Is MODx the CMS I should use? Need experienced advice.

The short version of my question is - Will it be too difficult for me to build my website in MODx since I don’t have much coding experience.

I’ve read a lot about MODx as well as other CMS’s like Joomla, Drupal, etc... From what I’ve learned the versatility that MODx offers is greater than the others and has the ability to pretty much do anything you can think of. This is great except I don’t really know much code. I’m not afraid of code, just haven’t had a lot of time to learn it. The extent of my coding knowledge is HTML, XML, little PHP and thats about it. MODx is definitely my first choice CMS pending I capable of using it.

Without going into detail, I would like to build a site that is driven by its community. Its not a social network type of site. Its a site that the community will submit "certain" ideas/projects and they will be voted on by the community. This will have to have a very nice voting system with several ways to display this content... it will of course have a user forum among other things specific to the concept of the website.

I would appreciate input from experienced MODx builders as well as newbs that may have started in my position. Thanks for your advice.

If you know regular xhtml and css (+some PHP) - MODx rules!

I knew no PHP when I started, but in order to use all the available code (one can google out of this forum)
I learned more and more. I am no PHP programmer yet, but enough skillfull to copy/paste whatever I want!

Make some advanced MODx webpages ---FOR FUN--- before you start selling them. That is my tip.

See http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,34880.0.html

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,36714.0.html

Nice! I forgot to mention I do know a bit of CSS.. so that’s good. Also, I have no intentions of selling sites. This is strictly just choosing the right CMS for my own project. Thanks for the input.

I learned MODx by stripping down the demo content that comes with MODx 0963/Evo
and this (old) wiki page: http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Beginner’s_Guide_to_MODx

But new wiki: http://svn.modxcms.com/docs/display/MODx096/Home
and http://modxcms.com/community/partners/books-training-tutorials.html
rocks.

There’s no question that MODx will do what you want, but you should know that MODx has no plug-and-play addon for a forum and the idea submission and voting systems you want might take a significant amount of work to implement in MODx.

It’s possible that another CMS would be a better choice unless you’re willing to put in some time learning a little bit about PHP coding and MySQL database manipulation. Maybe others with more experience in implementing that kind of stuff on other CMS platforms can chime in here.

Quote from: KevinH at Jul 22, 2009, 10:23 PM

I would like to build a site that is driven by its community. Its not a social network type of site. Its a site that the community will submit "certain" ideas/projects and they will be voted on by the community. This will have to have a very nice voting system with several ways to display this content... it will of course have a user forum among other things specific to the concept of the website.

Well, let me ask this then... what would a ball park figure be if I were to pay someone to build the majority of a site like this out.. with the key features that I would need.. then I could take over the machine so to speak. I realize a lot more thought and details go into a project like that, but what would you say a baseline range would be? Thanks.

Kevin,

I know you said it’s not a social network site, but services like Ning and Socialgoo can be a great and instant solution.

They do most of the things you list, not sure about the voting option, but there are a wealth of plugins for both services.