MODx vs Drupal Dilemma

Our company has decided to create an online community website for our customer base and I have been given the task of finding the right platform. We have decided to use a hosting service for the website instead of keeping it in-house. Based on the content management systems the hosting service offers, I have it narrowed down to MODx and Drupal. I have them both installed on my system in order to do the necessary "test drive" but am still having trouble determining which one to go with.

Drupal appears to have tons of functionality and a really large install base. However, with me being the one to design the site and maintain it, I am a little scared from the feedback I’ve seen on the template system and getting the Drupal site to look like you want it to. Plus, there is a lot of talk about its steep learning curve. I have experience with Wordpress but this will be my first major CMS project.

In looking at MODx, I love the template system and the fact that it’s very designer friendly. I am sure MODx would probably handle most of the functionality we would like to have with the site but do have some concerns. For example, a forum will probably be a major function of the site. Drupal has the forum module as part of its core. I noticed the MODx is using the third party SMF for their website forum and it’s not part of MODx. I am not opposed to using SMF. It appears to be a great forum and is offered by our hosting service. Will the secuirty of the forum being able to tie in with the MODx security?

As a newbie, I am trying to research this as much as possible so that I can make a good informed decision and not have a converstation with the company president six months from now about why I picked the wrong CMS. On the plus side, this project will allow me to get some PHP training, which will help with either platform. Sorry for the long post...

Thanks,
Terry

Hi Terry,

Can I be the first to welcome you to the forum, I hope you’ll find MODx enjoyable.

I would always recommend MODx for anyone in your position as it offers the best possible safe solution.

I find MODx to be extremely flexible, as a designer I always produce my designs first, whether this be on paper or via a graphics application. I then consider how to implement my designs within the CMS and feel this as important to my designs as it leads to stronger better design. Planning and developing a website should be about building a custom solution to meet the client brief rather than trying to follow some pre-existing technically framework.

So unlike with other CMS MODx bends to fit your brief, as such it removes the need to split and cut your prototype templates into special system files. Meaning that you can build prototype templates and turn them into dynamic solutions quickly and without fuss.

I’ve been developing websites as a freelance designer/developer for over 5 years and when I discovered MODx I was truily excited because it offers such great flexibility and allows me to deliver sites my client require.

Additionally, just as important as the core CMS, the MODx community has to be one of the best. When ever I encounter an issue someone on this forum always offers help and advise.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my post. I really appreciate it.

Based on what I have seen so far, MODx seems to be very flexible and will probably do most of what we need. If it were solely based on my perspective as a designer, it’s no contest, I would definitely go with MODx. One thing I am trying to do is get a clearer picture from the "powers at be" at what functionality they would like to see in the website. I probably need to get a handle on that to make a better decision.

Also, I agree with your statement about the MODx community. Since I’ve been camped out on this website the past week, the MODx community seems to be a great asset to the product. I plan to go back through the showcase sites to see if any of them are close to what we would be doing.

Again, thanks for your input.
Terry

Drupal is a good CMS... it’s fairly mature, and a big use base. But MODx wins with templating flexibility (no contest, in my opinion). If you have HTML and CSS that you want to use, MODx is the way to go. Drupal makes you think inside the box all the time -- it’s great if you don’t need a SPECIFIC look/layout, but otherwise, Drupal is boxy and limiting.

Development in MODx is easy too... however, Drupal has a bigger library of 3rd-party contributions, so you may be able to pull some stuff off the shelf more easily with Drupal. It just depends on what your needs/priorities are.

Hope this helps.

my 2 cents: MODx is very nice for dynamic website, although i wouldn’t necessarly recommend it for a community website. I don’t like Drupal as i think that it’s userinterface isn’t really good in the usability aspect (our clients understand MODx immediately, but Drupal uses a strange analogy for them).

I would suggest looking into Wordpress MultiUser (MU) with the BuddyPress extension, this gives you everything you need for a professional community site, and you can also re-use your Wordpress knowledge.

Olaf

I second olafmol... if you got a multi-user community problem to solve, WordPress MU is a great choice. If you can figure out how much time is involved from taking any CMS off the shelf and getting it to where you need it to be...

You can love MODx and do it!
I started out with weblogin and the simple user snippets.
Just because a field name is "zip" nothing stops me from using that
to other data. Then I discovered eform2db and how to query the database and
put the data into placeholders. And edit my database through modules inside
the manager.

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,39947.msg241419.html#msg241419
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/DB_query_and_Placeholders
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=32720.40

Quote from: olafmol at Sep 20, 2009, 11:07 AM

my 2 cents: MODx is very nice for dynamic website, although i wouldn’t necessarly recommend it for a community website.

Each CMS has its strength and weaknesses, of course it depends what kind of community website you’re planning to build. If you lean towards simple vs feature packed community website, or you can code what you miss you can’t beat MODx flexiblity and versatility. As said before on the thread, MODx is a dream to work with as a designer

This being said, having now a deeper understanding of Drupal (built a 400 users extranet with it recently), I have to say it’s probably a better choice when you need a feature packed community website (better than WordPressMU/BuddyPress but that’s my opinion). Some key items of community websites are :

• notifications -> drupal has a really great Notification module/API, fine grained preferences and a wide choices of channels including email of course but also PM, SMS and more
• permissions -> though there are some limitations to the permission scheme, it’s still one of the most comprehensive/flexible I have worked with.
• community modules -> there are a LOT of modules oriented toward community, really few things need development.
• workflow -> Hard to beat the Workflow module for flexibility and feature set, this one is a benchmark IMHO.

Now this feature range comes with a price which is complexity :

• contrary to what I hear, you can do any design with Drupal. But it’s going to take 5 times the time to do it and (this is important) even more to maintain (better document what you do when templating...).
• modules configuration is a memory game the infamous Drupal "clickodrome", finding where you set up what can be a nightmare. Things are better with the admin module, which install Drupal 7 UI in D6 (thanks Mark Boulton and Lisa for improving UX !).
• permissions are as complex to set up, and can interact in strange ways (Drupal permission scheme is based on logical OR, module can only GRANT permission). A good idea to use "Module Grants" which modifies the core’s OR to an AND logic (makes thing consistent).
• resources : forget a shared server with Drupal if your site is feature rich, I had to boost Memory Limit to 256M for the extranet I worked with and also MAX PACKET SIZE. You better have control over config, which means VPS or dedicated server only...

To sum the MODx/Drupal choice, I’d say :

• Use Drupal when you need to deploy complex features and have neither time nor money to code it from scratch in another system, bear in mind though that you’ll have to manage Drupal complexity and that Drupal is NOT good at managing hiearchical content (and no real solution exist only workarounds).
• Use MODx when you need to build a good looking hierarchical website (rocks and roll for corporate websites), with fast deployment times and easy maintenance, and/or when you have resource/time to code possible missing features. I believe that Revolution will bring lots of powerful addons and facilitate custom deployments, a whole new game !