I’ve been using MODx with several of my clients for a number of years now, and have been consistently pleased with its performance and expandability. I started off with Etomite, and upgraded to MODx when I discovered just how much better it was! The built-in tools are fantastic and provide all the functionality I need, and at the same time it’s kept simple enough for non-techies to understand. I’m also really pleased with the way snippets are handled, allowing me to write bespoke code for my clients which is seamlessly integrated into the site.
Right then, on to the showcase. My own business web site now runs MODx; I am a freelance web designer in Wivenhoe, Essex, specifically designing
web sites for churches and Christian organisations, but will do commercial sites too of course. I’ve got a few static pages, plus an ever-expanding
Resources area with HTML/CSS tips and software reviews, all RSS-enabled, and all using a set of templates I designed specially.
Of all my clients, the biggest is the
Diocese of Chelmsford, which looks after all the Anglican churches in Essex and East London. This site uses MODx very heavily, with around 500+ pages, RSS feeds, custom snippets to give access to a searchable database of contacts, web forms, and we have roughly 50 people set up with user accounts so that they can maintain their own pages. I’ve had to write documentation for them, as the documentation on this site seems to be aimed more at the web developer than a basic editor. Still, we have been using MODx for several years very successfully, and even the most technophobic amongst us has been able to do some simple page editing, which is fantastic.
Among some of my other clients is
Orchard Baptist Church, Colchester. Besides the normal static pages there is also a system I designed which allows people to download sermons as MP3s. This has been made so simple that they have taken over that system completely, uploading the MP3s each week. The next obvious step would be to integrate them into an RSS feed, which would effectively serve up the MP3s as a podcast.
You can see some of my other clients’ web sites on
my portfolio. Pretty much all of them are built on MODx, which gives a simple interface yet with the power of PHP to extend it further and further. Great work, MODx team!
Matthew Dawkins
www.matthewdawkins.co.uk
