term vision as well as a solid understanding of why these are issues, which unfortunately, is seldom something particular executives have.

The other problem is there are indeed some frameworks that WordPress developers are using to do custom work, but a lot of WordPress developers are not actual developers and customization just means you're not thinking right. It's possible that executives will think the same.

It's infuriating when executives (or anyone) come in and dictate platforms against the better advice of those who use and program the platforms. It's the equivalent of why use a web based application when I can use Excel?

I'm not a friend of wordpress and what I have experienced so far was a nightmare. So I'm as biased as one can be...

Some things that come to my mind:

WP Security "Standards":
---------------------
I might have missed some important things about WP security, but as far as I understand these are the security standards of WP:

1. You need a third party plugin to prevent brute force attacks on your user login?
2. You need a second plugin to log what your users are doing?
3. And a third one to set proper user rights?

I must admit that setting complex user rights in MODX is like going to the dentist, but point one and two are a bad joke.

WP is an alpha target:
----------------------
A couple of months ago I setup a WP site for a school. I used a themeforest template (noone to blame there) and some standard plugings.

I got comment spam from a Russian server a couple of minutes after I setup my dev account at modx cloud. Unbeliveable. Two weeks later the site got hacked by a brute force attack (about 30.000 login attempts from 3 different ip addresses in three waves).

Have a look your log files and you will see, that WP pages are like honeypots for hungry killerbees.

After removing the whole mess (and removing it again a few days later because I missed one backdoor), I did some research and found countless other WP sites "owned" by the same guy. I could even use his backdoors and all the other shit he left (mailer tools, malware, trojans, etc).

BTW: There are dedicated toolkits available for managing hacked wordpress sites. Using one of them instead of the regular WP administration interface is a real time saver...

Fun fact: I wrote about 50 emails to active and busy sites. To my surprise I got only about 15 answers. More than half of the pages hacked are still hacked. I really can't believe how careless people are.

Usability:
----------
The only thing I found impressive about WP was some plugin that allowed users to "build" content by using blocks with different properties (galleries, images, headlines, etc). At that time there was nothing available for modx that could offer the same user experience.

With contentblocks by modmore this has changed and as far as I can see contentblocks is MUCH more powerful and versatile than the pagebuilder for wordpress.

IMHO a customized MODX manager beats Wordpress in every way. Perhaps somebody can elaborate about customizing the WP administration.

Versatility:
------------
I haven't seen anything so far that cannot be done with modx, I don't believe the same thing is true for wordpress.

Last but not least,
I've found customizing and optimizing templates in WP extremely painful. It might be me lacking the right skills, but I think this is an important advantage of MODX.

Costs:
------
So far nobody could show me a WP site that doesn't use a default themeforrest template that was cheaper to develop or maintain.

Cheers,

pepebe

Quote from: aesop1 at May 12, 2014, 03:55 PM

For some inexplicable reason, high-level executives have started questioning our marketing department's choice of Modx (which has been working great, btw) in favor of WordPress.

A few points:

Executives are not usually irrational. Speaking from experience, it's more common that they are looking at considerations which you cannot see, which makes some of their thinking look "inexplicable". Try to find out what their key considerations are and work to those. One of those priorities will almost certainly be budget, and another will be risk reduction.

• They may be interested in WordPres because they have heard it is free; let them know MODX is free too, and that it has a host of other budgetary positives (see below). Also remind them that for anything but a six-digit system, the biggest cost over time will be stafff time, not purchase price.
• They may know that WordPress has a big pool of people who can support it; let them know that any PHP coder can work well in MODX, and that there are more highly-skilled PHP coders than WordPress experts.
• They may have heard that WordPress sites can be established quickly; let them know MODX sites have the same advantage.

Managers like reasons rather than preferences. Depending on the considerations they are looking at, good reasons may look like this:

• MODX has a much more robust security model which will minimise our risk. WordPress has some security issues which will need mitigation.
  - MODX is not a common attack target. WordPress is a favorite target for attackers.
  - MODX is secure out-of-the-box with an Advanced Install; you might describe it as security-hardened. WordPress is relatively insecure out-of-the-box, and needs a detailed hardening program.
  - The WordPress vulnerabilities can be addressed with extra budget for code audit and security.
  - The security budget will need to be higher if we are trying to do anything which requires less common WordPress plugins or custom code, as we will need to audit the code before release.
  - However, we can pay for a WordPress security audit once the site is done, and then pay as necessary to fix issues that arise. There are also some paid services such as Sucuri which can help to reduce these issues.
• WordPress is harder to extend than MODX, so we are likely to have higher costs if we need functionality which is not already available.
• MODX will give marketing greater freedom to add the features it needs at low cost.
• MODX is low-risk because we know and understand the product. WordPress's biggest problem is what Donald Rumsfeld rightly called the "unknown unknowns". (Note: this line best used if the executive in question voted twice for George W. Bush ... )

So in summary, WordPress is fine if we have budget for security and know we don't plan to do anything not achievable with the best-vetted WordPress plugins. MODX will be better if we think the site might evolve over time and/or we want to minimise the additional security budget right now.

Also take a look at Everett Griffiths' comparison - interesting because he has authored books on both systems:
http://tipsfor.us/2011/04/19/wordpress-vs-modx/

One interesting quote: "In general though, the WordPress architecture is primitive and more ripe for being hacked." [ed. note: shorewalker last edited this post 9 years, 11 months ago.]

Great points. Yes, the greatest annoyance is that I don't know the real issue, so I don't think management is "crazy" necessarily, but I think the real issues are not being communicated. The wrong people are at the table asking and answering questions. Modx, like WordPress, is a tool after all, not the site(s) that are created with it.

Thanks all for your contributions. This was helpful--thanks!