MODx can be a bit mystifying for sure. It takes some study shall we say.
Whether it is right for you depends on your site needs and experience level. I too am a photographer. I am pretty comfortable creating a design, coding it XHTML and building the CSS. If you can do these basic things and want a very flexible, powerful and well supported content management system then MODx is for you.
There are some great blog platforms like Wordpress and there are a ton of other CMS platforms to pick from as well. Some are simpler than MODx and some are more complicated. I tried like ten of them. They all take some time to learn, you have to get to know the lingo and you have to see what others have done with the platform. Others will tell you why MODx is great with all kinds of technical language. For me it became the slow realization that MODx will allow you to build your own site your way, with your design, while having all the MODx components working with you. With some of the other platforms I found that you had to modify or backwards engineer someone else’s design template to implement your own design ideas. This process is a messy awkward undertaking. In the end this was what sold me on MODx.
I think the best way to see MODx in action is to take one of the main member sites for a spin at www.sottwell.com See how the dynamic nav menu works and zip through the pages. Then go into the back end manager via www.sottwell.com/manager/ and you will see the page tree, how pages are created, the templates, the snippets (modules), chunks (reusable bits of code), etc all work together. Also check out this informative site:
http://bobsguides.com/MODx.html
No matter which CMS you choose you will want to develop your site locally on your own computer instead of a live server. If you are on a Mac then get MAMP, or the Windows equivalent. Then download and install MODx. Read as much as you can and then try building your template page. All your content pages will use the template you choose or build. One of the features of MODx is that there are many ways of doing the same thing. It’s very flexible.
A word on the MODx community: I really like this forum. There is an incredible knowledge base here. People also take the time with new users ( I am one of them.) I found the Drupal forum to be too large and that there seemed to be a lack of patience as well.
Hope this helps!
Max
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