Migrating to MODx?

I’m currently working on setting up a page for my organisation. I’ve worked in Joomla, and have come a long way on finishing the site. The set up has been a hustle, and I’ve encountered many problems regarding issues with using components with the newest joomla 1.5. I’m now so frustrated, that I’m considering to switch to a different CMS. The big question at hands, is whether it’ll be easier for me to wait for the components to update so that the version will work with 1.5.

I’ve read at many different forums, and MODx is a system that is recurring and that seems promising. I’m not very good at coding, so I have some questions I hope to get answered.

1) Event-function. I want to have an eventlist on the main site linking events from local groups. This has to be easy for the users to update and manage. It should be possible to write the seasons program in article-style and link it as events showing on the local eventlist and the main site. I’d also like it to be possible to show a page with all the events, like an automated article-list.

2) Scalable contact-form. I guess this one is easy.

3) Easy maintenance. When I quit this org, I want the site to easy for updating and cleaning out old articles and events. The system we have now is very lousy, but it’s quite self-explanatory, so that non-techies are able to update and maintain it without much knowledge. Making a new site that requires the users to be computer nerds is not very fruitful..

4) Sub-sites. We want to organize the site in sub-domains, like "localgroup.maindomain.com", is it possible to set up the site using the same installation, and giving the different users access only to the single area?

5) SEO. How is MODx organizing it’s sections and categories? Is it possible to have a structure like "http://localgroup.maindomain.com/contact" and "http://localgroup.maindomain.com/resources" ?

6) Style and layout. How can I style menues, sections and components?

Many questions. I should just have tried a MODx setup myself, and explored these things myself. The thing is that I’m running out of time, and I hope that someone can help me, so that I can make this decision quickly..

Quote from: turban at Mar 22, 2008, 12:46 PM

Many questions. I should just have tried a MODx setup myself, and explored these things myself. The thing is that I’m running out of time, and I hope that someone can help me, so that I can make this decision quickly..

That’s too important a decision to make quickly (IMO, anyway). You need to try MODx. Most of your questions can be answered by setting up a site with the test data the installer places there, and a quick run through the tutorials.

But ...

For #1, there are several calendar and events packages available in the repository. I haven’t tried any, so can’t tell you if they’re right for you.

#2. Probably, without knowing what it’s supposed to do. But the (bundled) eForm snippet is designed for that sort of thing.

#3. That’s subjective; try it.

#4. I don’t know. Then again, I wouldn’t have thought that was simple in Joomla.

#5 and #6. Yes; try it.

Having said all that, I built a fairly large site in Joomla, and it pretty soon came clear that I needed to try something else. I spent a few weeks last year building a new site in MODx and a migration script, and for me it was certainly time well spent. I’d encourage you to investigate MODx (and perhaps a couple of others, including Silverstripe and Expresson Engine), but don’t be rushed into a decision that your organisation will be stuck with. If your Joomla experience has left you with a better idea of how to evaluate a CMS, then it wasn’t a waste of time.

Good luck!

Cheers
Matt

Thanks for your quick reply!

I guess it’s wise to install a default setup of MODx, and evaluate myself whether it’s the right one or not.

A question to #3, you say it’s subjective. What if you compared to joomla, how is the ease of maintenance?

Decision still pending

cheers, T

#3: I’ve set up sites for clients with a lower lower level of computer skills. For the use of MODx I supported clients only via phone acting as an editor (creating new pages/articles, publishing text and pictures, setting dates of (un)publishing, maintaining news depending on special needs and so on). They were highly sceptical at the beginning but now they say that it’s easy to work with MODx.
Like ganeshXL said...

Quote from: turban at Mar 23, 2008, 06:47 AM

A question to #3, you say it’s subjective. What if you compared to joomla, how is the ease of maintenance?

Subjectively (ahem), MODx is much easier. But I’m quite comfortable rattling out a bit of PHP so when something hasn’t worked quite as I’ve wanted. (Even if you don’t know PHP, writing MODx snippets is about as easy as PHP gets.)

The one Joomla feature I wish MODx supported was having one set of users; in MODx you have website users and manager users, and they’re administered separately. I understand that will change in 0.9.7 and there will be just one set of users. MODx already has more granular user permissions, though. The ’content editor’ role that ganeshXL suggests is a good example.

Cheers
Matt

The one Joomla feature I wish MODx supported was having one set of users; in MODx you have website users and manager users, and they’re administered separately.

I used to think like this, but today I am happy that the two are managed independently. IMO it is safer, no chance of an inexperienced user accidentally giving manager permissions to a web user. I have two sites where the administrators are not web savvy, they could easily make webusers out of managers and totally screw up the site security.

I don’t need to teach managers about manager users and I can just remove that option from their role. This way I only need to teach them about webusers.

I have not used Joomla recently, and only touched it very briefly at the time I was checking it out, so I don’t remember the exact way that this is managed (there may be safeguards against this happening). But in theory it is safer to just isolate the two.