need advice from experienced users of ModX, Please!

Good evening Ladies and Gents

I’ve been looking for the right CMS a few months by now. After I seen many of them I’m still confused. The ModX looks pretty good. A lot of features, comfortable interface, fully customized etc... I need you opinion about it, please!

1. what about features?

2. what about security? (one of the most important)

3. weight factor?

4. ease of use?

5. updates/mods etc...

6. how fast is it working?

I really like ModX compare to others and I hope to hear a good replies!

Please, post replies based only on your own experience!

Thanks in advance.

Kind Regards,

Dmitri

MODx is secure, fast, easy to use, ultra flexible, actively developed and has a superb community. Read these for starters:

MODx features and background
Short explanations on some features
Can handle large sites and fast

The latest release of modx (0.9.2 -out today) is mostly a bugfix/security release. To quote netnoise, (main(?)security expert here) about modx security:

I think the most important thing about MODx and security is, that this project is very actively developed. So if any security issues occur, it won’t take a long time until they’ll get fixed.

And there are also some really nice things to look forward to (waiting for the 1.0 roadmap )

1. what about features?

Modular and extensible is the key with MODx, thus the name. That’s not to say there aren’t built in features, just that the core is focused on providing what any feature would need to interact with a site in a centralized manner.

2. what about security? (one of the most important)

We have a very active development team dedicated to making sure your sites are as secure as possible with regard to the MODx software. There have been a few recent security advisories involving MODx, but all were patched and responded to very quickly, and the latest release 0.9.2, includes a plethora of new security enhancements for issues we searched for internally, and found before they could be discovered and reported.

3. weight factor?

MODx prides itself on being a very lightweight system, and this philosophy will be even more evident as the project evolves to the 1.0 release. The primary motivation of the 1.0 code rewrite was to simplify and minimize the core code even more than it is currently, so you will not be disappointed in this regard.

4. ease of use?

MODx is primarily aimed at experienced XHTML/CSS designers, though is also a great tool for getting started in the XHTML/CSS design world. It is also an easy to use PHP application framework that can help you build or integrate PHP scripts into your sites with unprecedented ease, without sacrificing the prized separation of content and presentation.

5. updates/mods etc...

MODx has a very active community and more and more add-ons for both the front-end and back-end manager are available every day. We are also working on a new add-on repository where you can easily find what you are looking for. And once again, changes in 1.0 are going to bring some great new possibilities for installations, upgrades, imports from other systems, and a whole lot more.

It’s easy to extend and add-on to MODx, to make it do what you want it to. That’s one of my favorite things about it.

6. how fast is it working?

In general, in typical environments, MODx renders moderately complex dynamic pages at an average rate of about 2 to 5 pages per second, and can be as quick as 10 to 20 pages per second with full page caching. I haven’t really compared these in laboratory conditions (i.e. as benchmarks to compare with other systems), but I have a feeling it would stand up favorably on performance against just about any other CMS out there.

But, as a Foundation member of the MODx team, and a core developer, I may be a little biased.

Hi again,

Thanks for the replies. I really appreciate it!

Regards,

Dima

About performance, this thread might be of interrest to you :
MODx Benchmarks with Xdebug

Quote from: davidm at Apr 26, 2006, 08:59 AM

About performance, this thread might be of interrest to you :
MODx Benchmarks with Xdebug

I think that this "benchmark test" doesn’t really show how fast the systems are compaired to each other. Like OpenGeek has posted in the first reply to that thread, there is no indication that the systems used the same content at all. Like for example one may have 30 "snippets" rendered to the page and other none. Also some may have caching enabled where others don’t, etc.

Also the render times for modx looked oddly high for front-end pages.. so if the test is done by rendering backend pages (which would be weird though), it’s not parsed by modx parser at all and doesn’t really show how fast the system is.

You’re right, Jason has underlined this in the thread. I pointed toward it because there is an interresting discussion about performance there... It would be interresting to do a real benchmark of systems, possibly thanks to someone who has migrated say a Joomla (or any other systems) website to MODx. That would make for an interresting comparison...

MODx certainly won’t be the fastest, but it’s definitely not slow either.

I bet it lets you build sites with more control and orders of magnitude faster than other systems, though.

Just my two cents worth. We did a test install of almost every cms listed at opensourcecms.com over a period of 6 months. And there is literally only a hand few that come CLOSE to MODX. And modx is head and shoulders above its closest competitor. We did not make the decision to use MODX lightly as our livelyhood depends on it.

And we have not looked back. Not once.

Just one word to the caching system: As a designer of websites I´m more than once irritated because the caching system works so good that often none of my changes appear