Evaluating MODx - Need some help

We are currently planing a upgrade of our corporate website and I am evaluating various CMS-systems. We use Drupal to run our Intranet but the administration is such a pain that we have decided to go with something else for our public website. Having evaluated a vast number of different offerings (+10) I have narrowed down the choices to MODx and Silverstripe. I will willingly admit that I am leaning towards MODx because I prefer the back-end.

When answering the following questions please keep in mind that I am in marketing with a basic understanding of web technologies but certainly not a savy web-developer.

My main concern is the availability of seasoned MODx developers on the Swedish market. I have not managed to find very many companies/freelancers specializing in MODx in our nick of the woods. Choosing a developer based on general skill and then asking them to develop in MODx could be an option. That is, assuming that the system is fairly easy for them to get their heads around.
Q1: How hard is MODx to learn for a skilled Web developer? Assuming they now their HTML/CSS/PHP/etc and have previous experience of professional development in other CMS systems. This is of course a hard question to answer but any estimate (Days/weeks) would be helpful.

I find the upgrade path a bit confusing. On one hand there is the new Revolution soon to be released, and on the other hand support for Evolution is promised for years to come.
C2: Should these be considered different products with different target audiences?

Q3: Is there an on-line demo of Revolution available somewhere? (I tried to install it but faced to many obstacles)

Our new site will integrate heavily with our Enterprise System through an API.
Q4: Assuming the API is well documented, how difficult is it to connect to this from MODx? Would this need any ad-ons or could one build from the core?

Q5: Does MODx support sandboxing and versioning?

Q6: Do you have any examples of the maximum load MODx can handle? (visits/pages)

There is certainly a god buzz on the Internet for this product. But I can´t seem to find a good selection of high profile companies utilizing MODx. This in it self is not a problem, but it would be very helpful was I to "sell" the product as our choice to the company managers.
Q7: Could you please suggest a god selection of high profile sites using MODx? High profile web agencies could also be useful.

[e:renumbered questions for clarity]

Hello,

Q1 - If you understand your HTML/CSS you’re 85-90% there if you know a little PHP then you basically are there, granted PHP isn’t really required (good thing for me). In general you could likely pick it up in a weeks time assuming your only doing work here and there on it. I guess if you devoted most of your time you could get the hang of it it 1-2 days.

Q2 - Evolution and Revolution are two different systems. Evolution is the original version and currently has the most support. It’s great for smaller sites with one domain and say under 5-6k pages depending on your server. The add-ons, documentation, and support are geared mainly towards Evolution at this point in time.

Revolution is a ground up rebuild that works well for larger sites (MODx site for example). It will have support for more server configurations including caching technology, multi domain management, online add-on installation via package manager, and then some. It’s still in development so I would hold off on learning it for now and/or suggest it as downtime learning.

It will have much better documentation and down the road support for versioning and such.

Q5 - Evolution has two solutions for versioning, but they are a little limited and/or require some work to get installed. The basic answer is no. Revolution currently lacks it as well, but they say version 2.1 may have it. It will be much easier to do with Revolution.

You can setup Evolution on a local server, build the site, and move it to a production server without much trouble. You need to change the config file and two paths in the manager so that might be an option you could play with... I know the subject is discussed in the forums.

Q6 - I don’t know off hand, but with sites such as http://smarthistory.org/ running on Evolution I would guess a decent amount? This is also discussed some in the forums.

Q7 - The above site runs on Evolution, the MODx site on Revolution, and I know of at least one other high profile site if you care to PM me I can share. You can find some good sites here: http://www.2expertsdesign.com/web-designs/20-wonderful-websites-showcasing-modx-cms?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter and the showcase on the main site.

Thank you for answering all those questions.

I was also wondering how page code is stored and displayed.

Q8: Is it possible to store the templating code in a file on the server instead of in the database?

Q9: Is it possible to present all the templating code in one place? As I understand it you work with bits here and there in the back-end and then it all comes together when the page is rendered. I imagine it could be useful for a developer if there was a page of some sort where s/he could see all the raw code that goes in to a specific page/template.

Q10: Is there a plugin/module/etc available to handle A/B testing of pages?

Q8 - Yes, you can set some files to be stored on the server vs the database. Not all items can be externalized

Q9 - You can’t that i’m aware of, but you could add some comments to help identify where some code is coming from if needed. I find fixing coding issues isn’t that hard where I need to see everything in one spot.

Q10 - I don’t know.

Q8: Snippets and plugins can easily be stored as files which are then "included" in the PHP code, but it takes some effort to do so with templates and chunks. Future versions of Revolution will very likely have that as an option, however. It’s really not an option for resources (documents) although you can store all or part of the document’s content in a file with one or more @FILE Template Variables.

Q9: If you set a page to cached, both Evo and Revo will show you the cached version of the page with uncached elements still visible as tags via a tab on the Create/Edit document panel. Of course there’s always "View Source" in your browser which will show the fully processed version of the page.

Q10: I’m not sure exactly what you mean by A/B testing, but it’s very easy to duplicate a document at any time and have a second version that you can work on and preview during the design phase. You can also very easily switch which one is published on the site and (if you are using the Wayfinder menu snippet) the site menu will adjust automatically. If you mean having both pages up and randomly sending users to one or the other, I think there would be several ways to accomplish that fairly easily.