A Breakup Letter to MODx

I'm sorry MODx, it’s you, not me. I know I got the old cliche backwards, but it's the painful truth. We met so long ago when you were a fresh-faced youth still in Evo beta. Oh you had so much potential, and then you graduated to Revo, and I realized I was fully in love.

Yes, there were rocky times along the way, and I occasionally questioned our relationship, but I stayed true. You grew ever more refined, for a while, and I defended you from the naysayers. I introduced you to all of my clients along the way - you were a big hit at office parties. You even had a fan base growing, and that gave me so much hope for your future celebrity. I hyped you up every chance I got.

But the good times started to fade little by little. You started to let yourself go just a bit. Your leaps and bounds forward became hops, and then shuffles. Those clothes you wore that were all the rage 10 years ago, now look dated and frankly, old fashioned. You became stuck in a rut and didn't know how to get out. All but your most dedicated admirers and fans started drifting away, one by one.

It was about that time when one of my clients made it a requirement that I start working with another major star in the industry. Oh how I vowed never to sell my soul to the "establishment", but what was I going to do? When you are faced with the decision to go the way of the Dodo through irrelevancy, or move forward with the changing times, you have to evolve. Unfortunately, I couldn't take you with me. Even though you promised so many times to change, you simply got stuck in the sands of a bygone era.

After a while, I started to realize that I actually liked working with the upstart. I held on to preconceived notions for so long, I never realized that the upstart was actually very talented, just raw and unrefined. But what a ceiling! And now, I once again feel that enjoyment and hope that goes along with progressive enhancement. I was suddenly amidst a large cadre of like-minded people that worked toward the betterment of the future, rather than simply trying to patch the missteps of the past.

I still visit you now and then, hoping, praying for some sign that you are ready to shed your crusty old shell and move into modern times. Some of my clients still even have contracts with you, simply because they are too invested to move on. But this is it, this is my breakup letter. From this point forward, I can see no reason left to use you for projects, when you just weigh me down like an anchor. Destined to become another relic of a lost golden age, like a Zeppelin or Steam Locomotive - beautiful and advanced for that era, but too intertwined with the technology of the day to move forward. A forgotten novelty, gathering dust and cobwebs in the annals of an obscure textbook.

So, if and when you decide that irrelevancy isn't your color, and you are ready to join the modern world, please look me up. I'll always be waiting, hoping that you can make the impossible leap back to relevancy. But every time I look to the sky, I still don't see great dirigibles ferrying people to their destination. When I look to the ugly, modern trains, they all still belch oily, black smoke from diesel engines. No, those amazing machines are lost to an era of magic and hope, just like you. Goodbye MODx, but I must move on. I'll miss you.

Nobody should be stuck to just one system or another. Different projects call for different systems. Modx being more of a cmf than a cms just means it's more robust and adaptable to most requirements than others. But again by all means you should never just stick to one system.

I get you and I agree, but I find it highly ironic to call MODx "adaptable" when it's stuck using ExtJS for its manager, and it itself hasn't been able to overcome it's own limitations. It's only as adaptable as its own rigid confines allows. But that's not the reason I am moving on, nor wrote this admittedly flippant letter. Unfortunately, it's the uncertainty of MODx ever being re-imagined and updated to compete with modern CMS's and yes, frameworks, that has me shying away. Show me some progress toward that goal (instead of just saying "good things are coming"), and I'll be right back on board...

Quote from: dan971 at May 16, 2017, 06:19 PM

I get you and I agree, but I find it highly ironic to call MODx "adaptable" when it's stuck using ExtJS for its manager, and it itself hasn't been able to overcome it's own limitations. It's only as adaptable as its own rigid confines allows. But that's not the reason I am moving on, nor wrote this admittedly flippant letter. Unfortunately, it's the uncertainty of MODx ever being re-imagined and updated to compete with modern CMS's and yes, frameworks, that has me shying away. Show me some progress toward that goal (instead of just saying "good things are coming"), and I'll be right back on board...

Do you know PHP? Like really know it? MODX makes it super easy to extend it with Snippets. Try doing that with WP.
Out of curiosity, which CMS did you move on to? Since you didn't say WordPress and Joomla is almost gone I suppose it is Drupal. Drupal is horrible.

Modx is only as limited as it's contributors. The contributors are only as limited as the programming language. Modx is open source software if you don't like something you have the freedom to change it as you see fit. I think we are all intelligent enough here to identify that the jury is still out for you on modx and that you're only logic behind this post is to incite a debate to justify a movement for you. Unfortunately though the answer is really down to you and if you're willing to stay and help or not.

I work as a white label agent so the ideo of just ditching any system if alien to me, I work on all systems. Modx is however my preferred though, but I guess that's just personal preference. Have you seen the modx road map? Do you keep tabs on the announcements here for what's planned for 2017 and beyond?

I understand your frustration. There is some exciting stuff going on with MODX, but it's a slow process. That series of three articles was written in 2015.

That said, I'm fairly happy with the current version of MODX.

I'd be curious to know what the "upstart" is. [ed. note: BobRay last edited this post 6 years, 11 months ago.]

Haha, I knew I was going to strike a nerve with some people and I have made the same arguments in the past for MODx over everything else. To your first question Stefany, no reason to attack my competency - I have over 20 years experience as a developer and know quite a few more languages than just PHP. If you didn't really read my letter all the way through, perhaps you've missed the part where I've used MODx since Evo days. Snippets are a cool concept, just like chunks. They are A WAY to extend PHP, but not the easiest or even the best, IMHO. It becomes tedious really fast when you get more than a couple dozen snippets in tree-view, and some of them are file based.

To answer your other question, I now use Wordpress extensively. I purposely left that information out because I'm not here to start THAT debate, and frankly, I'm not here to draw people away from MODx. To each his own, and I admire that you want to stand up for it, even if your method in doing so feels a bit aggressive.

LK, I've contributed my share to bug reports, discussions, etc., but I am not an enterprise-level developer like the geniuses that created MODx. I have a niche and I'm good at it, so I stick to it. My biggest contribution came in using and promoting the system through all the years until it just started to fade away. I moved on, it happens. The biggest reason I wrote this, you are correct, was to restart dialog on the future roadmap. I saw an RSS feed post in the MODx manager that simply referred to a 6 month old post by Ryan, and since then, nothing about what's going on. Frankly, I have my doubts at this point that it's going anywhere besides "the cloud" where it can be monetized. Their prerogative, just as it's mine to move on.

Bob, having you respond to a thread I started is a big honor, you are a legend around here, I appreciate it. The "upstart" in my mind was WP, because for a long time I considered it a spaghetti coded monstrosity and not worthy to shine MODx's shoes. I still don't like the thousands of loose functions floating around that you use to extend and interact with the site, but I've written some actual Classes inside a cohesive theme to rein in some of that detritus. Since then though, it's really grown on me because it's very easy to use DRY principles in putting together normal, run-of-the-mill marketing sites, which is the vast majority of my business.

Thanks for the kind words.

It's been a very long time since I used WP. At that time its architecture was an incredible mess. It took me three days to figure out how to change a particular background color in my heading. I've heard that it has improved, and I'm sure it can be a real time saver if you find a pre-built theme that works for your particular use case.

I'm sure it can be a real time saver if you find a pre-built theme that works for your particular use case.

Or in my case, a theme I built myself (helps when you know the ins-and-outs of your own theme).

Yep, WP is not perfect by a long shot, but nothing is. IMO, if we could combine the principles of WP's plugin economy, taxonomies, themes, and the ease of extending the manager, and place it on top of the MODx framework, core and templating system (using preferably Twig), we'd be darn close to perfect.