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What's MODX & Evolution CMS and why I love it

Since it’s initial release, people have installed MODX millions of times. Here is why.

Creative/Coding Freedom

To put it simple, MODX and Evolution CMS are a "Creative/Coding Freedom" which can be described as:

Being able to write code with as little restriction as possible from a coding environment or framework.

Benjamin Davis, SEDA.digital

Why it’s awesome

Zack Wallace summed it up pretty good:

MODX is something of a power user’s CMS. Out of the box you get a blank template to design with, and hundreds of settings to change how things work. There are no wizards, drag and droppers, menu builders, widget organizers, template settings, strange forced file system hierarchy structures or magic functions to throw everywhere.

I was hunting for a CMS some years ago as a means of converting some older, hand-coded sites into a CMS. Nothing I found made this very easy without a lot of tweaking and learning complex template structures. When I installed MODX, there was this link to "BaseTemplate"; I pasted my HTML in there, and it just worked, no fuss no muss, as they say, and nothing broke.

In fact, if you’re typically a hand coder, MODX may be the best CMS for you. The learning curve to creating hand-coded websites is extremely small.

When you want to develop multi-language, multi-site websites with separate paywalled content and a customized manager for your clients, then you’ll experience what MODX can do!

Zack Wallace

Features

  • Extremely flexible
  • Safe & secure
  • Open source
  • Easy to use
  • Small learning curve
  • Can be integrated into existing workflows
  • Separation of presentation and content
  • Delivers any markup needed in any form required to the browser
  • Content Management System and Framework (CMS/CMF)
  • Developer has 100% control of code output
  • Easy to extend with new features
  • International community, meetups, events

Complete creative freedom

MODX helps create simply robust sites, on the lines of exactly how you want them to look. With almost zero creative restrictions.

Search Engine Optimization

Allows you to exercise complete control on the output obtained with practically no effort. With MODX you work with HTML and with as many custom variables for the site as you require. In minutes you may build a site that performs amazingly well in Search Engines and making tweaks is just a few clicks away.

Safe & Secure

MODX takes security seriously. The team constants work on rigorously/ continuously on audits and feedback received such that there is up to date content and provision of regular patches on issues that may arise.

Add-ons

There are hundreds of add-ons available for Evolution CMS and MODX.

OK, but why it's so different?

What differs MODX and Evolution CMS from most of „main stream” Content Management Systems is that it gives you 100% control of everything, from back to front and it just make sense from the begining.

Also, Evolution is lightweight and takes very little hosting resources. It's blazing fast!

For front-end developers, the biggest benefit is that your markup is separated from the logic - you can build complex, bespoke sites without touching PHP most of the time.

You create all the options for the backend while specifying your own terminology, customizing what the users see while adding new content. Evolution and Revolution offers solutions for all types of online applications, not just small blogs or simple websites.

For example, while WordPress is built around simple text pages, blog articles and heavily depends on additional plugins, MODX and Evolution CMS are built around resources that can range from weblinks, CSS, XML, PDF, and practically any type of file output used for online data.

Since blogs aren't the only part of the website that needs updating or customizing, training non-developers in WordPress can take a bit more to comprehend, especially when websites begin to become more and more complex.

So, why I use MODX and Evolution CMS?

The answer is simple. Years of web development showed that Evolution CMS and MODX Revolution does extremely well job in delivering clients fast, easy to use and reliable tool for managing content of their web sites. From small to big. From simple to complex. Evolution CMS and MODX Revolution get the job done.

Check also "MODX Revolution and Evolution CMS - two products, one philosophy" article!

More resources:

Sources:

evo, modx