Thought it would be fun to see how everyone first came to using MODX and what your first impressions were.
I’ll start…
I worked at a digital agency and we used WordPress almost exclusively. Around 3 years ago, a client came knocking on our door. They had a reasonable budget for a project, but there was just one problem: they wanted to use their existing CMS, MODX. We’d never heard of it so we tried to talk them out of it. They didn’t want to move from MODX (in hindsight, I see why), so we took on the job and hired a freelancer to do the MODX integration for us.
I built all the static templates in HTML/CSS and then passed them on to the freelancer to integrate with MODX. I was expecting a nightmare. To my surprise, the site was built in no time at all (probably faster that we could have built it in WordPress). The other thing I noticed was the code was really clean - or rather, the code I had passed to the freelancer was practically untouched. WordPress typically adds a lot of bloat to the code, but with MODX the CMS was invisible. That piqued my interest.
Then the client came back to us with a ‘phase 2’ around 6 months later. I decided to tackle it myself and thus began my journey in the world of MODX. This was a MODX Evo site and the thing I hated was that templates, chunks, snippets, etc. were stored in the DB. As soon as I found out Revo supported static resources, I was sold. I still use WordPress but I do get that feel-good feeling every time I go back to MODX.
So, that was my introduction… love to hear your stories
My story isn’t quite good as yours. Back in high school (probably around 7 years ago) I started getting into the web business with a buddy, and we needed something to put content in so clients could edit their sites, without breaking it too much.
I don’t really recall how we stumbled across MODX in search of a good CMS, but we did, and we just started building websites with it (v0.9.6.2, with our own manager theme!). After high school we both went to university, it got harder to keep the business up as our lives changed, so we quit the business. That was in late 2010 when MODX Revolution was just out, which caused me to learn more about PHP and back-end development, which ended up being something I really liked.
My first published extra was sLink, I founded my own freelance business in the beginning of 2011, got my first client via twitter, and then things kinda got out of hand
Several years ago I used to work with my own custom CMS only serving forms to customers for editing content, menu items and users. So with several customers and data I ended up to build the CMS over and over again.
Together with starting a company, Codeplaza Webdesign, to get out of the scene of building websites as the boy next door I started to look for a steady and simple CMS which could the do the job. I tried WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and some other less known CMS. But all seemed to be overkill in the backend, while I just needed the manager to be simple and logic to my customers and strong and flexible for me.
Then I discovered MODX on the web. WOW!!! So clean and logic in structure and my test site was made in 2 hours including some learning. I had a customer who wanted to transfer the website in my hands and then I saw a great opportunity to migrate an existing website to a MODX installation.
Flawless and within 1 hour I had transformed the website from CMS Made Simple to MODX. I presented my customer the backend for editing her content and the only thing she said was: > “Is it that simple???”
So a new MODX lover, stimulator and contributor was born. From that time I only use MODX for my projects and still learning.
Short story here, the office I work at used a payed CMS and I was looking for a cheaper CMS because the clients had to pay allot of money every year and we where loosing clients by that.
Although we benefit some percentage from the module costs it was too expensive for the clients.
As soon I got hang of MODX Evo 1.0 I rebuilded them all. I have a Graphic Design background so coding was hard. Luckely thats not really needed with MODX.
I used to be a Constructual Enigneer working for Architecture companies before I wanted to change my job and schooled myself in web design & development. Of course this meant using the most popular tools: Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Wordpress…
My first year working as a web designer I only knew and worked with Wordpress and thought it was the best thing ever! I was never open for any other systems and quite arrogant about my (in hind-sight very limited) skills…
Luckily, my boss at my second web design job forced me to use MODX when I started working there. I remember complaining to my girlfriend that:
My new bosses are horrible, they force me to use some crap system called MODX and they don’t even like or use Wordpress!
In about a week I changed my mind 100% and started loving MODX (Evo then).
Great to use my own code and no need for PHP, strange CMS code or Loops, just amazing.
I have been working with MODX since 2009 and never looked back.
I had just started getting involved in community and political activism and wanted to learn web design to assist. The most HTML I knew was from middle school so I was out of my depth with a CMS. Luckily I had just met Garrett Overstreet and since then everything I know I have learned on Modx.
Well, a long time ago … anno 2009, my second Joomla site was hacked and I was nerved that it was only possible with working on in the depth of Joomla to build W3C conform and table free templates.
I startet to compare several CMS: Typo3, CMS Made Simple, MODX (Evo), Wordpress and some others. Typo3 was too hard for little sites. I liked the easy way to create an template with pretty looking HTML und good separation from logics. And so a tried MODX Evo and since 2009 I build sites with MODX.
Meanwhile I had to work with the enterprise CMS First Spirit and SharePoint, systems that have lot of licence costs per year. Spending only the licence costs in an MODX site, it would be a great result Companies that are using such enterprise CMS mostly want to have a high security and it must be scaleable. Things that MODX also can realize. One big difference is there: Enterprise CMS seller do have an very efficient working sales and marketing.
But I say, MODX ist the best open source CMS that I know and I have a lot of fun building sites with it.
Back in high school (probably around 7 years ago) I started getting into the web business with a buddy, and we needed something to put content in so clients could edit their sites, without breaking it too much.
