MODx Review
MODx is an Open Source CMS created in PHP that uses the MySQL database, and it is a fork of Etomite. It's 1.0 release took place in July 2009, and it has been awarded by Packt Publishing in 2007 for its early development efforts. Even before the stable release, it has been used by many developers to create websites and has been celebrated for its ease of use.
Good Things About MODx
With the arrival of the 1.0 version, MODx has come into its own. Much like WordPress has opened up the world of blogging to the average internet user, MODx can make web design an accessible project for small businesses. It is also quite a bit like CMS Made Simple in that it is easy to install and operate through a graphic interface in the admin panel. However, where it differs from CMS Made Simple is where MODx seems to be bridging the gap between absolute simplicity and the high-caliber, loaded CMS systems like Drupal and Joomla.
Another aspect showing the maturity of MODx is its lively and growing community, an absolute necessity in terms of support for Open Source software. There are additional features and snippets of code you can download and add to your MODx site, forums, documentation, and a wiki to draw information from. This resource pool can help you go from a quick, cookie-cutter website to creating something a little more deep.
The admin interface is clean and has the familiar icon-style menu along with a tree menu on the left hand side of the screen. The WYSIWYG editor is familiar and easy to use, so anyone with experience will be able to catch on very quickly to it. The icon menu is separated by tabs making the day-to-day activities of administering the site quick and easy.
One of the best features, which should be (but isn't) standard for any CMS, is MODx's friendliness towards SEO. You can set up the structure, URLs, and content of your site in whatever manner you find to be most effective without having to hack around in PHP or ripping up the site. If you're not staying on the latest edge of internet marketing, your site is going to get buried beneath everyone else because they're doing it. The SEO arms race is making it more difficult on everybody—from the developers and webmasters to the users, so it's great to see this aspect taken into consideration right from the beginning.
What's Less Than Good
Previous versions have had issues where MODx sites could only have a very limited amount of documents, and that was one of the major problems keeping it back from a stable release. Other potential problems include that it is tied very heavily in with MySQL, and that has rubbed a few developers the wrong way because they didn't like the structure of how the data has been split up. Some, however like it well enough and just saw it as a bit of the learning curve.
Another problem may be that it's too simple to give some developers the power they need to create their sites. It's much like keeping a pet: keeping a bacterium alive is easy because it's such a simple creature, but its features are limited to watching it grow. A dog, on the other hand, requires much more work and knowledge to care for, but it can do so much more. In the rankings, CMSMS would be like a bacterium, MODx is a goldfish, and Joomla is like having a child.
Conclusions
MODx is really sleek, and it has a great community that is more than willing to have you join them. However, it currently lacks the capability of making extremely robust sites. Even so, that places it in the perfect niche for developers who want to quickly create an awesome, simple website and hand the reins over to the client.
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