Hello all, this is my first post, and I must say I am excited to be joining this community. I have a few questions, but I will start with the one that prompted me to post here:
"What did you use before MODx?"
The truth of that is, I haven’t really switched yet, BUT, I am very intrigued as a developer and was really turned on by this statement on the front page of the modx website:
"MODx is the alternative to hacking blogging tools and other tools to death, extended learning curves, and changing your workflow to fit software that just doesn’t quite "get it"."
I had actually read some of the documentation before I saw that for the first time, and it was part of all the little pieces that are quickly convincing me that I have finally found the right CMS, or CMF (if you will).
That said, what did I use before? (and technically still use?)
I work with a partner in development (as we all do) and am quite busy with mid-sized corporate and business sites. We kept talking about building a simple CMS to suit our needs and prepared a lot of modules that should have mostly worked together, but stumbled onto our first real GPL CMS epiphony:
Mambo: This one is a sly devil. It looks to be *very* sweet to begin with, the CMS of CMSs in fact. But the more one sinks in it’s grasp, the more one comes to refer to it as "Hell-bo". Did the developers run the entire engine through an obfuscation tool? We think so. Mambo turned out to be a real nightmare, and we spent more time just building menu systems and removing (actually just trying to find) all the default content, that we eventually moved on. Oh, and don’t you dare try to validate one of those pages, especially after installing a couple plugins. Go and grab a coffee while you wait for the validator page to load in it’s entirety.
Joomla: Well, I must admit, working with *something* was still better than nothing, and noone wants to code pure HTML anymore, do we?
WordPress: This little engine is amazingly more versatile than most people will ever give it credit for. The engine is small, but a whole pile of power is packed into it’s template tags, and the documentation runs rich and deep. Great community, versatile little system, but in the end, it’s a blogging tool, and will always be a blogging tool. As much as we tried not to, we always ended up hacking some of the core functionality to appease our needs.
So, I stumble (again) onto MODx. This isn’t the first time, but I always have to look at things twice before I *really* take a look at them. I tried the backend and WOW. This cms feels like an *application*!! AJAX just rocked my world!! I just realized while using it that this is what the online development community has been missing. I must assume this is the Web 2.0 that you talk about on your site, kuz it is HOT!
No refreshing pages, quick, clean... I never got lost in the backend the whole time. At one point I had to remind myself I was in the browser, and not some other program!!
Three words: HOT HOT HOT!!!
AND THEN I went to the front-end. "OMFG..." says I, "we were just talking about a little AJAX-driven toolbar for a CMS the other day...and THERE IT IS!!!"
I am blown away. The versatility of this system looks to be incredible. I have been a developer (php etc) for about 6 years, and have been almost bored for the last 3. Now I’m excited again. I want to tie into this system (in fact, I’m setting up my first site right now)...
*whew* sorry for the long post, but you kinda asked
Good work people, I will definately stay in touch with this project, and help if I can.
Cheers!
Paul
[edit]
did I mention the document and user groups??? role assignment??? man, you guys really thought this out!!
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