Joomla VS ModX - Reloaded.

Getting back to what I said earlier, Joomla! is the right solution for lots of people. Is it still difficult to build a semantic, validating XHTML/CSS site that doesn’t have the same semi-rigid structure left over from it’s Mambo lineage? For me, that’s why I started MODx in the first place but for many that simply doesn’t matter and all the robust, readily available function-specific modules weigh heavier.

As far as releases on our end goes, 096 is about to be released in earnest (features are locked down), and 097 will enter an extended beta immediately after that. With 097 and beyond, MODx will actually be a very very different animal with much more robust features that enable it to play on a very different field. 097 has been in development alongside the legacy codebase for more than a year, and much of the little annoying things (to me) about MODx will be rectified including API consistency, merged user systems that retain the flexibility of our current split manager/webuser system, true parser, ability to override the core system completely and still maintain a straightforward upgrade path and much more.

Is it still difficult to build a semantic, validating XHTML/CSS site that doesn’t have the same semi-rigid structure left over from it’s Mambo lineage?

Yes, still the same. They refer to version 1.5. with which you get besser possibilities of templating. But none knows when it will be released. They threw a beta on the market more than half a year ago, but this only was early alpha. Since then they changed a lot of stuff so the next beta also will be including new features/changes and so on. I think that there is no 1.5. final this year. So no progress in templating either.

Progress is always hard when you drag the past behind you... especially when you’ve been an "institution" in the CMS world for many years. The task is not easy. I really do think they won’t reach the next step without breaking up with the old codebase... tough choice, but at some point it’s either evolve or decline...

for us the biggest problems with Mambo/Joomla where the fact that lots of modules where either broken/buggy, or where messing up the output HTML and CSS. To solve this we had to dive deep into the code and it seemed much quicker to develop from scratch again. Furthermore the blog-structure with a very limited number of possible levels was also a huge problem for the websites we have to develop.
Right now MODx is our CMS of choice

Olaf

With agitated, i meant that he have been using joomla for i think 4 or 5 years
And he just can´t get off it, no matter how much i try to talk about the issues around it (He has only seen
a few, and has only used super moderator hierarchy on his sites). Since he has been digging some modx code
for me, i hope that he realises that it is better to evolve than decline, as one other person mentioned earlier.

About breaking the joomla code base, i think it might be possible to work around such issues.
But at what costs? As a system grows, it has to evolve. Old users will have to adapt to new codebase and features.

It´s like this, you have a core and plug in things to it.
If there are limits of what can be plugged in, the core might be useless!

And one Joomla user in the thread have obviosly taken offence by this thread, i shure would like to know of what?

The forum is an open place baby, join the crowd

PS: 0.97 smells nice.. drooool!!

The info about MODx in www.cmsmatrix.com is really old.

It shows version 9.1 and that there have been no updates since 2005 or something like that...
also a lot of features are missing. They require somebody from the dev team to go and
upgrade the information....

FYI only...

Thanks for the reminder !

We’re pretty much aware of this, and I (but I think Ryan also) mailed them a few times to get access to edit this but it seems the admins are not responding... Since we don’t know who added us and has the account to edit this, it seems until the admins answer our prayers, we’re stuck with this.

But I’ll sure try again !

well, Joomla obviously has more users thus it has more plugins, better documentation and probably some functionality modx misses.

On other hand modx has quite interesting tools which ive been looking for and found only in few cms, like ajax based back office which allows fast editing, SEO based layout and passing parameters instead of loading modules.

The most important is modx got good basis to start with which Joomla misses big time this is why 1.5 takes them years to produce. As for some stuff users said, well modx is really user friendly for management compared to many other cms including Joomla but only lack is very advanced construction of templates which gives flexibility on one side and takes usability on other. As few peeps from modx government told, 1.0 will integrate much of functionality inside and will be easier to design with. I like the idea though, first squeeze the plugins and then apply them properly.

My opinion is that ModX will go a long way so long as the backend is so easy to get a grasp of. Even People with little or no knowledge can manage their website if it has been set up well. Saying that though, I did have a "how can I make a folder" email yesterday

I can’t compare ModX to Joomla! but compared to Mambo it is very cleverly done indeed. Hats off to everyone with their fingers in the ModX pie.

I can compare it to Typo3 which has been flavour of the month here in Germany for a very long time. Learning things like "Typoscript" just so you can put a template together is imo way off.

These are my 2 (euro) cents.

All the best,
Taff

Thanks for the testimonies guys

Quote from: pr0ph3t at Apr 25, 2007, 09:39 PM

well, Joomla obviously has more users thus it has more plugins, better documentation and probably some functionality modx misses.

I am not sure it’s the real edge Joomla would have over MODx really. There are a lot of resources already, and "head count" is not the only thing that matters : given the flexibility of MODx addons, you can do with one of them the same thing a Joomla user would need to pick among several (let’s take menus for example : who needs something more than Wayfinder ? It’s templatable, thus you don’t have to choose between addons to try to fit the output to your needs... Same goes for Ditto : can handle news, catalogs, blogs or any item for that matter thanks to TVs no pre-defined data structure).

Of course, some important items are missing but I doubt this will be long before you see a full fledged e-commerce module, or a collaborative platform built with MODx

Quote from: Taff at Apr 26, 2007, 01:12 AM

My opinion is that ModX will go a long way so long as the backend is so easy to get a grasp of. Even People with little or no knowledge can manage their website if it has been set up well. Saying that though, I did have a "how can I make a folder" email yesterday

I can vouch for this too, most of my clients are to say the least not very web or computer savvy and manage pretty well with MODx. About getting emails about simple questions, well that’s how you improve your end user documentation And you’ll always get those emails, no matter how well your doc is written, anyway.

This being said, not sure Joomla! is too hard to use either, though I never used it for my clients thus I wouldn’t know... I don’t think that’s a real edge of MODx over Joomla. Maybe the document tree is more intuitive since it’s similar (sometimes falsely) to the folder structure of a computer.


Quote from: Taff

I can compare it to Typo3 which has been flavour of the month here in Germany for a very long time. Learning things like "Typoscript" just so you can put a template together is imo way off. These are my 2 (euro) cents.

I have used Typo3 for a while in 2001 (quite a fashionnable system in France too), and yes typoscript is not easy to learn its logic is a bit alien to other CMS. You click with the logic or you don’t... I didn’t really (same could be said of MODx though, I clicked immediately with the logic but some don’t or some take a bit of time to get into it...). It’s a powerful but "heavy" tool, developping a website with Typo3 will take longer I guess and be costy to maintain...