MODx vs. Wordpress

I just braindumped my ramblings into an article comparing WordPress and MODx. I thought it would be relevant for this forum:

http://tipsfor.us/2011/04/19/wordpress-vs-modx/

I didn’t realize how the two applications stack up until I had categorically gone through the various components. I hope this type of comparison is useful to any web devs who have to field work in both systems.

Nicely done! I have not used WP in a while as I have put all my eggs in the MODx basket, but I think you really do a great job highlighting all these points.

The one main point I would add is this: I think most people compare all the tools and methods from the viewpoint of being a developer or a designer. If you are a regular person with little or no web production experience then I think Wordpress wins big time. You can install Wordpress, chose your theme from a zillion template options, add your content and start blogging and enjoying your website. With MODx there is a lot more work to be done.

But MODx has more flexibility and freedom so I for one will not be going back to Wordpress...

Yep, agreed. WordPress is definitely more lightweight and streamlined and it’s a great choice as a first CMS. I came from the static html background, so MODx made a lot more sense to me.

wordpress has come a very long way, but its very basic compared to MODx.
I use Drupal and Joomla as well, but MODx is more and more appealing to me the more I learn about it.
I think a more interesting comparison would be between MODx and Drupal or Joomla.

I understand your point about comparing these other CMS options to MODx. But I will say this: on this forum you will not find that many people who use both MODx and Joomla for example. Most of us have already decided that MODx is the goto CMS. Wordpress on the other hand is worth evaluating as it really is a good blog tool. I think there are more than a few here who deploy both MODx and Wordpress.

In my early days of graduating from static html sites I tried about ten of these systems. I then narrowed it down to two: MODx and Wordpress. Somehow my once keen interest in Wordpress has since sort of faded away...

Yeah, I would love to put Drupal through its paces, but my experiences with it so far were pretty bad.

Here’s a little story about Drupal:

I was hired to do a DRUPAL project (yes, knowing that I’d have to first learn the entire CMS). So the idea was this: I built out the entire backend (there was a fair amount of custom 3rd party data that had to be added). So I jumped into the famed Drupal CCK (content constructor kit), and after much swearing and the help from some Perl scripts, I got the CSV dumps loaded up into Drupal with all the required taxonomies.

The plan was to hand the project over to the other developer (the one who had insisted that we use Drupal in the first place), and he was going to integrate all the custom templates (HTML/CSS) that he had designed. He was a Drupal expert, so he had designed the templates in a Drupal friendly way... but the guy kinda disappeared. Flaked out. Poof.

So at that point we had an unskinned Drupal site, a handful of HTML/CSS files that demonstrated the desired layout, and only $5k remaining in the budget for the integration. I started soliciting bids from eLance and from friends for any Drupal dudes to finish the project. NOT ONE OF THEM WOULD EVEN LOOK AT THE INTEGRATION FOR LESS THAN $10k. With the gun to my head, I said "F this", and I ported the whole thing over to MODx Revo and integrated the templates myself, and even with the time I spent porting the site, it was still ended up being a well-paying gig for that remaining $5k.

The lesson there was that that particular project would have been much cheaper to do in MODx. That was a pretty big FU to Drupal in my book: its template integrations and the way it handles customized data were truly painful in comparison to MODx.

And here it is:
http://greenjobscalifornia.org/

@Everett: Ouch! There really is no point making things more complicated - or expensive - than they need to be.

Out of curiosity, what reasons did the other developer give for insisting the site be done in Drupal?

And I love this:

he had designed the templates in a Drupal friendly way

If you asked me to design a template in a ’MODx friendly way’, I would laugh and say there is no such thing. It’ll take whatever you give it

He was set on doing the site in Drupal because he was really familiar with it and because it’s used to support a number of sites in his industry, he thought it’d make a good selling point to lure additional clients... something like "hey, we build our sites on the exact same platform as competitor X". I was curious to try it out, so it seemed like a good way to do it: use it on a real project while under his guidance. I’d still like to test it more thoroughly... it was built with larger sites in mind, and I think it does handle those pretty well, but yeah... the lack of eLance bids was telling.

Everett,
As always, great stuff! Thanks for that article. As a WP and MODx user, I can relate to your comments, and agree closely with your thoughts. It goes into much more detail than my comparison chart, which is more of a quickie comparison of the two for the newbie.

I have wrestled with Drupal a number of times, and couldn’t seal the deal. But nothing like the nightmare you had. I did have a ginormous nightmare with Joomla that was almost that bad, which I volunteered for in a non-momentary lapse of reason.

Love the comments about SEO!

Cheers, Dave

Dave -

That’s a great chart! I’ll see if I can throw you a link there from my article.

One thing I should field (maybe in a future article) is the plug-and-play nature of WP. That really is a huge strong-point. MODx can do a lot of stuff, but you have to roll it yourself 90% of the time. I’d love to see future enhancements to modx that make it easier to do drag-and-drop type of actions. We’re moving in the right direction there with the ability to drag snippets into page content, but still, you’re basically having to do some mini-configurations each step of the way. This isn’t viable for a large number of users : they simply need the plug and play.

The other area that is a blessing and a curse is that MODx does have a mature architecture, but often that means that the developer can’t figure out how to use it! WP is so trivial and simple, you may have to do all the heavy lifting yourself, but you can see pretty quickly which functions you’re dealing with. It can be a LOT of heavy lifting though...