MODx vs. Wordpress

Everett,
Thanks! You are the rare person who isn’t strictly a cheerleader for one or the other - nuance and grey areas are not completely dead yet! There are so many pro’s and con’s that one could argue endlessly.

I agree - the plug-and-play thing is very handy. It’s largely why I keep using WP, as I do on that blog. To illustrate, in about an hour today I changed to a new theme and tweaked it a little, added the social share stuff, added stuff to my sidebar (which had lost its settings on the previous theme), and made a top menu, added a new article, updated the table you just looked at, and that’s just what I can remember.

Yet, I see the downsides, too. WP is a victim of its popularity. Though a newbie can make a site very quickly with these handy parts, almost invariably a non-tech person going it alone will end up on their forum asking, "how do I move my site out of the place where my 1-click install went?" or "what is FTP?" or "why isn’t every plugin author on the planet dropping everything they’re doing to pay sole attention to MY NEEDS?".

I look forward to your future articles!
Dave

My experiences are the opposite.
I use MODx for simple html, css + jquery sites.
For sites that require extra php fuctionality, I use WordPress. [I got tired with Drupals bugginess.]

Firtly, I can use a child theme for the TwentyTen theme to build almost any kind of site structure. [Not as easy or intuitive as MODx, of course]

Then if I want any kind of php functionality there will be at least 10 great plugins to choose from.
Those who say WordPress is simple might not have tried WP 3.1, it is more of a CMS than ever before.

MODx Revo is really fantastic and intuitive to use. However, for added functionality, as I am not very good with php, I find the dearth of plugins very frustrating.

My latest MODx site: http://www.furniture-kenya.com

I’ll stick to my guns: WordPress, including version 3.1, has a very simplistic architecture that can bite you in the ass. Yes, it is awesome at having lots of plugins and it gets massive props (really) for being plug-and-play, and that is certainly the right approach for the masses. Yes, version 3.1 is *more* of a CMS, but who-ever came up with the insanely complicated inputs for WP’s register_post_type() function seriously needs to be slapped. It’s incredibly difficult to code for that thing. I have spent many many hours wrestling with WordPress as a CMS, and the result is this plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-content-type-manager/

I think it’s better than others like it, and it even has features (such as importing and exporting definitions) that make it easier to use than Evo, so I suspect its popularity will take off. I’d love to do something similar for MODx, but through and through, WP’s CMS abilities are much more juvenile, requiring a herculean effort by the developers to mask that from the end users.

Actually, using shortcodes and custom codes is pretty straightfroward in WP and let it have similar snippet like functionality.

I find the code messy and not programmer oriented, but it is easier to just jump on the code and produce something quickly using WP.

I will have look at the plugin Everett. Looks promising.

I liked the comparison and think it’s a perfect comparison. If all you ever plan on having is a blog WP is defiantly the best choice. But, if you want more or just an amazingly easy template system ModX is a better choice (IMO).