Moving to MODx

Last summer (2005) I wrote about my ideea to start developing on my own a new CMS or weblog. I started this project several times on my own because I did not had any help from anyone else. After my trip to Germany, I had to go back to school, then I started coding for a nice software, PHP Link Directory. Most of my free time I have invested in developing this software, it was my first chance to work on a big project, a very popular software, and somehow I had no time to get back to my own work. During this time, I tried several times to update my homepage, Frozenminds. I've never used a CMS or weblog on my page, I knew what I was in need of and tried Drupal, Wordpress, MovableType, Joomla, Typo3, Textpattern, Contrexx and many more.

Drupal had not that "something",Wordpress is a full weblog and for my needs I was looking for some sort of CMS. Same with MovableType, but much harder because it's written in Perl and I don't know much about that programming language. I am a PHP coder! Typo3 was my favorite software but definetly to heavy and to complex for my needs. I must admit, I did not payed to much attention to Textpattern and Contrexx. I've heared so much about Joomla, but it did not impressed me. Over and over again I had always the feeling that somehow my old and own backend was doing it's job very good. Then a friend of mine, Christian, sent me a link to MODx. After 5 or maybe 10 minutes I knew it was the right software for my homepage.

MODx is very simple, you don't need that much time to learn the software like for other backends I've tried in the past. There are a lot of plugins, mods and snippets available and with a minimum of coding skills you can change anything to fit your needs. What I like most on MODx is it's flexible and powerful API. It is user friendly, within minutes I was able to build everything accessible to almost anyone and the presentations will be much smooter and nicer with AJAX.