MODx vs. Wordpress vs. Joomla

OK--I hate to dredge up an old topic, but I’m working on a few sites and making hard decisions about my CMS.

I’m approaching it from two perspectives:

1) What I want to do:
I want to have a blog--the main page will have a weblog on it. I need trackbacks, pings, all that junk. Also, I need the ability to publish posts later (you know what I mean--publish this post on 3/1//08 and hide it after say, 3/8/2008).

WP gets me up and running with a blog. But, it’s pretty limiting if I want to grow the site later. And it doesn’t seem to give me any ability to publish a post at a specified time.

Joomla gives me that stuff, but in my experience with Joomla, your flexibility suffers if you want to do something that doesn’t have a handy plugin developed for it ("it" being any special feature you want in your CMS).

MODx gives me complete flexiblity, but I have to build my blog, trackbacks, pings, etc. myself by scratch (many of you are probably saying "Yes? And your point? That’s the beauty of the system!")

2) How you interact with the system:

WP is easy to install and has a simple interface, but I always feel like I’m wading in the kiddie pool when I’m using it.

Joomla is better, but it has some assumptions about how you work and how its interface works that make me feel like "why did they do it this way? Is this the legacy of a bad interface decision?" Plus, 1.5 is a code rewrite, but it’s also just a bridge to 2.0, which is everything rebuilt from scratch. So committing to it at this point may way some investment in time.

MODx is totally open, but I have to invest some pretty heavy duty time. I may feel differently after a week with it though, when I "get" some of its concepts (like, I shamefully admit that it took me a while to get what Ditto does). MODx to me is like giving someone a car engine, body, doors, steering wheel, etc. and saying "go build the most awesome car ever."

So, I’m on the edge of a decision and was wondering what anyone thought.

All I can say is that we see a fair number of people here in your position. The ones who choose MODx always say they made the right decision, even though it took them a while to catch on the the MODx way of doing things, but we seldom hear from the ones who choose some other CMS.

MODx’s second-greatests strength, as you’ve noticed, is its flexibility. It’s greatest strength, IMO, is the very active and helpful support community here at the Forums.

Hope this helps,

Bob

Quote from: mammoth at Feb 11, 2008, 11:12 AM

And it doesn’t seem to give me any ability to publish a post at a specified time.

Yes it does. If you look at pubdate in WP (lower right hand section of the write/edit post screen). This has always been a feature of WP since beta.

My own personal opinion is that if you want all the standard blog bells and whistles such as trackbacks, pinging and the like it is a fine tool. In addition it has a full fledged XML-RPC interface so you can use it with desktop apps. MODx does not...YET.

If you need all that, I would do as ganeshXL says to run them side by side with two back ends until such time a "complete" blog system for MODx has been developed. I have done this in a number of cases and used common headers and footers via php includes.

Jay

PS: If Joomla were more convoluted I would call it OSCommerce. -

Mammoth
I’ve used all three but in the end chose MODx for a very simple reason. MODx can be completely customized for almost any job and I want the control of writing my own XHTML/CSS from the start. In the near future I’m sure MODx will have all of the standard blogging features built right in - but without all of the bloated and useless code and pre-installed modules that I will never use.

You said:

Also, I need the ability to publish posts later (you know what I mean--publish this post on 3/1//08 and hide it after say, 3/8/2008).

MODx has this.

WP has a great community. But with MODx - as a designer - I get to take advantage of some really cool snippets that have been contributed when I need them. For me that’s a big deal. I like building lightweight applications that are completely custom to the situation. And Joomla practically forces a ton of modules on you from the start with all of the pre-install stuff. As far as the admin goes, if you’re building a blog right now why not just allow the client to use the web log-in feature only until their needs grow. I’ve done this and it makes it easy for clients that aren’t computer savvy.

OK--thanks!

The first few websites I’m talking about are just for me to use (not clients), so I think I’m going with MODx. My partners like MODx anyway, and I don’t want to support three different systems (mainly not Joomla and MODx at the same time).

So you’ve helped me out a great deal. To me, MODx is really a CMS framework--it’s not like anything else out there. I’m amazed that it hasn’t become the number one CMS player yet (although I hear about it more and more). I guess it’s just guys like me who need to jump in the water instead of sticking a toe in.

For a simple blog, I still choose Wordpress. Trackbacks, pings- everything blog related is already there. No use to reinvent the wheel unless you need to.

My 2cents.

Quote from: ProWebscape at Feb 11, 2008, 04:36 PM

For a simple blog, I still choose Wordpress. Trackbacks, pings- everything blog related is already there. No use to reinvent the wheel unless you need to.

My 2cents.

I agree with this. I use WP for simple blogs.

I use WP for business (pro) blogs, but I will use MODx to add a blog to an existing site where the blog is not the primary focus.

Quote from: dev_cw at Feb 11, 2008, 04:44 PM

I use WP for business (pro) blogs, but I will use MODx to add a blog to an existing site where the blog is not the primary focus.

Exactly. WordPress is a Blogging Application and it does it pretty well. Templating is a pain but I charge my clients for it so other than annoyance it is fine.

I suppose that once the new codebase is done and custom builds of MODx are implemented it will be much easier to build a real blogging platform on MODx. Contexts could easily allow for similar management of Wordpress so you could have a "side"end for blog management in a new context.

Cheers,

Jay
(Joomla is still awful)

Joomla drives me up the wall now. Absolutely nuts! I feel so constricted- and once you know MODx, J! takes at least 3x’s as long to do something right. And 10x’s as long if needs to be ’customized’.

On a side-note, has anyone in this thread gotten MODx to use Trackbacks or pinging? ( know leftblank.nl switched back to Wordpress for his blog because his site is... a blog and because of the trouble getting pinging and trackbacks to work I believe).