Advice Requested: Is MODx the right CMS for our church web site?

I have been evaluating PHP-based CMS systems for several months and I have yet to find one that I feel is a good fit for our church web-site. The features I need are fairly straightforward. It seems like MODx has a very active and excited development community, which is good. Allow me to share the features that are most important to me and if MODx is (or soon will be) a good fit for our needs, let me know. If not, and you know of a CMS that is a better fit, I’d really appreciate knowing that, as well. For what its worth, I’m a web developer by trade (but a very busy one).

Here is my vision for the site:
1. A front page that is fairly static, except for perhaps a "what’s new" block. I absolutely do not want a Slashdot/blog front-end that seems so popular these days.
2. Ease of use for content editors. Most of the people who will be updating the content are somewhat intimidated by this and it should be easy (as in not frustrating) for them to control the content and the layout of an area or section that they are responsible for.
3. Consistent look-and-feel. Far too many of the available CMS’s look like a hodge-podge.
4. Fairly sophisticated control of access to content. This is a biggie. We want the ability to have sections of the site accessible only by the members of that group. Within that group area, we’d like to have discussion groups, photo albums, event calendars, polls, announcements, etc. You know-- sort of a community-within-a-community. There should be someone who can be designated as a manager of that group who can control who can be a member of the group and who can edit what content within the area the group controls. Users can be members of multiple groups and may have edit privileges in one group and only view privileges in another.

Believe it or not, that’s about it. I appreciate your time in considering my needs.

Sounds like MODx would fit your requirements to a T.

As far as controlling access, MODx has extremely fine-grained access control from both the user aspect and the document aspect; here’s the docs on Users and Groups.
http://modxcms.com/administration-guide.html

And for ease of editing, check this:
http://modxcms.com/editor-guide.html

The latest version comes with an optional NewsPublisher feature that even allows a logged-in user to create new articles for the news section from the front end, and a QuickEdit plugin to allow editing of designated existing content from the front end.

As a guy that sought similar features/functionality for a long time (years, actually), I definitely concur with Susan. Then again, I’m a bit biased.

Thank you for your response!

I have downloaded MODx to my local PC and I’m running it on localhost and everything seems fine. Everything seems to work, the install was a breeze, I like what I see, but...

Where are the modules? The only module I see is one called "QuickEdit". I feel like I am missing a core concept somewhere. How do I go about adding basic functionality to my site? Specifically, here are module types I need, (and I need multiple instances of each one). For example, my University Class would like their own set of photo albums and discussions areas, as would the Youth Group, etc. Please understand that I am not complaining, I’m just trying to understand how to do things with MODx so I can give it a fair evaluation.

• Photo albums
• Discussion boards
• Polls
• Event calendars

If there are not core MODx modules, are there third-party apps that work better than others? Are there examples available as to how to (for example) add an event calendar that integrates with the MODx access control system?

Photo Galleries: EPG2.0 MODx Edition and Gallery 2 Integration are in testing now

Discussion Boards: SMF is integrated and is in testing as well.

Polls: You could integrate another poll script easily or use Ralph’s from the Etomite forum.

Event Calendars: There are a great many ways to do this both within MODx and externally. I reccomend using an external piece of web software for this because they are more specific to the task.

I have phpicalendar integrated with a site I manage (if you want to see it just send me a PM)

I also use ExtCalendar 2.

MODx is still in the tech preview stage so some features are still not complete on the roadmap.

If you need a solution ASAP then take a look a Joomla (formerly Mambo) or Drupal. Both offer similar features to MODx but are very difficult to theme or expand.

Quote from: Mark at Oct 24, 2005, 07:29 PM

If you need a solution ASAP then take a look a Joomla (formerly Mambo) or Drupal. Both offer similar features to MODx but are very difficult to theme or expand.

I was using phpWebSite, but it is just inadequate in terms of controlling access as to who can do what. I started to install Drupal, but ran into similar issues and the taxonomy system, while powerful, is just too hard. Mambo/Joomla also are weak in access control.

At this point, if I am able to determine that MODx indeed has the fine-grained access control I need (as Susan suggests), I’m willing to wait for the other features. Right now, a solid foundation is more important to me than bells and whistles.

The foundation now is good. In the future, it’s going to be insanely good. There will be many more "features" that surface via snippets, modules and plugins after 3.3 ships. From what you’re talking about, I think Mambo/Joomla would handle it but their ACL method is very difficult to get your head around (phpGACL).

If it were me, I’d definitely use MODx, and I’d definitely tell you otherwise. It can’t be the right thing for everyone, but it seems to make sense in this instance.

Quote from: bboyken at Oct 24, 2005, 07:53 PM

Right now, a solid foundation is more important to me than bells and whistles.

A solid foundation we have young one! -Yoda

MODx is very stable and has passed the phase (no pun intended) of major bugs.

That way you will have a solid foundation for you life and your website

Even if everyone will tell you how much it is easy to create your own MODx template from almost anything, it is nice to have available already made templates and yes, we are starting to get a few, thanks to our local artist Suzanne