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For creating common user modifiable site I've been forcing Wordpress to do the work of a CMS. It's worked and the back-end is purdy but it's just too hacky for my tastes. So I'd like a simple CMS that is easy to customize and add dynamic content to.

Right now it looks like modx is my best bet. I've tried Joomla a while ago but it was a real pain to customize and the back-end was not intuitive.

Basic requirements:

  • Free
  • Runs under PHP5
  • Easy to customize
  • Easy for content authors
  • Easy to add dynamic content

If it doesn't have these, then I doubt it's more fit than modx.

donut
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3 Answers3

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I'm a huge fan of modx, I don't have much to add other than to say if you are happy with modx and it does what you need then stick with it.

I just haven't come across anything as easy to use for a developer. The template system, ease of creating your own snippets if you can't find what you need already, everything just seems to fit from a developers point of view.

I have also had no trouble training clients to use it.

The main problem with modx for me is that I haven't really been impressed with any shopping carts/store solutions for modx yet, but I guess it depends on what kind of site you want to make.

Fishcake
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  • Thanks for the advice. I haven't actually used modx in the past, but it was recommended to me by someone who hasn't used it himself. It's good to hear from someone who's actually used it. – donut Jan 20 '10 at 06:54
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    So I've decided to go with modx and so far am very impressed. Seems to be significantly faster than Wordpress and so far has been very flexible template-wise. Specifically, I'm using MODx Evolution 1.0. Thanks again! – donut Jan 26 '10 at 07:50
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    Recently I've been doing research on ecommerce solutions...ranging from ecommerce packages to cms + addon. The folks at FoxyCart really love ModX. There's a basic tutorial here http://www.my619.com/foxy-cart-modx-tutorial-1 . The guy kind of goes pretty fast, but it gives a good idea of the integration. Also, here are more tutorials, http://wiki.foxycart.com/v/0.6.0/screencasts, on FoxyCart in general. Seems like a good ecommerce solution. – milesmeow Mar 28 '11 at 03:24
  • @Milesmeow I've recently been using Vision Cart and so far I'm impressed by what I've seen. http://www.visioncart.net/ – Fishcake Mar 28 '11 at 09:59
  • how easy/quick would be for a medior php developer to get ahold of the modx basics? – Spaceploit Nov 28 '16 at 05:47
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i can recommend frog cms http://www.madebyfrog.com/ it's a copy of radiant cms (which is running on ruby/rails, see http://www.radiantcms.org/)

z3cko
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  • I just checked it out. It's really nice and simple. I love how straightforward the back-end is and it looks like the templating system makes things easy on the developer. Unfortunately, I need something like template-specific variables that the content author can change, including file upload. I looked through the plugins but couldn't find anything that would suffice. Did I miss anything? – donut Jan 19 '10 at 08:06
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Have a look at this http://php.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=9&cat=Lite The list contains very lite php opensource CMS, most of them dont even use a database. You can go through the demo of these and pick the one you like.

shikhar
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