What did you use before MODx?

I was introduced to Joomla about 2 years ago. I then realised when I wanted support on Joomla, I couldn’t get the answers when I needed it, so I thought I might try MODx and haven’t looked back since. MODx’s support is nearly instant. Thanks MODX for a great cms and support.

I have tried many Content Management Systems, but i went ahead with Website Baker.

Now i’m in the process of learning Modx to use it for the more demanding projects.

In the past, I’ve mainly built sites from scratch using Cold Fusion, then Classic ASP, to .NET. I only discovered the CMS concept six months ago.

Within that six months, I have tried several platforms. I haven’t had the opportunity to complete a site using any Open Source Development platform. I’ve come close, only to find out at the last minute that I was restricted in one way or another. It’s frustrating but that’s part of the learning process. I was naive and in search of the perfect CMS that lacked nothing. Well, little by little I learned that there is no such thing.

I finally realized that I had to compromise and find some middle ground. I wanted something flexible, fast but didn’t have to build from scratch. Basically, remove a lot of the lower level development aspect of web development.

I have used the following platforms. Which all have their pros and cons. In the end, they just weren’t right for me.

Joomla - Great for creating quick, low traffic, generic portal communities/sites with little technical knowledge. Great documentation and large collection of components/modules/plugins. Fragmented output and resource hog.

Drupal - Seems more like a clan than it is a platform. "Let’s Drupal?" Difficult, unorthodox framework, scattered documentation. Output overriding is very cumbersome and complex. The taxonomy module is useless. Caused me more headaches. Honestly, I fail to see the place where this platform fits in anywhere. The only pro I found about it. It outputs clean, div based XHTML 1.0 Strcit/CSS 2.1 It’s by no means rich with features to justify the awkwardness and high learning curve.

Others:

Xoops/ImpressCMS
Wordpress
Exression Engine
Typo3
Jaws
TextPattern
CMS Made Simple
MojoPortal
.NET Nuke
Website Baker
EZ Publish

TypoLight - I still intend to use this along with ModX. Typolight is by far, the best all around, out of the box CMS I’ve used. Lacks documentation. Not as much flexibility as Modx. I will use them both.

Here’s our CMS journey thus far:

1) Static HTML
There was nothing else back then!

2) Custom coded stuff
Again, there was nothing else back then!

3) All sorts of crap that came and went, and required a lot of custom programming
See above.

4) WordPress and Drupal, and a little bit of Joomla
As for these, the only one we’re really using anymore is WordPress- and generally for small sites that are blog based. I know MODx has blogging tools, but really, WordPress is the standard in that area.

Joomla is a freakin’ mess, definitely an amateur CMS. We hate it and have banned it from our studio.

Drupal’s great for a lot of stuff, but it’s needlessly complicated and increases our overhead when we have to support it. That’s why I’m leading an initiative here to phase it out for our clients in 2010.

5) MODx
And we are very, very happy with MODx, and looking forward to Revolution!

I workt for many years with Mambo after that with Joomla and i know them very good.

The problem with this kinds off cms is that its hard to learn to use it specially for clients they want mostly a easy site to controle.
I found now modx with seems very very easy in editing content and so much power it have.
When i have found out all ins and outs from modx i can stop using Joomla.

I think part of the challenge is keeping it simple. As individuals we can build sites that have tons of added bells, TVs and what not, but for clients who will actually use the site its a different story.

With MODx you get that great page tree navigation on the left. Graphically this is better than most CMSs out there. But you still have to build the site with an eye to the day when you have to explain the entire structure and the manager to the client. I like to keep it straightforward and clean as much as possible. MODx really does a great job here...

Before MODx I was using Joomla, but as an Web designer I like clean code. But the messy code of Joomla scared me off, I heard much about MODx and how good it was, after trying it I was in love.

Now I only use MODx, I like it!

Keep up the good work!

Greetings,
Ricardo Farina

1. Static handcoded HTML, working pixel by pixel.
2. Too much to do, some PHP, includes and menuhints later.
3. Typo3, the big one to rule them all…
4. … it rules the developer soon…
5. Textpattern, but the backend isnt quite comfortable.
6. CMSms, with many options for the future and small sites.
7. MODx now for flexible handling(I am waiting for a revolution).
8. Wordpress for simple sites and easy going.


* Joomla is very fine to look at, but ermmm…
** Drupal, couldnt understand any version.
*** Silverstripe, very cool, but the speed?
**** Others: Serendipity, Websitebaker, Typolight, Nucleus.

Coming from Textpattern (that’s where I was coming from, mainly switched for the power of TVs) and CMSMS, the learning curve for MODx will definitely be less steep, welcome

I first used Drupal many years ago and found it very heavy going when it came to custom coding. I looked at Etomite but the site always looked dead, and links to user sites invariably failed etc etc.

Then I used the Adobe Dreamweaver Developer Templates to create custom CMS’s. These templates were originally developed by a Romanian company. Interakt, and they were a very useful OO framework, but Adobe took them over and have now discontinued them, so I’ve stopped using anything from Adobe.

Lately I have used Website baker, which is a brilliant cms for end-users because it is so simple to administer. I’ve done some custom coding with it, which is easy enough, but the framework is a bit sparse. There is also a question mark over its future because the original developer is branching into a commercial cms.

So, now I am looking at ModX, and briefly at Expression Engine. The things I consider in making a choice, in no particular order...

Documentation and user support
Number, quality and cost of add-on modules
Ease of learning and ease of developing custom code
Power of the tool
Quality of the underlying system
Current and future development of the tool

Website Baker scores well, for me, on the first 4, but has question marks on the last 2.

Because Expression Engine is built on CodeIgniter, by the CodeIgniter developers, it scores very highly in my view on power and quality. But because it is commercial it seems to be lacking broader support, and a lot of the add-ons are nickel and dime additions to the cost, so it loses genuine community support.

So, ModX - the best user support I have seen, after looking at many CMSs (Thanks Mary and Susan - to name just two, for your tutorials) I’m not deep enough into the code yet to appreciate the power, and I haven’t looked at enough add-ons to know how hard it is going to be to use for custom development, but I have seen enough to look deeper. I’m a little worried about having to go through a new learning curve for R2, and hope I won’t waste too much time by starting with Evolution?