I think MODx has great potential because it’s able to answer high expectations from those skills groups. As Wendy said, there is still work to be done, mainly to answer end users needs but with the upcoming interface overhaul the future looks nice to me
But still the final decision of what MODx will become is going to depend on the core member, after all they deserve to decide where they are going to bring this whole community into. Hope our suggestion can be something that can help MODx core member to decide the future.
I think it is dangerous from a marketing perspective to say "what types of users should we target" I think a better question is "how can we serve the users we have better".
It seems to me that the most successful products have followed the latter model. A project like this has a built in advantage that it has a lot of different types of "users" on the team and they will all voice comments and provide input and more people will hope on board because the product will have a solid identity. I think this is what will make MODx strong in the long run.
Most of them are users with skills or passion for the web. They love MODx’s flexibility, no wonder. And since they get great support 
, they manage to learn and grow skills to use its power So if you look at me as a class of user, MODx hit the nail on the head. So, what kind of user am I? I have been developing Web sites for a long time now but tend to be a front end guy. While I can do some simple SQL and PHP I am by no means a programmer. If a client asks me for a feature that I can’t do I just outsource it to someone who can. I have a custom php template system that is very simple and fast to use and for any common small business Web site it works great.
What I did not have was an easy way to do all the common things you want to do that go beyond front end work. Things like user editable content for clients, users, search, rss feeds, friendly urls, etc and MODx does all that for me basically out of the box with very little skill needed. But as an added bonus, it provides some great features for growing far beyond that that I can move into as my skills as a programmer improve. And, in the meantime, I can get my backend guys to create modules for me. Either way, I am still way ahead of where I was.
While I agree about the serving the users better, I have to disagree with you on the target part. Most CMS around here have no defined target, and you can’t be everything to everyone. You can try but you won’t make a good job of it.
You need to establish a target or, at least a segment : 1st tier (ECM), 2nd tier (Designers, Developpers) or 3rd tier (end users). If you don’t establish who your users are, you can’t serve them right. Those typically have different needs.
First I have to say that it is amazing how fast you guys respond to comments; even at 4am. It is really great and keeps a lot of momentum and excitement on the project.
Second, I agree with what your saying here about targets. The point I was trying to make is that your users are your target and I would agree that it is important to define who your users are and even gain a better idea of how they fold into different segments. My comments were more in response to the idea of searching for a target instead of defining a target.
Effective solutions are those that are close to home and solve real problems in your immediate community (your users). As far as I can tell from reading these forums, the user base already is made up of the three tiers that you outlined above.
I also want to say that I am really excited about this project and plan on contributing as much as I can.
I only found out about MODx this week and I have been spending most of my time since I discovered it reading the forums and docs and playing around in the manager. I don’t think I have read a single post that was not packed with good ideas and lots of enthusiasm and I literally can’t wait to see where it goes over the course of this year. A freakin awesome job to all of you guys on the team and thank you sooo much for putting in the work. This is basically the answer to my prayers.
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MODX Staff
I’m in no position to talk about marketing perspective, but I would like to ask a favor from you. As you explore more about MODx, would you mind creating a blog post or artcile about MODx? I can see from the reply that you made earlier, and the more I read it, the more I get attracted to MODx. Personally, I think we need this kind of promotion too. As you know that we have a good user base in here, but it won’t hurt to attract more 2nd ter users, which can be describes as half programmer and half coder to improve the usability of MODx.
I like the idea of comparing MODx with Photoshop, which most people know and probably using it to create a website. We still need somebody to build the plugin to make photoshop easy to use. For example if you have an eye candy plugin, which this is made by the 2nd tier users, while the core of photoshop is still being maintained by the 1st tier users that always try to make the system as flexible as possible. Having a flexible doesn’t mean allowing the core to have a lot of features. All the bell and whistles comes from plugin, modules, snippets, and etc.
From having this thought, the more we gather people to just start tasting MODx, we can increase our 2nd tier base users, and the more we have the 2nd tier users, the more we will have all the extended features that are easy to use and etc, and the more we have this features added, the more we can attract 3rd tier users. SO it’s works like a loop.
This discussion is closed to further replies. Keep calm and carry on.