Rethinking MODx

Hey David! very nice post man! ..

In-fact, a really nice topic in the forums, thanks to all who keep discussing nice things here, please continue to do so.

all the best!

Thank for starting this topic Neutrogeno and thank everybody who put his/her effort and time into it.
The seed grew and you can already see the blossam of this topic, everybody who read this from beginning to end knows that it will yield big juicy fruits.

A place of wisdom and intellectual posters like you is rare.

"Rarus sunt carus."

In other words: Thanks.

Thanks DavidM, for this sincere and thoughtfull post!
As far as funding is concerned, you simply forgot to mention the special value of donations.
The dev-team, regardless of how passionate they are, also have to pay their bills...

Thanks everyone for the comments

About donations, I did not forget it but it can only be considered as a bonus and not a business model. It doesn’t mean donations are not vital to the project but right now we don’t have enough users to hope make this the only source of funding... it can fund expenses such as server cost (which btw is steadily growing) but not development, I am afraid... It’s not a recurring income source most of the times and right now we don’t have enough users to hope fund development this way.

davidm,

I have spent the last hour reading through this amazing thread, very enlightening.

I, like yourself, have been down many CMS roads, I know them all, tried many and have become intimately involved with a few.

Let’s say you had to write a Top Ten for the David Letterman show that would convince me of MODx.

The Top Ten reasons that MODx is the one...

hcgtv,

I think that you could write a top-one.

1. MODx is what you make it to be--limited by imagination or skill only.

By comparison other CMSs are a round hole that you attempt to jam your square block into.

Jay

You could post your Top-Ten as a new thread in General MODx Discussions. -J

Quote from: smashingred at Dec 11, 2006, 07:06 AM

limited by imagination or skill only.

Very funny, redsmasher!
If I was not limited by imagination or skill, I could have come up with something far better than MODx!

I wasn’t trying to be coy or sarcastic, although I guess it might be read that way.

I just think MODx is the most flexible CMS I have ever come across.

Jay

Quote from: smashingred at Dec 11, 2006, 10:42 AM

I wasn’t trying to be coy or sarcastic, although I guess it might be read that way.
I just think MODx is the most flexible CMS I have ever come across.

I didn’t take that for sarcastic or coy. I just wanted to remark, that this claim of being "without other limits than yours" can easily be regarded as being intimidating. "If you don’t get it right - your fault"...
I think there’s a very valid point here: What do you have to have already, to make the most out of MODx??
As far as I can see: A reasonable knowledge of what HTML and CSS means as well as a reading knowledge of PHP. Without that - and without installable samples, as mentioned above - you’ll have a hard time. A rewarding time, no doubt, but you should be prepared for this type of experience...
[EDIT] and the time this type of experience usually takes. No "quick-wins" here for the unexperienced. Which is exactly what most of the other CMS are promising: "just click & run".
MODx, if you like it or not, is a solution for "pros", not for "beginners" - at least in the shape it is now. And, well, we need pro-tools more than others...[/EDIT]

si

About monetizing,besides donations I can suggest other things (some of which have been mentioned before):

- live support ( no really , this could come in handy to some people needing fast tips,the kind of people that don’t have the time to go to the wiki and forum )

- installing/configuring modx services ( ermm... though it’s already dead easy to install modx and have a site up and running fast ...)

- helping users choosing a web hosting plan. Many people would like to know a *good* web host that can cope with ModX’s needs.You could supply an affiliate link to a webhosting package that has decent amount of space ( 1Gb+) , bandwidth and , most important, features that make ModX run faster ( you said that it’s optimized for MySql 5.1+ and Php 5.x + - don’t remember the versions ) , and other features needed often ( apache server that has mod_rewrite on ) and has the basic security ( register_globals off). Actually, I propose you make a list with the best webhosts that have all of the above , and have affiliate links to them.I think there are people who would buy through them just to be able to make some contribution to ModX.
I think a banner or an unintrusive link about ModX hosting in the menu would prove VERY useful for both the ModX team and the users .

- having a "download firefox" button/link. https://www.google.com/adsense/ pays a certain sum of money for each persons that downloads firefox from their link ( 1$ for us downloaders, less for other countrys).

- You could also place adsense ads on the modxcms website , but that might degrade the user experience as some think ( though I would not agree , since contextual advertising is meant to be useful for the visitor - just depends on how intrusive they are ) .