How to stop undeserved MODx reviews by "users"

I was over at GoDaddy’s application review site and read reviews of MODx. Some of them are pretty good but there are bunch of really poor reviews that gives one star to MODX.

“I hate it”,
”Screen is blank after installation, not working ”

[I died when I read this one, but then came back to life immediately and decided to write this post],

“Waste of time”, ”Total trash”,
”Don’t bother to install. Use WordPress or Joomla! instead”

[I think he is absolutely right for HIS needs and inpatience] ,

“Initial screen only shows bunch of newsfeed”

[yeah, WordPress gives you bunch of widgets, not just a news feeder, but WP widgets are for front pages and you don’t need them in MODx anyway. Ok I am ahead of myself]
etc., etc.,

If you read them, you soon realize that those reviewers did not have capacity or spend time to understand the concept of MODX and/or too much trained by facebook and WP I/F. But come to reflect how I met MODX, I was confused too. I was more patient though.

I am not a professional developer but I needed a tool to prepare a website with a lot of pages. If it was not Mary’s coding Pad tutorial and the fact that I had a very clear understanding of how I wanted my web site to look, I would have probably picked up Joomla! or WordPress. But WordPress could not be coded with HTML to make the page look the way I wanted. (at that time I had no intention to learn PHP and the method to design WP themes seemed so unnatural)
I also had a need to embed a flash app in front page and only way Joomla! (or was it Drupal? I don’t remember) could handle in its content was by the use of iframe element. (At least at the time of evaluation. Don’t know if it’s possible now)

Professional developer will have times and experience to understand the power of MODx, but weekend developer like me need to be told first hand (in the installing session or in opening the managers page first time) that

1. One need to have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS at minimum to use this product.
2. After first install, the front home page will be blank and that is expected.
3. Dynamic menu system will require wayfinder extra.
4. Page aggregation will require getResources extra.
5. There are bunch of other nifty extras like thumbnail, breadcrumb, gallery etc.,
6. RTFM!

This may scare off some people from trying MODX, but I believe that is much better than receiving undeserved critical reviews.

You make some great points, and I hope you made some of them there. MODX definitely isn't for everyone, but as you point out, many of those supposed drawbacks are actually benefits.

If you want a straight blog and find a theme you like, it's hard to beat WordPress, but if you want to actually design your site, include dynamic content, and have tools to make maintaining it easy, it's hard to beat MODX.

Though my sanity is often [rightfully] questioned, I have a slightly different take on things. I think a lot of us already know that without question, MODX has the best foundations of any of the tools out there. However, for MODX to gain more widespread usage, I think there should be a "starter" [Editor: pronounced "noob"] version of it that a pre-built site which teaches the bare essentials of the tool.

This would give those with at least some technical acumen the ability to see some results quickly. I agree that with masakia's point that there are certain things that a real developer should know to properly use the product, but providing a sample along with some instruction can go a long way to take people who have never done this before and get them up to speed quickly. As for the idea of the add-ons which are normally be required, pre-install them.

This would be a neat test: someone build a cloud with something like is described above, call it NOOBX or something like that, let it into the wild with some focus groups of non-technical people with the desire and aptitude to learn, and see the feedback. My guess is that when you explain how HTML works and some brief tutorials, explain some basics for CSS, and give them a guided tour of the Manager by using some sample content, people will be willing to give it a try, as long as they think they have a good chance of succeeding.

And since my rant has gained momentum in my head as I type this, you could create a pre-configured site for various needs; not just blogging. To take it to the extreme, think of a cloud-based "design your own website" for small businesses and charities, with ads for MODX training and hosting for their free site.

As always, all comments welcome.

Thanks for the comments.

One needs A goDaddy account to be able to post your comment there. I submitted mine (don't ask why I have their account) but it requires their review and it is not visible yet.

As to the idea of "NOOBX", it is no easy task. I noticed one reviewer actually installed demo package (with evo). He was complaining the fact it was not easy to change anything on the page. This guy was living in the paradigm of facebook or WP or Joomla, it must be that webpage is build with the bunch of modules that you should be able to switch and replace, rearrange etc., In his definition, that seems to be "flexibility" of the product, but MODx goes beyond this and the first thing "NOOBX" has to do is to undo his paradigm.

Maybe its all in the semantic. Instead of saying you have to have html and css knowledge, our catchphrase can be "This is a great platform to exercise your HTML and CSS knowledge beyond your imagination." or something like that.

I started to notice in any of product review from any website, (such as amazon.com) there are some potion of reviews written by those who should not be writing. Those reviews should be unqualified and thrown away but that's not the way internet operates. The same reviewer mentioned above also complained the fact that Godaddy installed Evo under /modx/ folder and not root folder and called it "ridiculous" If I recall my case it took me about 5 minutes to look up the web and find the way to configure the Apache server. Now how do we deal with that kind of ignorance/laziness?

So there will be always negative reviews and its unavoidable. In Godaddy's site though, the ratio seemed excessive.

I like the idea of NoobX, though I agree that it wouldn't be easy. If I ever get around to it, do you mind if I steal the name?

Bob, if you ever did it, you could definitely steal the name... I highly doubt it's been taken.

I also think part of the misunderstanding is that there are multiple target markets for the CMS world out there. MODX right now is for those who have the skills and patience-- just like masakia mentioned. In other words, the target market is your web professional and die hard weekend programmer.

WordPress, though I have never personally worked with it, based on the comments above, it seems that this is aiming for the far less technical audience. And to be honest, one of the reasons why WordPress has such a presence is because the number of those less technical is much larger than those who are.

All of this leads me to my next point: if MODX wishes to gain wide acceptance and cross into a different market, it would have to have a NOOBX equivalent. It probably is a difficult task, but one that would bring MODX the fame it deserves. If MODX ever decided to hold a competition, this would be one thing that would definitely be prize worthy.

Finally, all this discussion about reviews and how uninformed people can make a comment just as easily as someone informed reminds me of leasthelpful.com

Well, that stubborn part of me that kept thinking of this over the weekend is making me post a follow-up....

I wanted to see what made people pick WordPress over MODX. Again, my comments reflect the fact that the WP group of users represent a different target market than the MODX group. From a very brief (15 minute) tour of what WordPress gives users is that it reflects the fact that people don't want to search around to figure stuff out, and if you're doing a blogging website that you think people might actually read, it's fairly simple to set up and get things up and running.

Where does this leave MODX? I think that MODX simply needs better initial instructions and to walk people through major tasks as well as pre-configured options for major ways people would use it. I would be surprised if the MODX gang hadn't already thought of this and was incorporating something like this into "MODX 3". If this seems strange to anyone, simply look at the way that they designed the entire cloud interface: you can see a material difference in the User Interface design, and this is not by coincidence-- they hired someone with a background in it and in my opinion this is money well spent. My own experience with the Cloud was I started at literally 0 and was up to speed in about 10 minutes; and I'm not even that bright

More specifically, in the installation, I would provide more of a "choose your own adventure" kind of install, which would install a pre-configured website targeted for what the end user wants to accomplish with this. For example, one option is a blogging site, which would install MODX with packages most likely to be used for blogging: Articles, getResources, etc.

Anyway, my take on dealing with ignorant people is to educate them. I remember seeing a program on a computer back in 1994. I opened it up, and it did absolutely nothing! I wrote it off as junk. It turned out it just wasn't configured-- it was an e-mail client called Eudora, and at the time, I knew nothing about configuring e-mail clients. Just like I was that person who was ignorant about mail clients, there is a large group of people who are ignorant about creating websites.

I also think that the MODX cloud has a part in this: WordPress is still a download and install on a local webserver by default. If MODX had something whereby a person, knowing little to nothing about websites, could "create" a fully functional blog site in just a registration and a few clicks with a website that lasted 10 days until you had to fork out some money for hosting, I think MODX would have a greater following with that market.

However, the bigger question is this: Is this something MODX even wants to do? This isn't an underhanded jab.. this is simply the reality that when you invite another target market into the fold, the culture changes. To put it bluntly, do you want the "AOL crowd" posting questions to the same forum? Just food for thought.

Thanks for reading my verbose post.

Joomla! and co kill the developer's skill. Too much ready made stuff means too little manipulations as well. We love MODx as is except for some buggy nature, some of which I can attribute to ExtJS and many of the now ubiquitous features that require developer time on MODx, say add user photo to sign up or email admin on user sign up, etc.

I think a NOOBX for the mainstream and MODx for the rest of us will be a hit!

Thanks for the comments ojchris!

I think NOOBX would be a nice layer on top of MODX so that it hides some of the complexity to the end-user. And of course, you can always override it. Best of both worlds, in my opinion.

By the way, I thought of calling NOOBX MODXpress (as in MODX Express) until I realized that MODX Press is what published Bob's book.

Regards,
Tom

It was Godaddy, what do you expect. Most the same folks that use their lame overbloated platform also use those crap CMSs. WP and Joomla! that have only limped along and never really been made modern. Still stuck in the dark ages reading books about predestiny.

I think NEWBX is better. Noob is pretty derogatory. If MODx 3 is all that it is being talked about many of the more complicated systems are going to be simplified. AFter you bridge the knowledge gap MODx is pretty easy to use even as a non-developer. That said it really is more of a developers CMS. The bonus to anyone is the versatility and open framework, although there are now other CMSs picking up on this and also offering more end user friendly interfaces. Not that MODx's is not, but there is a definite shift taking place in the style of the "backend" of the future CMSs.

As far as stopping anyone from voicing their opinions this is basically impossible. If they want to be closed minded pricks that's really their prerogative. Some older folks especially are just stuck in their judgmental ways and can't help but pass judgement on things they hardly understand.