MODX Core development team abandoning MODX development as 1st priority? Please read!

Quote from: sparkyhd at Apr 03, 2013, 09:28 AM

Did you get your sense of humour bypass on the NHS or privately?

I thought I did. I think it's funny the idea of creative freedom being completely lawless.

Wow, just discovered this conversation and it definitely makes me uneasy.

While I understand the need for the developers to make money, I can't say I think running a hosting company is the way to do it.

For a start Modx or Siphonlabs competitors already offer hosting at a third of the price of MCloud and with ten times the features.

To be anywhere near competitive the Siphon/Mcloud option is going to need to drop its price by more than 60% while increasing the features by 1000%.

Can't see that happening and still be able to make a living. Hosting is a brutal cut throat game where margins are razor thin.

I mean even Adobe offers a complete web solution from less than $10 a month. How are you going to compete with that?

As others have said, a better strategy would have been to develop the niche and the Modx brand.

I know we don't know all the ins and outs of what the Modx crew have been considering, but this decision is obviously making a lot of people very uneasy.

To pick up on some of the other comments:

I'm not a programmer or a developer but I can build Modx sites far faster than I can build wordpress sites. In fact the whole reason I started using Modx was because I got fed up with having to hack Wordpress all the time.

I've done things in Modx that I wouldn't even contemplate doing in Wordpress. So if I can do that, then any competent coder should be able to use Modx in their sleep.

As others have said an education or awareness program would be a good move to let other designers and developers know how good it is.

I've also looked at Joomla, Drupal, Magento and Concrete5 and many others.

With the notable exception of Concrete 5, all the others don't come anywhere close to Modx in terms of ease of use, flexibility and sensibility.

One thing Modx lacks that's stopping it from being more widely used is an ecommerce solution. Get that down and it will really take off.

And that might have been a better bet for hosted revenue raising.

But hey I'm rambling here, but this seems to be the thread to do it.

We live in interesting times, and it will be interesting to see how this pans out.

I agree on the lack of an ecommerce module specially made for Modx. It could have been a commercial but professional module. Just think about how many designers and clients would have gladly bought it. It puzzles me also why they chose for hosting to make money. I think it would be much more competitive to stand out from the crowd with Modx as a brand and a pro cms. Monetize it with a worldwide MLM, and teach every AMB how to make money with Modx.

Quote from: markg at Apr 05, 2013, 05:16 AM

For a start Modx or Siphonlabs competitors already offer hosting at a third of the price of MCloud and with ten times the features.

To be anywhere near competitive the Siphon/Mcloud option is going to need to drop its price by more than 60% while increasing the features by 1000%.

Can't see that happening and still be able to make a living. Hosting is a brutal cut throat game where margins are razor thin.

I mean even Adobe offers a complete web solution from less than $10 a month. How are you going to compete with that?

I disagree that other hosting offers ten times the features. Yes, the Cloud is currently lacking email service, SSL, and multiple databases but cheap hosting does not have features that save us massive amounts of time when staging, updating, and moving sites, not to mention the backups that are easily managed and accessible. MODX Cloud became the most appealing type of hosting we've ever seen for our group of developers but then the hosting plans we had our clients on were not the cheap less than $4 to $10/month plans anyway.

Quote from: sitecms at Apr 05, 2013, 07:55 AM

I agree on the lack of an ecommerce module specially made for Modx. It could have been a commercial but professional module. Just think about how many designers and clients would have gladly bought it. It puzzles me also why they chose for hosting to make money. I think it would be much more competitive to stand out from the crowd with Modx as a brand and a pro cms. Monetize it with a worldwide MLM, and teach every AMB how to make money with Modx.

From watching the sessions European MODXpo and from comments here, there are two things that keep coming up with respect to e-commerce:
1) It is highly sought after
2) It is massively complex, partially in part due to calculating shipping

Just because MODX hasn't thusfar created one, it doesn't mean that they won't, although it's a big gamble when the cost of the development effort has no money earmarked for it. I know there is the "build it and they will come" way of thinking, but from my experience in building a solution, until it has everything someone wants, it has nothing, and "I would pay $X for this" doesn't pay for development. "I paid $X for this", however, does.

There's nothing stopping from someone creating an e-commerce. Given the number of people and the passion they have for this, I'm suprised there isn't a separate thread discussing next steps (if there isn't, someone should set it up). If 500 people thought this was a worthwhile venture, and people donated either money or coding effort or architectural guidance to do this, I can't imagine that this would be insurmountable. Just think: the bulk of the coding for MODX Revolution has come from Shawn and Jason, so think what a group much larger than this could do!

Sounds like a hell of an opportunity for Siphon to make a e-commerce module. That would be the only reason for me to host there if they can offer a shop that blends in seamlesly with my own cloud. A good integration with e-mail marketing too BTW.

simpleCart is not a million miles away from being a very good ecommerce solution, and there is now miniShop 2, people are closer than you think.

Quote from: eighthday at Apr 05, 2013, 09:18 AM

simpleCart is not a million miles away from being a very good ecommerce solution, and there is now miniShop 2, people are closer than you think.

Thanks eighthday,

I know nothing about e-commerce, but I'll take a look into these just to see what they are all about. If these exist, what is it lacking that they'd want in a modx specific solution?

simpleCart is not a million miles away from being a very good ecommerce solution, and there is now miniShop 2, people are closer than you think.

Quote from: markg at Apr 05, 2013, 05:16 AM

Wow, just discovered this conversation and it definitely makes me uneasy.

...

But hey I'm rambling here, but this seems to be the thread to do it.

We live in interesting times, and it will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Not sure you're rambling at all and I agree with you.

One of the statements I sometimes make to my prospects is that MODX are the core developers and they have the resources to supplement mine for larger implementations. I formulated this at the time MODX were pressing for me to sub contract them to help their finances and the partnership status was based on how much you spent with MODX.

I sure hope none of my clients and prospects read this thread and discover the total resourcing of MODX is 2 people!

Whilst I've always understood the need for MODX to be funded I always thought the hosting/cloud route was a mistake. Looking at the total cake for an install the hosting slice was the wrong one to pick. I think it's unfair that I make a good living out of MODX installs and the developers get nothing. That's why I made a donation, paid $2,500 when the partnership program was launched and now pay a monthly sub for the partner listing. If MODX had a few essential extras that were chargeable I'd be fine with selling these on, make a bit of margin and pay the balance back to MODX.

I'm slightly concerned this thread is now deviating into a "let's expand into ecommerce". The 2 man resource team is barely sufficient to respond to posts on this thread, let alone develop the CMS. As to branching into ecommerce can everyone please take a reality pill.

Having implemented a Magento site I would dispute the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

Ecommerce is huge job to make a decent fist of it. Also bear in mind that MODX seems at least as popular outside the US as inside. As a European the last thing I need is another cart with sales tax and no VAT purely because the developers are over there.

For ecommerce MODX should be looking at great integrations, not re-inventing the wheel.

Returning to funding, if everyone could sign up for the Partner Directory and pay a monthly sub the team might be able to upgrade their used car. (post #60)