modx for full featured newspaper website

I’m going to be bidding on a project for a small circulation newspaper website. I have experience with portals (i.e., DNN, Liferay) but am relatively new to CMSs with the exception of a little experience with Wordpress and Concrete5. In general I am a UI designer/developer for complex java web applications, not content websites--so am a bit out of my realm on this.

Anyway this client needs a fully featured CMS that can handle plug-ins for forums, photo galleries, and online shopping carts. The requirement for many features would initially make me feel I’d have to tackle Drupal or Joomla but so much praise for ModX makes me want to take a closer look before I make technical decisions.

Is ModX more for simple content sites or is it capable of handling add-ons like these?

Thanks--

MODx is a Content Management Framework - capable of whatever you tell it to do and the most flexible thing I’ve came across so far. Addons are, compared to Joomla for example, still sparse but the quality of those that are there beat most Joomla plugins. As MODx Revolution has not been out of beta for too long, the best addons are currently underway.



For the older (but still supported) branche there has been a forum link with PHPBB released recently: MODxBB: http://www.modxbb.net/. There’s also Discuss, which is still in Alpha, which is a native forum solution for Revolution.
Photogalleries exist for both branches: Gallery for Revolution and Easy2Gallery, MaxiGallery and EvoGallery for Evolution.
VisionCart, Revolution shopping cart framework is expected to reach beta stage on Friday, but is looking promising already.


Hope this helps!


And remember - even if you don’t pick this CMF for your project, be sure to stay on board cause things are improving and expanding at a rapid pace.

Mark already summed things up nicely, MODx is a Content Management Framework. Instead of building the website for you it gives you the tools to build one. I know MODx Revolution works well for newspaper websites as I am currently working on one for a college paper. There add-ons to handle forums (native or external), comments (native or external), gallery (native, and yes external), you can also handle ecommerce (native (VisionCart) or external (Foxycart, or other)). One thing to keep in mind with ecommerce is you must go through the PCI-DSS (PCI Certification) if you’re site touches credit card information in any way shape or form. My suggestion if they are a small paper would be to use a solution like Foxycart (which handles PCI Compliance for you).

Anyways, you can do just about anything you want with MODx, there is more power than most people know what to do with leaving loads of room to improve