Can one MODX rule them all?

In my blog post today, I posited that there's some things in Evo that from an experience standpoint, make it superior in some cases to Revo. What I'd like to discuss, is what is it that makes you love Evo so much. Some of the things we've read before include:

• Faster Manager that takes less memory
• Manager works with Firebug
• Faster rendering for small websites
• ManagerManager
• Easier Permissions
• Smaller server footprint
• …

On the Server front, I hope we've finally reached a point where PHP4 can be laid to rest, but is that still important to you? Are there other critical areas that can be improved?
[ed. note: rethrash last edited this post 14 years, 5 months ago.]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for all your hard work! I enjoyed the speed of using evo mainly and the simplicity of it. When I say speed, I mean front end rendering times followed by the speed inside the manager. I also prefer how fast easy2 gallery is to working with Revo's gallery. While revo offers so much, it felt like a real letdown from a speed perspective. I didn't understand why speed wasn't embraced as a first principle while architecting Revo that everything else would work off of. It is almost always the thing that manager users, and site visitors remark on about a site that makes their experience a net positive or negative one. Users are impatient (me included).

I also like how easy it is to package up a website with Evo in a zip file, and copy database to another instance and voila you have a copied website. That process feels a lot more laborious with Revo. Packman is limited as to what you can package. It is great for a lot of things, but not as easy as being to just extract a site, copy a database over, change a couple of settings and you're rolling. I know I'm oversimplifying, but the process takes a lot less time with Evo

I'm looking forward to MODX recapturing my imagination over the next year. I know you've added a lot of very talented folks to the roster and look forward to all that y'all will produce. And as a "Site Builder", I think that my views are held by a lot of other MODXers too.

Many Thanks,

Noah

Having said That, I just did a flawless upgrade to Revo 2.21 on my own site. A lot of the annoying little bugs have been fixed.

Well Done!

-Noah

In order of importance (the first 2 are essentials):

* Faster rendering for small websites
* Faster Manager that takes less memory
* More Stable
* Portable and easy to maintain
* ManagerManager
* Easier Permissions

I did a medium-sized website with Revolution and I had to do it again on Evolution when I realized how slow it was (both Back End and Front End). I realize now that it was my fault because it was on a Shared Hosting. I didn't know that Revo was so heavy. I have other websites built with Evolution there, and they are lightning fast.

I guess that Revolution is more suitable for big websites which can afford a dedicated server.

Here's my list, also in order of importance

* Faster rendering for small websites
* ManagerManager (FC-rules that properly work all the time!)
* Faster Manager that takes less memory
* Easier Permissions
* Smaller server footprint

Bottom line: Evo is faster (the back- as well as the front-end) and easier and more consistent to customize with ManagerManager than Revo.

Take 2.2.1-pl for example. It's a step further in the right direction, but the template switching feature is still buggy: http://tracker.modx.com/issues/7548

Revo is not yet as easy and stable as Evo.

-- EDIT --

But don't get me wrong though, Revolution is getting better all the time! I love its features. It just needs a bit more stability, if you know what I mean.

My top three shortlist:

1. Slow and too hard to modify ExtJS based manager converted back to basics (HTML + CSS + jQuery). And also manager support for all commonly used browsers by clients including IE 7 and IE 8.

2. Speedier front-end performance especially for small and medium sites

3. Easier manager permissions

At this stage I don't consider MODX Revo to be a right choise for small and medium websites. Most of the time it feels like I'm trying to kill a mosquito with a elefant gun. On the other hand I'm convinced Revo is a great for very large sites or sites with a lot of custom features but then the problem is that it's facing a though contenders with these kind of projects (Drupal comes first to my mind).

I don't agree entirely on the "only for big sites". I’m running 3-4 installations on a shared server and it all works pretty well while two of them are running with pretty big (but optimized) graphics...:)

It's not just Evo to Revo.
It's what Revo lacks compared to Drupal, Joomla, WordPress:

1) documentation is very uneven, some things explained really well, some things have really good examples, *many* things *don't* have good docs. hire a documentation specialist??

2) ACLs are functionally/operationally well thought out but their implementation is tooooo difficult. WP and Drupal permissions are thousands of times easier

3) I've said it before and been flamed/criticized for this: MODx is a niche CMS primarily for developers. Designers can't easily grok MODx because to do anything more than a basic site one must know too many things. Most of the addons seem to be for developers and are often mediocrely documented.

4) MODx is very young, lacking good stuff like calendar, forums, etc. etc.

5) ACLs must be fixed/improved ASAP. This is an ESSENTIAL requirement. Even in Evo they are difficult.

6) Some people have already offered ideas and suggestions to improve Revo's speed, did you notice??


7) If the ACLs and bugs are fixed people will put up with slower performance, I think.

8) I almost forgot -- programming standards are desperately needed for addons. Right now addon makers generally feel free to put their files almost anywhere, force upon us their own CSS, etc. I removed Church Management for these reasons. Standard locations for addon files and don't add any CSS except in examples and always enable toggling &noCSS=`true`

9) And the ACLs implementation must be greatly improved.

Thank you, Tom [ed. note: TomMLS last edited this post 14 years, 5 months ago.]

Bob's *The MODx Book* is really helpful to all.
Digitizing it would go a long way toward evangelizing MODx.

Wasn't it digitally created to begin with??
I think many are surprised it's taking so long to offer a digital version.

Thank you, Tom

6) Some people have already offered ideas and suggestions to improve Revo's speed, did you notice??

I seem to have missed that, but would personally be very interested to see those suggestions. Got some links?

I don't agree entirely on the "only for big sites". I’m running 3-4 installations on a shared server and it all works pretty well while two of them are running with pretty big (but optimized) graphics...

I agree, have about 5 small sites all on their own shared server (different clients who manage their own hosting) which is perfect. Visitors range from 30-1000 per month and the hosting bill varies from $30-70 a year. No problem there.