MODX - Does it have a future ?

I love MODX and really, really hope it continues.

I've been out of the 'MODX game' for about a year now, simply because I stopped freelancing and got a job with the web dev team in a large corporation who use Drupal. Trust me, if you ever want to renew your appreciation for MODXs ease-of-use, cleanliness and uniform learning curve then spend sometime with Drupal!

Anyway, one of the biggest issues I had when freelancing was MODXs lack of a robust, opensource e-commerce solution. I used SimpleCart a few times but it was 99Euros and it required a fair bit of customisation to get working with various payment gateways and postage calculators. I'm not even sure if it's supported anymore, now that it's been sold to ModMore who are releasing their own e-commerce extra at something like 300Euro.

Is there any talk of creating an opensource e-commerce solution?

Quote from: meltingdog at Aug 30, 2017, 11:08 PM

I love MODX and really, really hope it continues.

I've been out of the 'MODX game' for about a year now, simply because I stopped freelancing and got a job with the web dev team in a large corporation who use Drupal. Trust me, if you ever want to renew your appreciation for MODXs ease-of-use, cleanliness and uniform learning curve then spend sometime with Drupal!

Anyway, one of the biggest issues I had when freelancing was MODXs lack of a robust, opensource e-commerce solution. I used SimpleCart a few times but it was 99Euros and it required a fair bit of customisation to get working with various payment gateways and postage calculators. I'm not even sure if it's supported anymore, now that it's been sold to ModMore who are releasing their own e-commerce extra at something like 300Euro.

Is there any talk of creating an opensource e-commerce solution?

It already exists. https://modstore.pro/packages/ecommerce/minishop2
The basic implementation is open sources and absolutely free. Yes, for ms2 already exists a lot of add-ons, some of them paid, but usually, it's a complex solution for something more than plain e-commerce website.

If open source (read: free) is a requirement, then indeed look at minishop or integrate a different system like presta or Magento. Expect to pay for some modules, as people still need to get paid for their time.

SimpleCart and Commerce take the approach where you pay upfront, providing you with support and someone to yell at if things don't work. You don't have to pay extra for additional modules, as most of those are simply built in or free because you already paid for the core package.

If you're building a shop that makes money, spending a bit of money on a platform or modules for one, should be seen as an investment in the ecosystem, and allowing the developers a to earn a living too. In return, you get support, updates with new features and bug fixes, and a lot of time saved by having prebuilt features that you don't have to write yourself. For non profit organizations we offer a discount on Commerce to make it more affordable.


SimpleCart is still supported by the way. We'll continue to support it for at least a year after Commerce reaches v1.0, which is still a few months out. When that year has passed we'll see what our customers are doing; are both platforms used or are all new shops using Commerce? Based on that we'll decide to keep it supported for longer, announce a retirement date, or find it a different future. That's not yet decided.

Quote from: markh at Aug 31, 2017, 07:55 AM

SimpleCart is still supported by the way. We'll continue to support it for at least a year after Commerce reaches v1.0, which is still a few months out. When that year has passed we'll see what our customers are doing; are both platforms used or are all new shops using Commerce? Based on that we'll decide to keep it supported for longer, announce a retirement date, or find it a different future. That's not yet decided.

That's good to hear! I've got a few sites on SimpleCart that are performing quite well. Can't wait to try Commerce, but it's going to be a while before I take on another MODX client sadly

fourroses666 wrote:

I think mostly Evo and its future is in the hands of the Russian community.
There are still plenty of users and I'm confident about updates for newer versions of PHP.

Personally I make small sites and think Evo fits that great.
When having larger sites and need many plugins Rev probably fits better.
(...)

iusemodx wrote:

Why should I not stay with something that works perfectly OK for all of my needs ?

Just to note - Evo is not just good for small sites, I personally run 2 large sites and I know others use Evo for large business and shopping sites

But a few days ago, I saw some serious lively github commitment to Evo, and I muttered to self: boy oh boy, that's one other CMS I have not looked at yet.
I am so excited about Evo and its future

BobRay wrote:

My experiences with Evo in the last year or so suggest that it's developing into a separate product, much like what happened with MODX and Etomite.

Hi fourroses666, iusemodx, BobRay, and everybody,

As BobRay wrote, the Evolution branch is developing into a separate product and the latest version, the 1.3.0 version was forked to "Evolution CMS" (http://evo.im).

Before the arrival of MODx Revolution, the Evo branch had a great name: MODx, which had some uniqueness when "googling" for some information.
Because of "MODx Revolution", the original branch became "MODx Evolution" and its nickname "Evo".
Now, trying to access old posts with the "modx" keyword returns most results about MODx Revolution.

Unfortunately, from the fact that MODx 1.x had be nicknamed "Evo", the ongoing developments have become the "Evolution CMS" fork. In my opinion, this is a bad name, because the "evolution" keyword is too widespread.

I'm sure that several users remain fans of the Evo branch, despite some shortcomings it may have. I see many small possible improvements, especially in the manager, that would make great difference in comfort of use.

Can we find a name having more uniqueness than "Evolution" has?

Can we federate into an international community to give a future to the Evo branch?
(I must admit that I'm not myself a fan of GitHub.)

How to avoid splitting development effort into many forks?
Should we build some kind of crowdfunding community where users vote on improvements?

As for myself, I'm still a user (and a fan) of the Evo version, especially the 1.0.15 version with the MODxCarbon interface of Modx Evo 1.0.14. I have tried newer versions of Evo, but to my humble opinion, the carbon interface remains the one that offered the most visual comfort.
So, my favorite version to start from would be the 1.0.15.
There certainly have been improvements in later versions, that I'm not aware of.