Collect user's Testimonies about MODx

Per Wendy’s suggestion, I am creating a thread with the purpose of keeping track of user’s testimony on the boards or elsewhere...

Let’s start with the last one from Duane :

Quote from: Duane at Feb 14, 2006, 08:22 PM

I’ve been working with Mambo/Joomla for about a year, and while Joomla in particular is a very powerful site engine and CMS...I have to say that MODx just blows me away!

This is a TREMENDOUS content management system, an amazingly easy development environment and, honestly, much more end-user friendly than Joomla could ever hope to be. MODx is amazing. Truly.

I love the flexibility and speed of deployment, and the much easier learning curve. Everybody involved in MODx needs to take a bow and accept my pat on the back. Wow!

So, just a thank you, basically. But, it’s a big thank you.

Duane

I’ll start the hunt for those this week, and upgrade this thread.

Feel free to help

Thanks !

There’s the good stuff over at Stylegala:

I have to say, as a php programmer and someone who’s been looking for a good php cms for basic websites (you know, the ’ol non-drupal business-class stuff), this is the best system I’ve seen to date from the os community.

In ONE day, I was able to take a complex ajax based CMS template, and build out a 40 page site with FAQs, contact forms, custom fields for outputting content, and a plethora of other tidbits. I was able to build out a pretty full function site, without a lot of user training ...

Now, as someone who’s done a LOT of work with eZ Publish, Typo3, Drupal, etc, and as the owner of a CMS deployment firm, I have to admit to being somewhat impressed by this rapidity with which I was able to get this stuff out the door.

Jonathan Lambert, FireBright

Here’s a potential one...

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,1261.msg8146.html#msg8146

Probably a few more tidbits in those Site Showcase topics...

I think we can add a document in main site about them ? What do you think of it guys ?

I think it’s a great idea but first we have to collect enough of those and sufficiently varied, to take this next step

Updated

Quote from: Duane at Mar 02, 2006, 05:47 PM

I used Mambo, then (after the fork), Joomla. I worked with both for about a year, and have around 10-12 sites deployed in one or the other.

I found MODx about two months ago, and it has become...by a mile...my favorite CMS. Very flexible, very easy to use.

Duane

I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts about *why* I like this CMS so much better than Joomla. I think it might be helpful to others who are looking for some comparative things:

1. SEF URLs.
To get the sort of SEF urls (human-readable) that MODx generates out of the box, you have to buy a $49 add-on module for Joomla/Mambo. Non-human readable urls (variables without the "?" character like: xxxxx.com/index.php/content/category/9/19/128/ are not hard to do, but MODx SEF is human readable with a click box.)

2. Search
Without some major hacking, Joomla/Mambo search only looks at "Category" names, not content. And, getting the results parsed to a page requires using a php module called "mosMainBody();" as the container. Like all their built-in modules, it is a pain because it holds multiple functions and requires hacking to remove the unused functions.

3. Includes are much easier in MODx
In J/M, there’s no real equivalent to TVs, Chunks and Snippets. Scripts, html pieces, etc. are brought in through a php include, and any edits require either FTP or the use of an add-on editor (Joomla Xplorer).

4. Adding Pages is much easier in MODx
There’s no equivalent to the front-page menu tree in the admin, and the section/category structure forces you to create (or assign) a section and category to each new page in an interface screen that’s separate from the page content input. Plus, the menu item itself is activated/published in yet *another* interface page. It takes a lot of doing (in a certain order) to add a new page -- Section has to be assigned/created *first*, because the category requires attachment to a section. Category has to be assigned/created second, because creating a menu item requires attachment to a category. Menu item creation has to be done third, because creating page content requires assignment to a menu item. It’s a pain.

5. The menuing system sucks.
With just a few output adjustments, I made DropMenu *perfectly* match the syntax of the css/list-based menu my designer set up. It takes (again) a third party add-on component to do the same thing in J/M. None of the built-in menu components can seem to replicate the designer’s list menus. (Another 30 or 40 bucks).

6. Page Level Meta Tags
Unless you use J/M’s built in content modules (all set up as news stories), there’s simply no good way to create page-level Meta Tags. Everything ends up being site-wide. I did most of my content in custom-output modules, because I was rarely creating "news" pages, and J/M doesn’t give you any way to add specific meta-tags for custom modules. So, all my J/M sites have only site-wide metas.

With MODx, I just set up editable TVs for the MetaTags, and do the page-specific tags at the same time I’m putting in page content. It reminds me to include keywords in the content, and allows me to build my keyword meta-tag list while looking at the content. Much, much, much superior.

7. Finally, MODx is faster, in my opinion.
J/M suffers from a lot of performance problems. There are an incredible number of database queries generated by J/M...and if the SQL server isn’t damn well tuned, it will turn page load to painful slowness. MODx seems not to have these page load problems -- woo hoo!

So, it’s short of a Letterman top-ten list, but ought to give you a better idea of why I LOVE MODx!

I know Jeff is a member of the team but this testimony sure is great !

I’ll go on adding testimonies to group them all in one place. Many wiil come from the "What did you use before MODx" thread, it seems...

Quote from: Bravado at Nov 07, 2005, 10:29 AM

Well...I definitely used Etomite before. But for more of a portal site, I was really trying to get Mambo/Joomla! to work for me (with little success!). I think the problem with other CMS’ is the fact that you’re stuck within the confines a specific way of developing templates. Plus, the advent of "modules" and such in CMS’ such as Mambo can lead to some confusion. The main problem I had with Mambo was getting some of the modules to output valid DHTML/CSS code. That and I had specific things I wanted to accomplish and the code itself for alot of modules were just sloppy and hard to modify.

These problems don’t really exist with MODx. If I was to classify MODx as anything, I would label it as more like a "Website Construction Kit"...meaning that you build it the way you want to using the API and tools provided by the CMS. What else could a web developer want?

Quote from: davidsim at Nov 07, 2005, 11:58 AM

The layout and methods of working are very logical and easy to customise - something which can’t be said of most of the competitors. Good work!

Feels strange quoting oneself, but let’s be exhaustive. I selected the best part of the message.

Quote from: davidm at Nov 08, 2005, 01:10 PM

I am not coming to MODx to switch CMS per say, but to find one that will fill a gap in my current shortlist of CMS. You could say I am looking for one more tool, a "different from the others" kind of tool. (...)

I need illimited hierarchical structure for more complex corporate websites. Corporate also means usable, user-friendly backend and frontend editing. Since for me flexibility and modularity are key, and I wouldn’t adopt a CMS with a clumsy template system , I chose MODx for this very specific need because it’s the only one to fit the bill I have a feeling I might just end up using it for other projects as well...

I also must say the responsiveness of the dev team, and the dynamics of this community are key to my being here... This probably explain why I tested and never adopted Etomite while I saw great promise in it. It’s hard to put your finger on it, it’s not the number of post or snippets or whatever. I don’t see Etomite moving forward, MODx is. It makes me want to contribute and invest time, and ultimately : use it for actual projects.

Quote from: The at Nov 09, 2005, 04:05 AM

My standard has been Mambo for the past two dozen or so sites. I’ve tried everything and Mambo generally had some plugin that I needed, so it forced the choice. I found Etomite a while back and was thrilled, but it was right around the time that things started to get all weird, development was stopped, etc. I didn’t want to get too invested when its future was so uncertain.

I decided to come back to Etomite because a current project was just going to be too much a pain for Joomla, and the CMS that’s supposed to be the most powerful/flexible (TYPO3) just seems to be such a beast. I remembered Etomite being so fast to develop in (as well as having blazingly fast page loads), but MODx just seems to be moving forward so much faster, and the forum has some of the nicest (and fastest) people ever.

So MODx it is and I’m absolutely loving it! I have a Joomla site that’s almost 90% done and I’m seriously considering remaking the whole thing in MODx. Probably take me 1/10th the time!