There are plenty of content management comparison blog posts and and quite a few between MODX and Wordpress and, at the risk of just adding to the noise, here is another one!
I have never made it a secret that I am a huge, huge, huge MODX fan and I have joked and scoffed at Wordpress in the past, but actually it is a very good system and hugely popular. In fact I use both these systems for different projects depending on functionality and requirements. This blog post will hopefully provide some pointers on why you might choose either system. People come at web design from different angles – designers, hobbyists, developers etc. and what suits one set might not be the best solution for another.
FOR DEVELOPERS
For web developers MODX is a dream to use. Its tag line “creative freedom” is a perfect description for the experience. Its use of template variables, chunks and snippets is perfect for separating and organising content from logic and building intuitive editable pages. Everything is customisable and for our clients this can only be a good thing. We can build solutions that are tailor made for client requirements as well as scalable for elements they may wish to add at a later date. Wordpress in contrast works a little differently - rather than editing templates through the dashboard they are in separate php files and there is less natural separation from logic and content. It always feels a little more like you are hacking Wordpress around when you want to add some custom functionality and organising code feels a bit more messy.
Winner - MODX is perfect for developers to create fantastic sites and editable interfaces.
FOR DESIGNERS AND HOBBYISTS
I am sure that much of Wordpress’ popularity is due to its ease of use and quick set up. If you are a designer or a website hobbyist and don’t particularly want to get your hands dirty in code then Wordpress is probably going to be your choice. The hundreds of plugins that are available to install means that you will probably find something that provides you with the added functionality you need. If you have a little bit of CSS knowledge you can quite easily download a theme and tweak the stylesheets. In contrast it is pretty much impossible to build a site in MODX without getting involved in code. If you are purely designing for MODX (for someone else to build) designing for MODX is a dream because you really are designing without worrying about the CMS restricting you.
Winner - Wordpress snatches this one, simply because with very limited skills you can probably build something reasonable with just a little CSS/HTML knowledge. You can always add ‘out of the box’ functionality with downloadable plugins. It is quick to theme and easy to use.
FOR WEB EDITORS
When building a website its really important to consider the people who are responsible for editing the site on a daily basis. An intuitive, well designed backend is really important and on the whole, both MODX and Wordpress succeed in this. Many of the default features are similar - well laid out dashboards, the ability to publish/unpublish documents, intuitive text editors etc. I find that Wordpress tends to handle media a little cleaner (uploading images, video etc) but MODX is perfectly adequate. Design often comes down to personal preference but I generally prefer the look of the Wordpress dashboard - it feels cleaner, brighter and perhaps a little less intimidating whereas MODX feels a little bit ‘2005’ in its design. That being said MODX does have one key feature and that is the document tree.
The document tree as you would expect is the expandable tree which shows the structure of your site and you can easily drag and drop documents around. Clicking on the documents will open up the editor panel. For a small site I find Wordpress’ layout to be fine, but for larger sites the document tree comes into it’s own and really helps you visualise the order of your pages and documents.
Winner - Although I prefer the overall look of Wordpress , MODX just edges it because of the document tree.
FOR BLOGGING
Right from its beginnings Wordpress was designed primarily as a blogging tool. Since version 1.5 Wordpress developed into a more rounded CMS tool but blogging still feels at the heart of what it is about. WordPress by default still feels like it is set up with blogging at the centre of its design. It’s default template includes a main content area and a sidebar which you can pack full of widgets and snippets of code which are ideal for blogging. Wordpress gives you plenty of options to categorise, tag, sort and archive your posts and it does very well.
MODX in contrast was never built around a blogging system, in fact it wasn’t until late 2011 that it had a dedicated blogging extra you could download. That said extra (called Articles) is actually a very good tool, it’s easy to install but as with most things with MODX it takes a little more knowledge if you want to do something a bit more custom with it and you will need to style it up of course. Articles doesn’t come with all the ‘plug and play’ widgets that Wordpress does and adding extra sidebar content requires you to edit the template code. I do also find it slightly odd that Articles doesn’t have a standard categories option, you have to build that functionality in yourself.
In most cases people wanting to set up a blog do so because they want to spend their time writing and creating content, not developing and getting stuck into code. For this reason I would probably recommend Wordpress for pure blogging sites. There are many good blog themes available to download and so if you are looking at getting a blog set up quickly Wordpress is your friend. This very blog however is built in MODx and Articles is still a very good blogging tool.
CONCLUSION
It’s safe to say that both MODX and Wordpress are excellent open source CMS solutions and we are happy to use them both. For the majority of sites both systems are probably more than capable of handling the job. However, in my opinion there are certain things that both systems are better at. If you are looking at building a more custom site, or a site with more complicated layouts then MODX is always my preference, whereas, if you are perhaps less of a developer or looking to set up a quick site or blog yourself then Wordpress is always going to be a great bet.
As both developers and designers we tend to choose MODX as our preference for most projects as we love the freedom and power it gives us and our clients. If you are a developer or have a little bit more knowledge or time to learn some code I strongly recommend giving MODX a go with your next project. There might be a small learning curve (not too steep!) but the community is excellent in advising. I am confident you will love it and wont want to go back!
