WordPress or MODX? The Winner Is…
WordPress and MODX are two of the most popular Content Management Systems. Each has its own loyal user base and audience, and both WP and MODX are amazing tools when it comes to website management. However, how do the two perform against each other? Alternatively, what are the similarities and dissimilarities between WP and MODX? We are going to answer these questions in the following article.
But I digress.
My point behind the above example of operating systems is simple: usability is a subjective concept, and if we are to compare two CMSs in a free and fair manner, we need to get rid of the usability rhetoric. That said, let’s focus on certain specific playing grounds and assess the performance of both WP and MODX.
Still, all said and done, WordPress enjoys maximum usage amidst a particular section of users:
This is where MODX establishes itself. As a casual user just wanting to create a gorgeous portfolio, you’ll probably find MODX to be overkill. But as someone wanting to do more with his/her website, you’ll love the control MODX offers you over your website. In MODX, your customization skills do not start with that of your theme or template -- instead, you decide the way you’d like to do things!
When it comes to security, I often find almost half of the internet criticizing WordPress. I am, however, not in agreement with the criticism: yes, WP websites get hacked a lot, but that is, in my opinion, because WP is more popular than any other CMS. Since WordPress websites are easier to come across, they become handy targets for malicious minds. Poorly coded plugins and themes don’t prove much useful either. However, even if it isn’t WP’s fault per se, it all boils down to the practical fact: WordPress-powered websites are often targeted by hackers and crackers alike.
On the contrary, MODX projects itself as super-secure. It probably is, but there is a double-edged sword attached: considering the fact that MODX gives the customization ability to the user, the user himself needs to be pro-active. If your coding skills are limited, your MODX website will suffer.
WordPress And MODX: A Comparison
Before going any further, allow me to clarify: I use both WP and MODX, and I find them great! I like the ease of use that WordPress brings to the table, and I appreciate the customization prowess that MODX offers. In this article, I will refrain from comparing mainstream features such as interface and layout. Why? Simply because if you have used WordPress for a long time, you will probably find MODX confusing. On the other hand, if you have been a loyal MODX user, you will not be able to operate WP with eyes closed either. I feel that this concept applies to every CMS (or any other software for that matter) out there. Agreed, some CM systems are more user-friendly than others, but this very word ‘more’ is subjective. What I find user-friendly, may not feel the same to you, and vice-versa. I have been a Linux user for almost a decade now, and even though I have used Windows in the past and I’m not a stranger to it, I find the command lines and desktop environments in Linux to be easier to use as compared to the Windows Taskbar. Yet, I know that any Windows user will find the migration to Linux extraordinarily confusing, but that doesn't stop me from feeling more at home with Linux as compared to Windows!
But I digress.
My point behind the above example of operating systems is simple: usability is a subjective concept, and if we are to compare two CMSs in a free and fair manner, we need to get rid of the usability rhetoric. That said, let’s focus on certain specific playing grounds and assess the performance of both WP and MODX.
Target Audience and User Base
WordPress began as a simple blogging tool. Even though right from its inception WordPress was being used for a wide array of websites, its primary purpose was to facilitate easier blogging. However, trends changed, and during the past few years, WP has evolved into a full-fledged CMS. Yes, blogging still continues to be in the driver’s seat, and WordPress.com still proudly proclaims on its homepage: “Get A Free Blog Here!” However, WordPress, as a software, is no longer a bloggers’ monopoly, and if Matt Mullenweg’s statement at State of the Word 2012 is anything to go by, almost 66% of WordPress users use WP as a pure CMS, and not as a blogging tool.
Still, all said and done, WordPress enjoys maximum usage amidst a particular section of users:
- Portfolio purposes (artists, designers, photographers, etc)
- Corporate/Business websites (you know, homepage with a big slider and 3 widgets and a separate blog page)
- News/magazine websites (though most of the time, I feel WP shares this position with Drupal, Joomla!, Expression Engine and of course MODX)
- Blogging (obviously)
Administration and Security
This is where the difference between the two CMSs becomes manifest. WordPress has a structure that, if put to proper use, can let you do big things with your website. For instance, you can use custom post types and post formats to create a portfolio or corporate website. In fact, almost all the portfolio and business WP themes on ThemeForest have the same formulae beneath them: custom post types and post formats. Such customization suffices for the intermediate to the novice level of users. Assume for a moment that you do not know much about coding. Now, purchase a portfolio WP theme and use it to create your online portfolio. Most likely, the theme will make use of a separate Portfolio post type to distinguish your portfolio items from main blog posts. Now, some days later, what if you decide to change the theme to a regular one? Once done, your portfolio post type will be gone! Of course, the handles and other details will still continue to exist in the database, but as a non-coder, you will be left without your portfolio items. Not a happy experience, is it?
This is where MODX establishes itself. As a casual user just wanting to create a gorgeous portfolio, you’ll probably find MODX to be overkill. But as someone wanting to do more with his/her website, you’ll love the control MODX offers you over your website. In MODX, your customization skills do not start with that of your theme or template -- instead, you decide the way you’d like to do things!
When it comes to security, I often find almost half of the internet criticizing WordPress. I am, however, not in agreement with the criticism: yes, WP websites get hacked a lot, but that is, in my opinion, because WP is more popular than any other CMS. Since WordPress websites are easier to come across, they become handy targets for malicious minds. Poorly coded plugins and themes don’t prove much useful either. However, even if it isn’t WP’s fault per se, it all boils down to the practical fact: WordPress-powered websites are often targeted by hackers and crackers alike.
On the contrary, MODX projects itself as super-secure. It probably is, but there is a double-edged sword attached: considering the fact that MODX gives the customization ability to the user, the user himself needs to be pro-active. If your coding skills are limited, your MODX website will suffer.
Addons and Community
WordPress has WordCamp. MODX has MODXpo. WordPress offers WordPress.com as well as VIP Hosting. MODX offers MODX Cloud. But if you judge things at numerical value: WordPress has way more extensions and themes than MODX. In fact, even if MODX were as popular as WP, I don’t think the number of themes and addons would’ve risen. The reason is simple: MODX puts the power in your hands: you decide which editor you’ll use, and you get to decide the template. When it comes to MODX, the concept of a plugin repository becomes almost defunct. The fact that WordPress powers a good number of casual users has led to many interesting concepts, the latest being the rise of Managed WP Hosting. Hosting firms such as WP Engine and ZippyKid have come up, which offer specialized WP hosting, along with security and updates. Since the user base of MODX has little to no casual or novice users, such innovations are rare. On the other hand, MODX “learning resources” such as books and documentation are a class in themselves.Conclusion
And now, let's sum it all up!WordPress
Pros- Detailed abstraction with almost no need of further tweaking if you’re a casual user.
- Ideal for blogs and even medium-sized news websites.
- Less work to do: numerous ready-made themes and plugins.
- Too many plugins = a bloated back-end.
- Security woes.
- Advanced users: Abstraction may leave you feeling handcuffed.
MODX
Pros- Great scope for customization.
- Ideal for medium- to large-scale websites.
- Less security issues.
- Loads of work in customization: not ideal for casual users.
- Fewer third-party goodies.
- Little help beyond the official docs and forums (not many third-party blogs and magazines).
Hi, Nice comparison between two nice web building tools, (though it’s my first day of installing MODx on my system, but first look gave me a nice impression to try it). I am a fighting (poor in quality) theme developer of WP, recently started Drupal today I got MODx.
In my opinion, WP is not super handy as a CMS, there’s a ton of hassle to make it CMS like (not pure though) as Drupal offers. But MODx seems to be more handy at both Theming and making it customizable. When templating is so easy, it must going to be more handy for developer. I want to add here. We got many client who come to us with their Premium Theme to make it in their way. That’s bit more painful to customize others code.
Anyway, thanks, coz your article has given me a new hope to build up a CMS development career.
I used MODx 2 years ago and it caused me the greatest server pain I ever experienced with any CMS. To be true, I still try to wrap my head around that such things can even be possible, but with MODx they seem to.
I always compare anything with the attached support. MODx has a bunch of arrogant forum core members that, should you really get stuck, can make you feel like, really bad. WP? Even the dumbest appearing questions get attention. No discrimination like in the MODx forum.
Too many add-ons at WP and too many crappy one? Yes. But as I mentioned, just ask a question and you’ll be fine. Ask the same Q at the arrogant MODx camp? Yeah, right. Why you ask, are you too dumb to figure it out? Often times I really wonder why MODx even has a forum.
MODx or WP?
I think the answer in too obvious ;-)
I have to say, I have had nothing but postive experiences with the MODX forums. After reading many, many threads, I have seen some of what you’re referring to, but it is extremely infrequent. I continually get great responses, suggestions, and clarifications about how to do all kinds of things by posting in the MODX forums.
As for servers, one DOES have to be careful about selecting a hosting service that has all the right software and hardware to run MODX Revolution properly. You can’t just slap a Revolution site on any $2/mo hosting service and expect it to run well, or even at all. One thing that is important is that php on the server (and thus the MODX software) runs as the account user, not as “nobody”, or else clearing caches and file management can be a problem. I ran into problems with that at one host.
There are many services that have what MODX needs (check the configuration requirements on the MODX site), and quite a few that actively set up their servers with MODX in mind and know how to address any potential server problems quickly.
I’ve used WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Modx – I can see why Modx appeals to designer types but Modx tests my patience every time I have to work with the damn thing.
Ever tried moving Modx from one server to another, like dev to staging to live – good luck.
ModX puts its cache files in core – seriously!!! And then regularly refuses to clear them when you use the clear cache function. Oh and because of the way it caches things your PHP debugging becomes much harder as the PHP file that runs isn’t the one you wrote so your line numbers with your errors don’t correspond with what you were writting.
Sorry starting to rant!
After much experience with the above, use WordPress for smaller projects and Drupal for bigger ones, but as in all things evaluate what your project needs and choose the CMS that best addresses those needs.
I’ve been using Modx for at least 6 years now. You’d have to pry it from my cold dead hands. Modx has always complemented my projects as I most often find clients that want tools that go beyond the plugins you find in WP and Drupal. Rather than hack away at the CMS core, using Modx to build custom sites is quite elegant. It is way more stable than using a myriad of WP plugins and hoping the accompanying JS doesn’t cancel each other out. For the guy above that doesn’t understand the difference between chunks and snippets? …stick with WP buddy. LOL..
I’ve had the “pleasure” of working with WP sites and am only impressed with the ease of adding posts or installing a pre-built template. Moving a WP site to another host or domain just sucks. Why does WP index full URLs for photos? Unlike Stu above, I am able to move a website in modx considerably easier than WP, plugins or not.
I think the bottom line is this: if you are familiar with WP and you know the site you’re about to create can be done with a plugin or two, then go with it. Same for Drupal. But if you’re building out something other than a brochure with a signup list, Modx offers the most scalable and flexible environment possible. The community has never failed to respond quickly and reliably.
i choose wordpress, i think if every platforms have their vulnerability, but inform of open source, it will develops by itself
Some says MODX and most say wordrpess.I had better go with wordpress as I don’t have enough tech. skill.
A question to the experts-what skills do I need to continue with MODX?Thank you
The fact that, as you say, WordPress is commonly attacked by hackers, makes MODx our choice of CMS platform. In the same way PC’s are attacked more than Macs, because of the popularity of PC’s means they aren’t as safe to use as Macs unless you secure them. WordPress sites can also be secured, but most people don’t and that is why WordPress sites are such a big problem when it comes to hacking.
I do agree that MODx isn’t for the beginner though, and does require a lot more skill to set up than a WordPress does, which can be set up within a couple of minutes by a real novice.
I use Modx Revo for lower budget websites and ExpressionEngine for bigger budegts. I love Modx but the only drawbacks are slack slack slack documentation…why put so much work into an Extra and document it so poorly. Come on Modx wake up. WordPress just breaks my heart when I really need to customise. I actually built a large golfcourse website with Modx and Babel worked well for multi languange aspects . I also like being able to duplicate contexts and duplicate the navigation tree. It has many advantages navigation wise over ExpressionEngine. All said once u get used to Modx and figure out and experiment with the slack documentation it really does rock! Be willing to put in the time. WordPress is fine for small budget sites where client has basic needs.
One of the things about ModX is that it’s over-reliance on inline Snippet tags to generate content using a tag based structure and manually typed parameters, leaving a snippet prone to typo errors (eg. typing parameters wrongly). This is because Snippets are convenient to create, and many addon developers rely on these a lot.
Why not have metatagged/commented variables in a Snippet with some information on the variable type and possible values, allowing a standard ModX GUI to be hooked into every snippet? That way, a GUI could easily be plugged into the snippet system, allowing more user friendly drag-and-drop into post-box kind of functionality. Parameters like ‘docid’, ‘parents’,etc. could use a common GUI to select from existing ModX resources. It’s amazing that after all these years, people are still using primitive tag declarations and hand-coding the parameters manually within an HTML/Content document (without type-checking!), and for snippets with lots of parameters, you get a long string of parameter-dependant text!. I understand that having such a manually-typed-text system allows for flexibility, but if you adopted a metatag scanning system for Snippets (maybe even var documentation, though that might bloat snippet size so an external http link would be more reasonable for such a case), you still get flexibility, and manual text edits could be a last fallback. Likewise, Chunks should have a “Rollover it” to check what it outputs, rather than having to refer to the Chunks folder and wonder if anyone mistyped the chunk name. Why can’t there be broken links reported for chunks/snippets/snippet parameters too? Why can’t ModX resolve such links? Additionally, if certain parameters are no longer used in later versions of Snippets, the metavar tracking GUI system can give warnings on unused/redundant parameters within a Snippet tag. (eg. browsing a site while logged in developer/admin in a special mode could give warnings of pages with broken snippet/chunk links).
I find that WordPress has more user-friendly on-board plug-n-play features for generating common things like menus, galleries and such. Not so with ModX, which requires linking chunks with snippet declarations, and manually checking that your parameters are correct within a snippet call. Changing a chunk name doesn’t resolve any snippet parameter that may rely on that chunk by that name, without any form of binding between them. Thus, Modx can appear more ‘backward’, even if it’s deemed more ‘flexible’.
WordPress has a sidebar on the left for users that immediately want a “click to start application” kind of approach (Mac). Modx doesn’t, and assumes end-user admins are smart enough to navigate a folder structure, click on relavant parts, right-click and perform actions an experienced user should, following the system’s “convention” (Windows Explorer/Windows Shortcuts/DOS).
Good thing about Modx (in particular, Revolution) is that it has good built-in output filter capability to handle most use cases. Though at times, one may wish to simply just have PHP and hack their way in cases where Modx output filtering doesn’t seem sufficient enough, very seldom this is the case. Modx is a great tool for designers that don’t know much PHP, and don’t mind taking time to learn a tag-based structure (that may not necessarily be easier than PHP all the time, actually), but works quite well, providing a standardized, cleaner and far more dynamic content approach compared to writing templates with PHP codes found in Joomla and WordPress.
I like Modx , because it so easy to use for me. Creative freedom , and you can create your own style website. If you like some gallery or some plugins script, You can easily change the snippets in modx . It is so useful for me.