Is MODx right for me

Hi Guys,

I’ve spent the last few days searching for a fontend CMS for our new startup and after lengthy searching, reading and posting, I think MODx may be the one for us. The decision has come down to either MODx of C5.

Can someone please answer a short list of questions I’ve got?


1. Are there any design constraints? I.e can I put a creative frontend job out to crowd sourcing networks, choose a design and have it sliced to XHTML/CSS without any MODx integration fear?

2. Can we build modal overlay’s - this may be available as standard add on?

3. Can all 3rd party code be added to the pages - i.e. analytics code (not google analytics), affiliate tracking links or any other marketing related 3rd party code?

3. Will the user authentication and reg forms integrate with a Django backend? The ops dashboard will be built and run in Django.

4. Can MODx handle rich media with ease? The user help centre and tour pages will predominately consist of tutorial videos. A Feedback community will also be managed via User Voice.

5. Are there any license constraints? At all?

I think that’s about it for now. MODx looks a great solution for us & I’m looking forward to becoming more involved in the community.

Cheers

1. No constraints at all. MODx uses a plain-vanilla HTML page structure, with dynamic elements (menus, individual page content, etc) inserted into the structure via special templating tags. http://www.sottwell.com/how-templates-work.html

2. Don’t know; don’t know what a modal overlay is. [Google is my friend; and yes, again, this works just like any ordinary HTML document; javascript library conflicts may occur}

3. Yes, just as you can in any ordinary HTML document. The only thing that might cause a problems is if there are conflicting javascript libraries, but that also is true with any HTML document.

4. Yes. http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/board,318.0.html

5. GPLv2 constraints (if you can consider them as such). http://modxcms.com/about/license.html

6. Enjoy!

AdamLee, I think MODx would be a good choice for you. I don’t know anything about your other option, but I had mostly the same requirements when I was considering MODx a few months ago, and I’m pretty happy.

I can’t stress enough how wonderful it is to be able to make my own templates and (X)HTML exactly how I want, and then just sort of add the whole MODx deal to it to manage everything.

No CMS is perfect and MODx has its quirks, but the community works hard to polish the system and make things better, and so really the annoyances are quite few.

Thanks for your comments guys, they’ve been really useful. Is there a marketplace where I can find MODx developers, like this forum perhaps?

I want to try and understand how sites are built in MODx and what the best way is to have my site developed. Can the whole site be built using a developer and then just integrated into MODx?

Whats the best process for building sites in MODx? Apologies if this seems like a stupid question, I come from a marketing background and I’m not too technical when it comes to development.

Thanks guys

3. Will the user authentication and reg forms integrate with a Django backend? The ops dashboard will be built and run in Django.

My answer would be no, at least not in the sense that you can seamlessly sync Django user authentication/access control with modx user management. You’ll need to use one or the other. Personally I’d use the modx user tables in my model and write a authentication/acl scheme with Django. Or even easier, don’t use Django - use the modx api and snippets to build your application If you do this you might want to check out the CakeModx api which provides a bunch of very helpful methods...
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=35663.0

What if user auth is entirely managed via Django and the login fields link to Django’s auth tables? Would that be a solution or am I talking rubbish?

MODx controls access to its pages according to its own user management scheme. When a user logs in, much of his profile information from the database is loaded into the $_SESSION array to be used by MODx processing. So you would have to somehow get Django to put compatible data into the same session that MODx is using, setting the same cookies, then redirecting back to the MODx page. It can get ugly.

So is it fair to say that I really cant do what I want to?

Let me ask the question like a 2 yr old. If I log onto the home page of my site, fill in my user name and my password, is there no way that the user name and password fields can be linked to Django and upon entering my details, be taken to the Django dashboard?

Sorry its just how I look at/understand it.

Cheers

Sorry - the dashboard that is built in Django, not the actual Django dashboard.

I’m not at all familiar with Django, but you can have a login form with its action set to anywhere you want; it can be sent off to your Django login processing page. But that won’t make you logged in to the MODx site.