New to MODx - need overall guidance / advice

Hi everyone..

first off, apologies if this question has been asked before.. if so please URL me the answer.. thanks

im looking for a CMS system to develop several websites which will allow the owner of the website to amend/add/remove content/pages/sections etc etc..

but im completely new to the CMS situation and swamped with info and lost!

I have ok HTML/CSS skills but poor and limited PHP skills, so im looking for a system where I don’t need ANY PHP skills.

This CMS system seems very advanced and im worried it would be out of my depth and maybe over kill for what I want (basic online showcase allowing the owner to edit info/sections etc).

would this system be out of my league?.. especially as I don’t want to learn PHP

what alternatives would you folks suggest? I have looked at Silverstripe, typo3, Drupal etc etc.. or do you think I should aim for the more joomla / expressionengine / wordpress / CMS-made-simple?..

wow.. my heads a mess.. I have done a few sites using zencart, after a month I found that easy (templates systems, add-ons & minor code hacks)

so people.. is this system overkill / out of my league? It is the CMS system that gets the most rave reviews…

NB: im more a designer than a developer

help
Martin

I’ve been a HTML/CSS guy for more than a decade and no one is going to accuse me of being a PHP coder/programmer. The PHP I know is extremely limited and done out of necessity. MODx is by far the easiest CMS for designers who want to implement their HMTL/CSS designs in a CMS without needing too many PHP functions or to learn a 3rd party code structure.

You need to learn the MODx tags,
You need to learn how templates tick (basically HTML CSS+ MODx tags,
You need to learn Ditto, Wayfinder and that will start you on your way.

As an example. I designed a HTML/CSS template in TextMate and it took less than 2 hours to build out a site around it. I just copied the template into Resources>Templates>New Template.

The reason I’ve been with MODx since 2006 is because it was the extension of my skills of HTML/CSS and not a hindered or barrier to it.

Welcome to MODx and to the forums!

I’ve personally put a lot of time into writing and updating Wiki articles, so please have a look at the MODx Wiki: http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Main_Page

And here’s my shameless plug for some of my instructional videos up on YouTube:
Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ga8l93n0Uc
Installing MODx: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehPekbU0qbg
Creating a Template from an existing HTML/CSS Layout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EasmxiU0LsM

Hope this helps...

@Everettg_99: great video tutorials

Thanks, dev_cw. I wish YouTube didn’t fuzz up the resolution so badly, but hopefully the wiki will have the necessary answers when anyone sits down and tries something at home.

What I really need for the videos is to write a techno beat for the opening soundtrack and get some nice After-Effects for some graphical logos...

You might find the site in my sig helpful as an overview of how MODx works.

Welcome to MODx.

Lads… im feeling your love for MODx, lol and was expecting a slightly biased replies (which isn’t a bad thing)

smashingred: so basically I can create stunning websites using my designer skills?… without knowing how to code to develop functional systems? I just need to learn Ditto/WayFinder..
so it would be a bit like learning how to use an application.. like dreamweaver??
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Everettg_99: excellent example of shameless promotion, but your YouTubing efforts are outstanding!.. I have YouTubed other CMS’s but the quality of presentation aint there…
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BobRay: I did.. thanks
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however.. I am still undecided.. simply because of my fear of messing up / steep learning curve.. as I have limited time to develop these sites.

I have narrowed it down to Joomla and MODx. But want your opinion and feedback

MODx :
For: Because of the nature of the project, it feels like it would be as simple as learning dreamweaver. The ability to rip off sexy designs from other websites.
Against: is this not more a framework?.. so id need minimal PHP / MySQL skills (which i dont have)

Joomla:
For: Massive community, uses the similar type of template system that zencart applies so I think I cud pick it up no problem. LOADS of modules, add-ons etc
Against: bloatware, can become a messy filesystem

AAAARGH!.. HAHAHA!

what is MODx performance like?.. the websites I will be creating are on simple shared hosting packages.. (supanames)

it was the footprint and speed of zencart that made me choose it over Magento. Even though Magento is a newer & (some say) far better system. It’s awful to run on shared hosts (super slow) so you pretty much need a private or virtually private server to run it on. So hosting costs go from £50 a year to £300 a year..

I also want a ’click and install’ system… which is why I love zencart, I do nothing but name the database and pick a password… everything else is done for me. all i then do is creat a template

Is this so for MODx?
also can the admin section be customised to show the customers own logo with restricted access too, so the customer thinks the CMS was created solely for them?

wow,, a massive post!

I have narrowed it down to Joomla and MODx.

Ouch, do you need to put the ’J’ word so close to modx? There is no comparison, specially if you are not a coder. Modx has a very intuitive and easy to understand model. Joomla is a developers nightmare (OK I am a bit biased).

Joomla (and other bloat-ware) have very large communities with 1000’s of add-ons. OK, sounds nice, but why is it. It is because you need to have a masters to be able to create anything effectively in Joomla. In modx you can simply whip something together with minimal effort. A huge % of modx driven sites rely on only a handful of ’standard’ add-ons. But if you need to do more there will most likely be an add-on available, or one that can be modified, or simply build your own and use the powerful modx api. If you want plug’n play than go with Joomla, but if you want to control how you build your site and not be forced to do it ’their’ way, then modx is the tool for you.

Modx is not a full blown application framework (not 0.9.6.x branch at least) it is a Content Management Framework which means that all of its tools are geared towards content management not application development.

I’m all for the right app for the project but the templating in Joomla and Zen Cart may be similar but are both cumbersome. It is about boxes and blocks. In addition the clickflow in performing simple tasks is significant. What I mean is that if you want to add a document it can take anywhere from 4 to 10 clicks to complete a cycle. That’s a lot of time.

I’d say some other CMS apps that might be worth looking at would be Drupal and Wordpress if large communities and lots of addons are what you are looking for.

There is a reason there are a lot of books for some of the aforementioned systems, once you break the surface you will be fully into hacking and wading through clumsy code. .

Ditto and Wayfinder are easy to learn. They are not "systems" but snippets that perform simple tasks. Wayfinder generates menus and lists of document links and ditto is primarily used for serializing content like blog posts or news items on a page but can be used for any repeated content from articles to staff bios.

At their simplest they are called simply with a simple snippet call [[Wayfinder]] and [!Ditto!]] and they will output the default content. They are well documented and make life very easy.

From what I understand you don’t want to dirty your hands with PHP/MySQL (I understand why you don’t want to take a course or become an expert) but any of the CMS applications that are built on PHP/MySQL to customize them will require at least some cursory knowledge of PHP to make changes or customize anything be it Joomla, Wordpress (all its templates run on php loops for post/content output and method calls), Drupal, Mambo and others.

Entering the world of CMSs as a designer means you will learn some new skills and some new ways of doing things and MODx allows you do develop these without forcing any one particular way. You can rely on 3rd party addons or learn to develop your own (which is easier than you might think.) Two years on I’ve learned more about PHP/MySQL than I ever thought I would but on 90% of my project work I don’t have to touch a bit other than in the installation of the application.

Honestly, the best way to decide is for you to install XAMPP on your computer and download all the CMSs you want to try and play with them till you find the one that fits. I’d add Drupal to your list to try as I think it is really MODxs FOSS competition and having a good community similar to MODx.

Cheers and best to you.

Most of the CMS’s out there are slower than straight files, which makes sense, given that they are running a lot of PHP and making calls to a database.

That said, there are 2 things that got me using MODx:
1. The speed (again, this is largely affected by caching), but it did score highly.
2. The ease of use. I tried about about 8 different CMS... I just started installing them on my OS X machine and trying them out. If I couldn’t make it work in an hour or two, I moved on. MODx was the last one I tried and it just made sense to me. It was easy to use and understand, and I didn’t need to know a whole lot of complicated things to get started with it.

And just in case you haven’t seen it, a great site to evaluate different CMS’s is http://www.opensourcecms.com/