Drupal vs MODx - yeah yeah I know it's been discussed before, but...

Hi there

First post here. I’m not a php-programmer, but more conceptual and design-oriented.


I’ve been spending these last few weeks testing MODx, and trying to weigh its pros and cons versus Drupal. Any input is much welcome. I’ve used Drupal before, but still have that nagging feeling, that I’m not quite "hooked" on Drupal. Drupal is modern and modular, but still feels a bit... Nerdy. Nerdy, not in a bad sense, but as in "developers, developers, developers"... And while a non-developer can download a lot of Drupal modules, I still find that I have to hack various modules in order for them to do what I want em to do.

Anyway, I’m wondering how MODx compares to Drupal when used for a social networking site, not as crazy full-on as MySpace, but a community with web-user profiles, and web-user submitted news, and a web-user maintained directory which can be collaboratively edited a la Drupal’s Book module. For this I don’t want my web-users to use the manager/back-end.

Is that possible to do, for a guy like me?

Additionally, looking at the roles/permissions management of MODx, I can’t find a setting for allowing the user to write, edit and publish, delete OWN content, but not touch others content. Is that possible?

And additional question:

What would be the best way to achieve what in Drupal is achieved via the Views-module. That is, flexible design of listings of whatever is needed, ie.

10 latest blogposts, 3 random users, and such stuff.

Is that best done thorugh the WayFinder module, or is there a native way?

I’m going to take a stab at this and point you towards "Ditto".

I haven’t looked at Drupal 5.x, but investigated Drupal 4.x at length and it’s a good, but absurdly complex CMS system. Prepare to get buried in the intricacies of taxonomies.

There are far more knowledgeable people than I am here in these forum. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply

Ditto is for blogging and news posting and so much else, but it can also make lists of its content? If so, interesting.

About Ditto. I tried installing sample site, and when creating a new document the Ditto RTE is a template variable, additional to the normal document RTE, leaving two writing areas. That seems weird... Is that the way Ditto is supposed to work?

Quote from: raveoli at Jun 01, 2007, 12:13 PM

And additional question:

What would be the best way to achieve what in Drupal is achieved via the Views-module. That is, flexible design of listings of whatever is needed, ie.

10 latest blogposts, 3 random users, and such stuff.

Is that best done thorugh the WayFinder module, or is there a native way?

The Wayfinder snippet is for use building or integrating site navigation - as in ’navbar’ or ’menu’ etc.

Quote from: raveoli at Jun 02, 2007, 07:54 AM

Ditto is for blogging and news posting and so much else, but it can also make lists of its content? If so, interesting.

About Ditto. I tried installing sample site, and when creating a new document the Ditto RTE is a template variable, additional to the normal document RTE, leaving two writing areas. That seems weird... Is that the way Ditto is supposed to work?

Ditto is for listing the items in a given folder/container or set of folders/containers. For example, in a simple application, you have a document "News", with a dozen or so individual news items in child documents. You specify the ID of the "News" folder/container document in the Ditto call, and it will generate a list of the child documents. What gets displayed in the list depends on the template chunk you use; by default it makes a basic news-type display with date, author, a bit of the content, and a "more..." link.

Ditto does not have anything to do with creating the documents, only with the listing display. You create the individual items’s documents in the usual way in the Manager (or using a snippet such as NewsManager). If your document’s template uses a TV with a Rich Text input type, then there will be another RTE input field after the content input field for documents using that template. But that has nothing at all to do with Ditto. Ditto only generates a display of listings using the options specified in its snippet call.

Hi raveoli

Since I know where you come from (unless you’ve got the same user name a prominent textpattern user has ) and came from the same place I can say without a doubt that you’ll get into MODx logic way faster than anyone coming to MODx with no previous Textpattern experience.

The way chunks are used in MODx snippets is completely similar to the way forms are used with txp’s plugin (i.e allow you to keep full control of the design). Templating is really akin, so much so that it took me only 2 hours to convert a medium sized website from one system to another (just keep in mind though that conditionnal testing need the PHx plugin with MODx, it’s not built in like in txp).

Anyway, I never hooked on Drupal either (nerdy logic is an accurate description), though it’s an excellent CMS and has probably some advantages compared to MODx to build a social networking site, mainly because Drupal is an older product and therefore has more extensions available in that department. Your choosing one or another depends on which features you need.

As for Ditto, Susan said it all and it can do so much more than "just" setting up a blog. For example I build a company directory with it, a product catalog... etc. Ditto combined with Template Variables is just one of the most powerful feature of MODx, one which I missed with Textpattern.

Now, more to the point, here are snippets, plugins or module I’d look into for your purpose :

• Personalize snippet
• User profiles -> PPP extended profile
• Downloads -> FileDownload snippet and plugin
• Uploads -> FileUpload
• Calendar -> EventCalendar, Kalender or CALx, GoogleEvents and of course DittoCal
• Forums : SMF bridge and SMF ssi, there was also a beta of Phorum integration (can’t find the link for the moment) and Vanilla is in the works
• Galleries -> the must have MaxiGallery
• Polls -> the Polls Module
• Rating -> CSS Star Rating

I probably forget things here, please fellow MODxers add to the list !

Thanks for enlightening me. It really sheds some light on the confusing aspects.

As the community site is a project I’ve procrastinated for too long, I’ve decided to do that one with Drupal, as it’s more out-of-the-box, but MODx is right now uploading to another upcoming site I’m doing, being smaller and easier to digest.

Definetely looking forward to actually building my first MODx site

Thanks again for the summary and links

Hello everybody,

It’s been quite a long time without having used MODx, but now I definitely want to start developping the site I of my dreams.

MODx is the only CMS I know so I’d prefer to use it, but I must confess that I have been thinking about other solutions, and particularly Drupal.

I don’t have much time to try the different CMS, so I prefer reading the forum posts from more experienced people than me to get a good idea of the pros and cons of every solution.

My point is, the site I want to create will be a community site for Business Intelligence professionnals.
At long term, I’d like it to have at least :
- "normal" content pages
- a forum
- a wiki
- and maybe a space for members to create their own blogs on my domain

That’s why today, I went to Drupal’s website and CMSmatrix.org, and got very interested by things MODx may not have already :

1/ Threaded comments : can Jot manage them now?

2/ Forum integration : SMF integration should be fine, I just haven’t tested it yet...

3/ Wiki integration : I don’t think MODx has any feature concerning this point, can anyone confirm that?

4/ Retrieval and storage of other sites’ RSS feeds : I’m pretty sure FeedX can display them, but what I’d like is to be able to store them into my own site for archiving. In fact, it’s one of my project’s key point...

5/ Public mailing list.

6/ Complex advertising management.

Most of these features won’t be necessary during the early stages of development, but I’d like to know if they are planned for future versions or in future snippets/plugins...

Which brings me to another question : will MODx 1.0 be released before the end of 2007 ? Are 0.9.8 and 0.9.9 going to be skipped ?

I know I’m being impatient, but it’s just that I’ve heard of it for a long time, and I just can’t wait to get my hands on it!

Point #4 seems to be OK with FeedX -> http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,12657.msg103649.html#msg103649

Concerning the creation of a social network site with individual blogs, this thread asks the good questions, but the answers come at the second page. (A troll interrupted the discussion! )

I guess I’ll start my site with MODx, and add more fonctionalities as time and development go by.
Nevertheless, I hope Jot will soon manage threaded comments, which I intend to implement as fast as possible.

MODx rules!