Why I shifted focus from Drupal to MODx

Quote from: davidm at Sep 12, 2009, 03:06 AM

I am curious how you managed to talk with Mark at DrupalCon , he was litteraly unreachable with 30 people or so jumping him right after his talk, he arrived just a few seconds before starting... I didn’t see him outside of his talks which I both attended (and they were great ! If you want the slides, check http://www.slideshare.net/markboultondesign/designing-grid-systems-doesnt-begin-and-end-with-960 and http://www.slideshare.net/markboultondesign/web-typography-fundamentals -> btw there is nothing Drupal in there, its pure webdesign).

Pure luck really! He wasn’t outside one of his talks. He was in a small group, him, Jeff Eaton, a lady I didn’t recognise and a guy I know from #drupaluk called Nik. Nik shouted me over and they were all in heated debate about Views mark-up (again!) - so stood there and joined in.

If you know what you are doing modx is a godsend, if you want a functioning website out of the box I can see why people would feel drupal is better. Every single modx debate you ever see it’s the same thing. Pre-knowledge of web design? Want a CMS but full control? Why does the person choose a manual to drive, even though in traffic it would be easier to have an automatic? We all like to make our own choice, and some people prefer to have that full control. There will never, ever, ever be a CMS that is the one all be all. The difference between drupal and ModX for myself is, when I learn how to do something in modx I am learning web design. You have to understand the architecture of a web site to implement snippets, chunks and tv’s while this can be frustrating for some. Personally I think the one click install has only hurt our generation in advancement of programming then help it. A friend of mine swore by drupal, she said I would never need another CMS again. The difference between her and I however she got into computers around 2004ish, I got into them 1995. The knowledge she has gained from drupal without that architecture she is lost. Where modx because I have to see the code, put it in where i want I just didn’t get to pick the house I got to decorate it too. More work? Absolutely. Better payoff? Always. You could research this topic 100x and yet its a clear line that separates modx users from drupal users. A step modxcms would have to take to get the drupal core audience would be to make the extra’s section like a single link to click and it install itself into modx, they would just fill in a couple text area boxes to configure it and voila. That is not the route modx has clearly demonstrated it did not want. However you will notice the core % of the modx audience are developers, or those in the profession. You really do not find all that many blog lil joe schmoe modx sites. I appreciate the power, the control, and the ability to learn web design while still running a CMS style site. I also like really all in all the only code you have to learn from modx is what you decide to label your chunks/tv’s/snippets. I installed drupal first prior of modx, I looked at drupal for about 3 hours, I even watched a guy on video walk me step by step on how to transfer my website from a static document into drupal format. I looked like I just sat a computer for the first time. I had to learn the drupal language prior of doing anything. After about 3.5 hours and 4 cigarettes I gave my monitor the middle finger said to myself outloud effing drupal and went back to google. I found modx, posted a link susan ottwell responded on the pronto and in 45 minutes I had my index page converted and up. In just two weeks I went from first time ever using a CMS, I now have managed to create tv’s build an img gallery, bridge smf to modx, utulized Ditto in so many ways it is unreal and still have much to learn and do. My point is as an experienced user I found Drupal to be more work as i already had previous web knowledge it made it confusing as I kept trying to apply previous knowledge which would not work. So I end my ramble as my site still needs to be finished up and launched by Tuesday

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yess, considered

Very nice...

I’ve question:
How about making the ecommerce site?

(please DO NOT try offer some for-one-country-only solutions (as for USA only) or some not-editable solutions as for example cart-as-a-service - please!)

yes, some explanation to it...

so:

1) I can’t to understand, why so small number of systems are able to offer CMS+ecommerce
- ten years ago I was able of a little of accepting those sites, where there was the link from base informational site to another domain with eshop - but nonsense today... If anyone says "web 2.0", I am saying "hu? you are meaning web 0.2, do’t you?"

2) Why CMS+ecommerce system?
Because quarter of clients (dynamic sites) want run their own eshops.
Because in two or four years, another quarter of clients will want to start eshops either (on sites, what are now builded up).
Because there is no argument for client to have two separate sites (two catalogues of products for example ;-) ).
And may be developers rather either learn and work (with) one universal system, than with two different ones (when you must solve integration by yourself in addition to this)

3) Some problems with making ecommerce modules to CMSs?
I think, there is some easy to use Payment services and if a CMS have a few developers and fun club, there can not be a problem to develop some base payment modules.
And for example we just only occasionally need to have credit-card payment gateway. Here in Czech Republic, C.O.D. (remboursement) rules over other payment/shipment ways. Payment by credit card is as last of all usual methods. (it is from historical reasons, but it is now very good and visionary! as now computer-criminality is in turnover comparable to other non-legal things like e.g. ilegal weapons trade etc...)
In addition, we have simpler system of tax here in Czech; but USA tax system is very different compare to our, so the USA developers of ecommerce make products, what is not usable here in Czech republic (or whenever in Europe) without changes.
(As USA is one big market, there the works like open-source-CMS-projects grow up more quickly then in Europe, where there are many smaller and completly different contries/languages/markets - and I say it reardless, than huge number of european citizens work on many open source projekts either - and many important projects origined here in Europe - namely World Wide Web ;-) )
So, I would like to have CMS with ecommerce, in the most of cases I don’t need live shipping quot. or some complex payment gateway - I use some very easy rule for computing price of shipping and paying - but I need have this formula under my control. I need only two tax (base VAT and high VAT) - and in 50% cases it is sufficient have only one tax for every product in the eshop! But prices show every time with tax comparable to USA.
And so the bigger question in looking for some solution is, how good is the-catalog-part of that ecommerce+CMS system: I need very good categorization possibilities, for good user experience alogn with finding producst.
And I need selling-up things like five-stars, compare-these-products, clients-buy-either-this, etc.

And I must compute with it, that those my client, who have only-CMS, will phone one day and want anything more, like these.

So what do you mean about it?

Thnx vry mucho ;-)
Johan

Then you need a cart with a strong API so you can build in your own payment gateway and tax solutions. You cannot expect e-commerce packages to exist, for free, for edge cases. Unless someone with the ability to engineer the same solution as you require has had the same issues, the software will not exist. And even if they have, they have to have been decent enough to share it. AFAIK e-commerce has a ways to go in MODx (I prepare to be corrected - there is a good paid for option, I’m told, but how it works outside the US I do not know).

There are products with an API allowing you to build in your own gateways and tax rules. Being a European dev shop, we have a myriad of tax rules and different VAT rates and rules to deal with. That’s why we use Ubercart (sorry, I know this is the MODx forum, but any MODx guys working on e-commerce should take a look at it - it has some great API features to, um, "borrow"). The tax API allows us to deal with this, but even that is very new.

The long and the short of it is the e-commerce market is still very under-developed in open source circles and the majority of development happens in the US, because it is by far the largest market. So it makes total sense. The first open source product (or product, period) I’ve seen that provides such an API is Ubercart.

Quote from: jessay at Sep 12, 2009, 10:53 AM

I installed drupal first prior of modx, I looked at drupal for about 3 hours, I even watched a guy on video walk me step by step on how to transfer my website from a static document into drupal format. I looked like I just sat a computer for the first time. I had to learn the drupal language prior of doing anything. After about 3.5 hours and 4 cigarettes I gave my monitor the middle finger said to myself outloud effing drupal and went back to google.

Yea... that’s the same approach that I have had with portal script cms!
so discouraged that I have installed indexhibit

next searching something more flexible i found MODX!!! I would want to have discover it before!

thx a lot for MODX

(i’ve just finished to read the superlative guide of wayfinder by kongondo, modx isn’t difficult if it is explained well)

a modx’newbie

I shifted for similar reasons also... too much effort to make too little changes.

Modx is great! Easy to design anything and have it up and running in no time. Want to add programming features... easy to do also.

Also would like to see ecommerce functionality but for now it’s simple Paypal buttons for few products... but for major shopping portals I’d have to go with Magento... haven’t found anything else that can beat their system even though I wish it would be a little more open.

Jessay, your post should be required reading. It perfectly explains some things about why MODx has real advantages for developers.

This might be dead but just wanted to give my 2 cents.

I have used joomla before the 1.5 change. I try using drupal, Typo3, Expression Engine (bought a license and never used it), I love CodeIgniter tho. I came across modx when searching for a good cms. It was posted on one of those crappy sites that are full ads. I was presented with concrete, and others and modx was at the bottom. Ok, so when I enter the site and read it, something told me to download and test it. After reading trough the documentation and asking questions on the irc channel, I decided that it was time to really step it up a notch and build a website. In this case my website. I actually was coding it from scratch using code igniter because I didn’t want to have Joomla as backend. Then drupal. Yes, a great solution. But the same as joomla in order to make it work have to modify many many things. Had my EE license but again more modifications need it to work as I wanted.

Then alone in the dark came this solitary cms called modx. After 50% of the site was done in CI. With Modx I didn’t have to tweak the system to work for me. To the contrary I added the functions I wanted in. Like some say godsend. Yes, I love modx and we are now on revolution. Why I love modx? Not just because is the new cool kid on the block. NO. Because it gives me the power the build anything quick, simple, and strong enough for high traffic.

Don’t take me wrong I think drupal is a great system if you have the time to sit down and learn everything. It took me 2-3 days to build my site in modx. And my site is simple compare to other sites I have built. But in reality it saved me time and effort. It has increase my production. Period. Now I used it for ever site I am developing.

If you have time to sit down and play with a system and you are not in a rush you welcome to use joomla, drupal, or any option out there. But if you in the market to make money you know that time matters. If you want to look professional, have less overhead, and have control of what you publishing. I have one thing to say to you. Modx is your best friend!

Once you go modx, you’ll never go back!

Agreed, MODx is a god-send. I’ve build bespoke CMS’s and used phpWebsite, Adobe Contribute and Wordpress prior to finding my home with MODx. I trusted my instinct to avoid Drupal and Joomla (bigger doesn’t necessarily equate to better). MODx was literally love at first site.