The best CMS for professional web designer

It is just amazing! I am on cloud nine! Splendid CMS. Spectacular Service. Gorgeous! Dazzling! Fantastic!

Pros

It is the best lightweight CMS. Google PageSpeed Insights skyrocketed on my website with this MODX. It is almost perfection. Secure, trustworthy, ideal for any web developer who wants to innovate. It is easy to customize, modify for your personal needs, and manage on any good, reliable hosting. I cannot imagine any other CMS which could have replaced this one. I am quite a fussy, picky, choosy and troublesome web site administrator, content creator and something like web-developer, so I have spent 2 years to choose the best of the best CMS for my projects and when I have found this one, tried out it myself, created several webpages with using this CMS, I insisted my web designer use only MODX. It is born to inspire! Innovative. Inspiring. Intelligent. Indispensable. Incentive.Impressive.

Cons

For comfortable using this CMS you need to choose a good server and hosting. If you choose an improper, unsuitable hosting, you will have serious problems in the near future.

A great tool for anything from small utilities and APIs to larger multi-language communities

I've used it for projects for at least 6 years or so. Anything from a single-page utility to standard websites with custom coded features. There are so many abilities and features that get way more advanced than I've ever needed, with the intense security permissions system to multi-context/multi-domain sites, and more. I have an appreciation for the product and want to see it continue to succeed, and the core people and community that keep it going are some of the best folks around!

Pros

Their slogan "creative freedom" means you are not saddled with a ton of auto-magical output that you don't have control over. You can be in charge of every bit of code and markup that your site produces. MODX is better described as a Content Management Framework (CMF) rather than a CMS. It is better suited for developers to use in creating fully custom designs, rather than out-of-the-box templates. If I need to build something fully custom and want to build from scratch, I choose MODX.

Cons

As of this writing, MODX 3 has not been released, but it will address almost anything I could put here. The biggest problem for a lot of people is being stuck on an older version of ExtJS. Updating that library would break a lot of 3rd party plugins, and there is debate about whether to keep using it anyway. Also it can be daunting to build custom backend admin pages, but there is work to make this easier, it's also partially due to the learning curve of ExtJS. It doesn't yet have a built-in core feature for self-updating. There are 3rd party tools to help update though so this is a minor thing. The addon library is not massive, and there are certainly some older and outdated, or even abandoned plugins. This is not a huge issue due to the fact that plugins are little more than some PHP functions or a class or two, they tend to be super robust and long-lived by their nature, not having to rely on constant changing theme frameworks and other foundational issues.

I had to use it

If you're working strictly on a template, then you're good. Not a flexible UI at all.

Pros

It does what it supposed to but it just seems outdated.

Cons

It was difficult to use. There just way better options out there.

MODX is Awesome

Ignore the reviews that say things like "all the plugins are full of bugs", "it's impossible to connect to payment systems", "it can't be easily customized", and "not good for complex sites". These are simply untrue. I've tried many, many CMSs over the years, and once I tried MODX Revolution, my search was over. I've had very few problems with plugins over the years, and authors are generally responsive to bug fix requests. I do tend to write my own plugins, though, because it's so easy. The site manager screens are highly customizable. Create new tabs with custom fields arranged the way you want them. You can show or hide any of the standard fields. Set up a permissions systems and serve completely different admin screens to different users. I can create editing screens with tabs to manage complex data. In Wordpress, this would be a mess. ExtJS does have a learning curve, but most people don't seem to know that you don't have to use it to create your own plugin admin screens. I create plugins using plain old PHP and HTML. It works great, and I've added countless custom admin screens this way to manage extremely complicated data setups. I've created connections to all sorts of payment systems like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, etc. It's a breeze to embed third-party shopping systems like Ecwid, FoxyCart and others. And, if you need a completely native store setup, the new plugin "Commerce" is great and has connections to many standard payment gateways built in.

Pros

MODX is endlessly flexible, and easier to plug in custom code than any other platform I've used. There is a sizable library of plugins — not huge like Wordpress for example, but they are generally well written and secure. The MODX community is a great source of help, tricks, and tips. It's very easy to add your own PHP code and plugins. You can set up a site to be edited solely through the standard MODX admin area, or completely on the front end using the plugin FRED. MODX works for everything simple information-only sites to multilingual sites with thousands of pages (I know because I've created these). It has an excellent caching system built-in. MODX has its own API language for programming, but it's pretty intuitive. It didn't take me long to be able to use it effectively, and there is excellent documentation available. I can transfer a normal MODX site to a different server and domain name in about 15 minutes. The fine-grained permissions system lets me give access to specific parts of a site to different users. The core MODX programmers and very responsive to requests and are actively updating, debugging, and adding new features all the time. MODX is the most secure platform I've tried. There are various security features built into the core code. I've only experienced one exploited vulnerability in the past 8 years, and that was rapidly patched by the MODX team. No bloated code gets inserted anywhere in pages, only the code I specifically want.

Cons

If you're looking for a plug-and-play CMS, this isn't it. There ARE some themes available at ThemeForest and other places, so if one of those works for you, great. But in general, MODX is best for custom work. In the past, the site manager was kind of slow, but in 2019 that's no longer generally the case, so this is no longer a negative for me.

Oh my goodness, MODX how I love thee, let me count the ways

Over nine years experience using MODX and would not trade it for the world. We love MODX, the community and stability of the platform.

Pros

I've been using MODX for more than 9 years. It is BY FAR the best CMS/CMF that I've EVER used. However, that comes with a nice, juicy grain of salt. I have the pleasure of working with a team that has dived head-first into MODX and has learned it inside and out. We KNOW MODX. We extend MODX daily and use it for all kinds of things, regular simple marketing sites, eCommerce, higher-functioning websites, web apps, and even as a headless css with custom API. It's secure, flexible and can handle ANYTHING we throw at it.

Cons

If you're not a developer (either backend or frontend) you're going to have a hard time. MODX is NOT for those who are used to the relative simplicity of something like WordPress. And to be honest, that's for the best. MODX allows you to design and build whatever you want, keep it optimized and secure... BUT, if you're looking to just customize a theme, modx would NOT be a good fit