Collect user's Testimonies about MODx

A nice testimony !

I sure have to compile all this, get the best out of each and maybe build a testimony page for modxcms.com...

Quote from: Uncle68 at Sep 06, 2006, 05:36 AM

About me: I’m a newbie making sites, only made one public site, spending lots of time learning php, css, mysql and all that (and struggling with Mambo).

(...)

My over all impression of MODx after looking into it for two days (mostly reading documentation and installing MODx) is:

Fantastic! I used Mambo before, and comparing to Mambo, MODx is like having a new Ferrari instead of a Trabant (old east european car) from the 1972! The MODx manager feels more like a local application than a html page on a server on the net. Again: Fantastic!

What I have been looking for is a system to use as a start for building sites, not a ready done solution. I don’t want to start a new site by setting up document handling, user handling and security and such. I want to concentrate on adding contents, functionality and stuff without being locked to... anything! MODx seems perfect, I have not yet found one single thing that wouldn’t be possible to create and/or integrate to MODx. With Mambo I had to give up lots of ideas just because it was either impossible or to complex with the need to hack the core.

And there are lots of MODx documentation to read, but I still think it’s really hard to understand all about how snippets, chunks, modules, TVs and all that fits together.

Templating is incredible easy! At least the steps required to set up a small test template, I used my old template from Mambo, and it took only 10 minutes to port it to MODx!

(...)

Well well, still, my over all impression of MODx is that it is without doubt the best foundation to build sites on right now. You can make a small site pretty easily and there seems to be no limits on how complex and advanced sites you can build!

If I could make a wish it would be that the developers of MODx concentrate more of making current MODx even better, instead of adding more and more new things to it. And also making even better documentation! Up to date tutorials and walkthroughs will make MODx the choice for more people, more than adding more functions to it! And the version number should not be 0.x, the product is ready and stable! (Instead I think Mambo should set their version number to 0.1.5 or so...)

Now I have to stop writing, I have to go back to the documentation and read it from the beginning (again) so I maybe can add userlog in and registration to my test site!

Hope that someone thinking of using MODx can be helped by initial (newbie) thoughts.

If not, go for MODx anyway, I’m convinced it’s the best!

Thanks for reading!

Quote from: Ace at Sep 13, 2006, 07:53 AM

(...)
I started with Wordpress because many of my favorite sites used it. After monkeying around for a couple of weeks I got frustrated with the amount of hacking required just to modify the look of my site. The lack of multiple sections was also a big let-down so ... Next!

I downloaded Drupal because it was supposed to be versatile and powerful. After spending 40 minutes trying to install the damn thing, I realized that it’s only a flexible tool for developers who can code PHP in their sleep. Next!

Rails had begun to generate a lot of buzz. Ruby was the sexy girl next door that everyone wanted to get with, and the infamous "Blog in 20 minutes" was successful in seducing me. So I decided to teach myself some basics and ended up with a copy of Typo. All I can say is "ugh!" the app felt like it was haphazardly slapped together in one afternoon by someone who had not eaten their breakfast. The community support was non-existent and the app was lacking many features I needed... Next!

One day I stumbled across Veerle’s blog and was like "Wow!" Expression Engine seemed to pack quite the punch indeed. I still have it installed on my server and though the admin is a little difficult to get your head around (along with the Smarty-inspired tagging system) I haven’t totally given up on EE and recognize its value for future projects. At the same time I realized that to get the most out of it I should buy a copy which is out of the question, so Next! (for now anyway)

I suppose I suffer from a common symptom of many designers. We mostly want a quick fix that gels with our workflow and doesn’t force us to get a degree in a new language. I had pretty much given up hope for my search and resolved myself to the possibility of coding static pages for the rest of my life, but my luck turned around...

HOME SWEET HOME

Thanks to talented designers like Jon Hicks and Nathan Smith, I finally discovered Textpattern and what a huge difference! The install was a breeze and the admin was a breath of fresh air. Though it was a challenge to absorb the logic of TXPs workflow I found it was relatively painless thanks to it’s html-like syntax and structure. (not to mention their great documentation) I was sold! Since then I have created two sites and have 3 more in production.

Other things I love about TXP:

- Lean, mean code output that actually validates
- Complete separation of content from presentation
- Template driven site structure (use of forms to call up frequently used chunks of code)
- Conditional tags (Amazing how much coding you save yourself)
- A wealth of plugins and extensions that is constantly growing
- An incredible community of talented developers and overall good folks.You can feel the love!
- Tiny footprint and blazing speed
- Clean URLs working out the box

But like any system, TXP is not meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution and does have its limitations

- limited custom fields (10)
- No way to assign custom fields (though a plugin is being developed for this)
- No sub-sections at all, not quite suitable for larger applications
- No e-commerce support (still in development)
- No forum integration
- Admin is a beast to customize
- Community and workload seems to have outgrown the core team a bit

As they say, when you can’t get all your milk at home, you start looking at other cows

ENTER MODX

I found out about this software thanks to davidm (big surprise right?) and I admit I was instantly turned off by the poorly designed admin. Sure there has been talk of a revamp for many months now, but whoever designed the current admin could not be forgiven and as the deadline kept being pushed up without so much as a screenshot of things to come, I was quick to dismiss it.

Months went by and I kept pushing the limits of TXP on my projects until I hit a wall. I started looking at other CMS again just to get a feel for what was out there. tried Joomla and felt like vomiting, tried new version of Drupal but still could not install it, Tried Radiant CMS but I find TXP to be more capable, finally I ended giving Mod X a second chance.

Some things that are impressing me right now

- Flexibility of custom fields (TVs) and zero limitations
- Sub-sections
- AJAX integration
- Dynamic style sheets
- Solid team of core developers who seem to have every angle covered
- Ridiculous pace you guys maintain at updating the code
- Lovely design you have on your site - clean, modern and attractive!

Things I find lacking

- No conditional tags (ouch! thats a big one)
- No e-commerce solution (paypal doesnt count in my book)
- No forum integration (yet)

Suggestions for admin interface

- Rollover effect is terrible, whatever option you last left your mouse on top of stays highlighted and leaves the impression that you are still in that section.
- When you click on the top menu bar, it should take you to a default submenu instead of just sitting there, waiting for you to select from the submenu.
- lose frames, go with totally semantic css/html
- provide easy way to brand admin for clients
- Allow us to fully customize admin content (move elements around, change order of fields, place upload buttons, etc)
- Speed up admin..feels very sluggish
- Allow us to put frequently accessed tabs on that side menu for quick browsing (think of OS X’s finder toolbar)

I am sure that yall are already working on most of these things but hopefully I have covered some stuff you haven’t thought of. Next month I will begin production on my first site in ModX so you will definitely be hearing more from me.

In the meantime keep up the good work,

and for the love of God release version 1 already! (sorry..couldnt resist)

A full blog post... lol ... but great testimony

We have a bunch of those now... I’ll be doing some selecting soon, trying to build a testimony page for modxcms.com. Plus Banzai needs this for the MODx video might as well do it now

Go man go! Good luck!

This one made Ryan go "wow" and has to be added to the list !

Great testimony, especially considering the guy’s profile :

Quote from: ifthenelse at Jun 05, 2007, 09:33 PM

A few months ago, I was working with Drupal, trying to use it to implement a website for a volunteer group I work with. After looking at Joomla, I felt that Drupal was the best choice given its flexibility and more importantly, its ability (or so I thought) to meet certain delegated administration requirements.

But after peeling back the onion with Drupal, I came to the conclusion that while its core architecture has some good aspects, on the whole it is a software development train crash. There are too many cooks in the kitchen, and the developers have allowed (even encouraged) too many others to implement add-ons which define what should be basic functionality. So much so that Drupal now is very inconsistent in how it does things - especially regarding security. Things like implementing templates are more difficult/tricky than they should be. Also, there is so much going on inside Drupal that it uses an extrordinary amount of computing resources even to do simple things. For all it is capable of, Drupal is, in my opinion, collapsing under its own weight. Frankly, it is a mess.

(I know what I’m saying about Drupal is harsh, but I have over 25 years experience as a software developer, including Unix kernel development and years of major software system lead design/architecture experience.)

Then I ran into MODx. A bit less mature than other options, but it has a much better thought out core, and it hasn’t spiraled out of control like Drupal has. It also is reasonably performant. In less than one day, I was able to put together a basic site together that took me two weeks fighting with Drupal to create. I was able to focus on getting the CSS and other elements right instead of dealing with all the wierd idiosyncracies of Drupal.

Security is a particular area where I think MODx can have a particular advantage - I have some security background, and while I do think there are areas where the MODx model can be improved (the existing role based implementation doesn’t work well with certain use cases), at least it is built on a foundation that can actually work. The hierarchical document tree is key - enhance the system to include the appropriate container and document-level security (possibly one thing might be to add specific access controls to document groups, containers, and individual documents - for example, implement access control lists.). Throw in some specific inheritance features and MODx will have a document security capability that no other open source CMS I’ve worked with can handle (at least not easily).

The bottom line is that I’m quite impressed with MODx so far. To its core developers: please, please, please - don’t let it get away from you like what happened with Drupal. Do make it easy for others to extend, but keep what should be in the core where it belongs. Make the core solid, focus on the glitches, document well - and MODx will succeed.

I do hope that Drupal can be turned around by its developers - at least in version 6 they are trying to fix some basic things (the menu stuff is being reworked for example). But I’m not hopeful it will be anytime soon. I think that Joomla is in far better shape than Drupal. If its core developers can get past some key limitations (security and tree depth, for example), then Joomla will be a winner - it is already very easy to set up a basic Joomla site with pretty good functionality. MODx is, in my mind, a bit more difficult to set up a basic site with than Joomla, but far easier to set up a site with anything approaching the flexibility of Drupal.

Good work folks!

Another good one:

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,16101.msg103295/topicseen.html#msg103295

Funny, I just saw it a few seconds ago

Made me think we have to provide some marketing kit for this purpose, help people convince their CEO / Manager to choose MODx

If i was the guy to choose a cms base on users testimonials i would like to see two different point of views, the First; as a person to select a cms for its first time and the Second; as an experienced user of other cms’s.

The fact that a virgin cms chooser don’t know the mighty features of other cms’s to compare with modx and all they can see is live demo at opensourcecms.com and again, experienced users want to see more detailed reason of others that may cause them to choose modx as their cms.

One another sensible way of attracting new users to modx is to collect website addresses that are good enough in design or use of modx potentials to link them to show as what could be done with modx . I was googling to see howmany nice crafted sites are out with modx a week or two before by the way, finally i got something but it was much less than i was expected, maybe this will be a good idea for next to search in contents of ’you and your site’ s forum board.

For 2008, I’d rather foster a community of developers who push the CMS out to their customers/virgin CMS users. The MODx design directory is a perfect example of what’s planned for a site update too ...

The reason your Google search didn’t turn up much is because there’s not a lot of requirements for MODx credits.