If you want something that's been around a little longer,
ContentBlocks is pretty stable
Fred and CB are not compatible however as Fred actually
disables ContentBlocks..
As MODX is going after the same thing ContentBlocks has been doing for years, I would also be interested in hearing how people would compare the two products. I'm obviously biased towards ContentBlocks and have a commercial interest there, but I am genuinely eager to learn what people find most interesting about Fred.
Based on my own testing so far, here's what I think each do better:
Things Fred does better:
- Front-end editing.
- More modern visuals. CB looks more like the manager itself, which is a little more dated, and it's not quite as visual as content is shown in fields most of the time, instead of as how it is rendered.
- The responsive preview is a nice touch for users to see how their content looks on other screen sizes.
- Free.
- Cute logo.
Things ContentBlocks does better:
- Stricter separation of content and markup. In Fred, all content only seems to be stored in the content field with no separate data structure. I think this will make evolving your markup while keeping the same content more difficult because it's tied together.
- Repeater. Defines a structure that you add rows off. Ensures consistency in design and markup. I've not looked into custom elements/plugins for Fred too much, so maybe something like that is coming.
- Back-end editing. Fred only works in the front-end.
- Unlimited support included in purchase.
While front-end editing is a definite "win" for Fred, I'm personally not a fan of front-end editing. It gives you two very different contexts to do things in. While managing the site content would be in the frontend, you'd have to hop back into the manager to manage FAQs or your shop orders for example.
TVs are also harder to use from non-manager (non-ExtJS) editing experiences, which is something I learned when building HandyMan. As you can't use the existing code to run those, replacements for each one of those need to be built into the core, and as custom TV input types are a thing, that can get challenging... not sure what Fred will do about that as it does seem to have some basic resource fields included, or if you'll need to hop back into the manager to edit TV values.
I also wonder how the LLC will fund ongoing development and support for Fred. The site mentions premium plugins for Fred will come, but if the core plugin covers most types of content and if fred is indeed extendable, would they be able of selling enough to make it all worth their while? Or maybe there are plans to sell commercial support packs if you want to get help from people that know how it works? Either way, at some point Fred will have to start generating some revenue for the LLC if they want to support something as complex as a visual content builder for years to come...
I'm also frustrated that while the community works together on MODX3, the LLC decides to shift their focus to Fred. They failed to deliver on their commitment to the MODX3 project, putting in about 40% less hours than what they promised. Imagine if the 700 hours they spent on fred was spent on MODX3, how much more we could have achieved there... I think the entire MODX3 project was estimated at about 500 hours, so that would've doubled the available effort! It also stings that there has not yet been a single acknowledgment by the LLC of the MODX3 alpha build that the MODX3 project team released two weeks ago, yet socials are lit up with pictures of Ryan's dog and teasers leading up to the announcement. There's a snapshot of Fred available in Cloud, but no MODX3 build last I checked...
(As an aside, @Liam, I can definitely imagine Redactor will support Fred when we release v3 of that. I'll look into that in the next couple of weeks as Fred stabilizes and (hopefully) some docs on extending it become available.)
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