What did you use before MODx?

Hmmm...

Just prior to a decision to find a method to share publication rights with the voluntary staff at my own site, I produced a layout and design for a fan site for one of the greatest Rock bands in history. Part of what the webmaster wanted was full integration with postnuke management. Well, I completed a table-less layout for his site and an appropriate design, and then chose to find a better solution for my own project.

So, my CMS experience trail leads like this:

PostNuke
CMS Made Simple
TYPO 3
MODx

As much as I disliked PostNuke, the CMS Made Simple templates would break whenever I added separate data queries. TYPO3 seemed to have out of date documentation, and so the problems led me to search for better solutions.

I do not fully understand everything I should about MODx. However, I see that there is good support from both users and developers. I feel I can speak highly of both (meaning you) because it’s clear there is a strong community here.

Quote from: davidm at May 14, 2006, 08:15 AM

I know there has been improvement in the performance department, and I keep my eye on the projet and test every new release... for me, it’s not nearly as flexible as I would want it to be... only MODx, Textpattern and CMS made Simple satisfy me right now.

For me, the hook system is the best feature for xaraya, and that make it as much flexible as I want. Still, the learning curve for xaraya is quite high. A xaraya con are the 20Mb of files... I am looking for something smaller and ligher (for now, in MODx)

I would like to see a "no RTE" version minus the rich text editor and resource browser. I believe that those take up more than half of the size of a MODx installation.

Quote from: sottwell at Nov 18, 2006, 06:09 AM

I would like to see a "no RTE" version minus the rich text editor and resource browser. I believe that those take up more than half of the size of a MODx installation.

Absolutely agreed on this one Susan. Very few of my sites use these and I don’t want them in there either. In fact, I’d love to be able to just install the core with absolutely nothing else added in; no templates, no snippets, no plugins, no nothing. Just the engine. This is exactly how I plan to move forward with the new core, so we can distribute at bare minimum core as well as pre-fabricated, ready-to-roll distributions with everything needed to create a blog site, and maybe another with everything needed to create a marketing site, etc.

I would like to see that too Jason. I really only have 3-4 snippets that I use on my site (Wayfinder, Jot, Ditto, and MaxiGallery). So I bet I could get away with a pretty lightweight version of MODx on my personal site.

-sD-

I started off with my own php based manager - learnt the basics of php through it. Still use it for small sites (10 or less pages where the client doesn’t need to add pages (I never perfected the menu manager).

I discovered Phase shortly before the name change to Etomite, and built a few sites using that before discovering MODx. I have experimented with a number of other CMSs, but abandoned them for several reasons:

• Needed root access
• Learning curve to great
• inflexible templating
• Too slow
[li]Lacking SEF and/or user-friendly URLs

I do use 2 other CMSs where using MySQL is not practical. I don’t think either have been mentioned in this thread:

• phpCMS (http://phpcms.de/index.en.html)
• Sapid (http://sapid.sourceforge.net/)

Like MODx, these both are use friendly URLs and allow unlimited freedom in page layout.

Before MODx I did some basic coding in Dreamweaver, and kicked the tires of Joomla and Drupal.

Quickly found the limits in the other CMS’s so they are out, but I still use DW for small stuff.

Before my web design life was enlightened by modx I was wasting my time:

..trying to get around the hideously over hyped and restrictive templating system they call....Mambo. No I mean Joomla. >:(
..more the same with the to basic WebsiteBaker.
..thinking CMS Matrix is nice. Then thinking no it’s not as all the best bits are re-packed as commerical addons.
..here we go again PHP-Nuke, PHP-Fusion, vB and other styled portals.. ’oh I’ve not seen that style before’ next.
..not even going there with TYPO3.
..feeling quite depressed with WordPress.
..thinking, I didn’t have the time to RTF the manual for Zope and Plume.
..not feeling confident in webGUI project.
..completely giving up on the waste of space that is now phpbb2.
..looking a so many content management system and coming to the same conclusion.
..building sites the good’o fashioned way.

There are probably more CMS’s that I’ve tried but those where probably so pointless I’ve forgoten there names.

Now most of me time is now spent with Notepadd++, occasionally using Dreamweaver(pointless purchase now) and letting MODx do what it does best. Manage my content.

Once you get your head around where modx sits in the whole scheme of how you develop your site, it’s so simple. You can spend 10mins searching around the forum or RTF’ing manual and before you know it you’ve got yourself a super sexy Ajax search or a ’I don’t have to manually update all my navigation ever again’ WayFinder (unless you used php includes) all XHTML vaild.

For me that is the beauty of MODx, a simply comprehensive content managed framework system. What more could you ask for!

So there my 2pence worth. Now just looking forward to more liberated freedom of MODx

I have tested PHP-Nuke in the old times it was my firt CMS but le layout system was (and still his) "à la slashdot" and i am feed-up to see slashdot like site Alhougt all my PHP-Nuke site where hacked (they are abandonned now).

After i use spip for two sites. It’s a realy great and powerfull tool and il will probably not migrate the sites from Spip to MODx.It’s easy and confortable to use for the end-user, and now they are used to it (use a sort of Wiki syntax). I do no want the user to learn again how to edit . But, the templating system is a bit difficult to understand, even if it’s realy powerfull with the "loops system". Althoug, the uncommon "wiki syntax" is a thing i do no want anymore the user of future sites have to learn (simply because most of them are used to the Wikipedia syntax with is simpler and different).

For the new site i am building now i have made the choice MODx after testing some other systems here is the comparison :
Typo3 -> Seem to be very complete and very understandable and very uneasy to install
Zope/Plone -> Same comment than typo3. The two are for big-big corporate site...
Joomla/Mambo -> Seem to be far beter than PHP-nuke but the last stable version is not in UTF-8. Templating system not tested, but il will keep a look on it to see what appen in the futures versions.
Drupal -> Was selected first over Joomla because of the clean coding, the "hooks" and OO programing inside. Future 5 version seem to be very promising. But it’s oriented for "community site" and as i do not want to make a Blog/slahdot but a "corporate" site i will have to forge special template to remove the "by user John Doe" for each pages. Also, the "node system/taxonomy" are a bit confusing to me... No time to realy understand this first. Templating not tested. At least i am steel looking how-to-add an image into articles the easy way.
RoR/Django/Seagull/Cake-Php/Symfony -> I will have to make lot of forms+database querys latter. Il keep all of them in my mind for later. Ho ho somme one sy to me than i can do this with MODx... is it true ?.

MODx was choice because of : Flexible and "standart" templating system. Easy to install. Clean URL. Clean backend. QuickEdit for the End-users. Apparently have the needed features for later database working.

I originally started waaaay back in Frontpage (yes, I’ve had that terrible experience I’m afraid ).

I then moved to Dreamweaver to develop better-presented static sites whilst learning a bit of PHP at the same time.

I then started integrating a bit of PHP into my site to grab member details from the forums and automate some bits. This unfortunately led to me writing a very unsecure include line that opened up my site for hacking.

Since then my PHP knowledge has improved greatly and I don’t make silly mistakes like that, but I’ve relied more on CMS’s as my sites have grown anyway as it’s just been easier.

The CMS I’ve been using on my largest site is ocPortal at the moment, but it’s a bit too bloated for what I really need and confuses the heck out of my other site staff.

I’m hoping that if I can write a few small plugins to drag some info from my IPB forum as ocPortal currently does that I can make the switch early next year (and release the modules to the community of course ).