People Get Touchy When You Talk CMS
Recently Glen Stansberry did a post on the popular Nettuts website about the 10 most usable Content Management Solutions. In his post he chose Wordpress as the top CMS, which wasn’t a huge surprise to me because I love Wordpress already, but it wasn’t the CMS’s that he mentioned or how he ranked them in terms of usability that generated the most commentary, it was the CMS that he excluded that raised the biggest stink…
In case you didn’t see the post, you can read it here, be sure to checkout the comments below mentioning the exclusion of MODx. Also, here’s how the CMS’s were ranked according to usability:
There are plenty of options when it comes to picking a content management system for a development project. Depending on how advanced you need the CMS to be, what language it’s built in, and who is going to be using it, it can be a nightmare trying to find the "perfect" CMS for a project.
However, some CMSs have a slight edge over the rest of the competition because of the usability of the software. Some are just easier to install, use and extend, thanks to some thoughtful planning by the lead developers. Here are 10 of the most usable CMSs on the web to use in your next project.
- Wordpress
- Drupal
- Joomla
- ExpressionEngine
- TextPattern
- RadiantCMS
- CushyCMS
- SilverStripe
- Alfresco
- TYPOlight
Personally, I was surprised to see MODx excluded from this list as well, I don’t see it outranking Wordpress in terms of usability, I can walk a client through the management of their Wordpress site in a few minutes over the phone while watching a football game on television, but I do see MODx as being a more viable solution than some of the CMS’s mentioned.
In fact, there are a few solutions mentioned here that I have heard very little about. I hang out with a lot of developers at events like Central Arkansas Refresh and I can honestly say that no one has ever mentioned running some of these solutions.
One thing that I did like from this list was the dominance of PHP/MySQL based solutions.
MODx Revolution 2.0.0 Beta2 Released
My partner Greg will probably blog about this a lot more on his blog because he primarily handles all of our MODx projects as to where I handle most of our Wordpress projects. Not having worked with MODx very much I am still impressed with all that it brings to the table in terms of rapid deployment and content management.
If you are looking for a good enterprise level content management system there are several of them out there, Drupal, Joomla, and even Wordpress has enterprise level applications these days, but for us MODx has been a great platform for us to build upon. We recommend it highly whenever we talk with other developers and one of the things that we like about it the most is that it is supported by a highly active community of developers. The activity in the support forum at MODx is unlike anything you have ever seen tied to open source software.
If you are already familiar with MODx, here’s a short list of the improvements / new functionality that makes up Revolution 2.0.0.
- Manager upgraded to ExtJS 3.0 from 2.2; now faster and more responsive.
- You now can drag/drop Elements and Resources directly into any content field and watch as it builds the tag for you.
- We’ve added a Visual Tag Builder for Elements, where after drag/dropping them into fields, you can select a Property Set and customize values from a form, and watch it build the tag syntax for you after you’re done.
- Now you can Quick Update or Create any type of Element or Resource. Don’t want to leave a page to update another Document? Quick Update it!
- Toggle your Manager layout between tab-based and portal based with a setting.
- Speed improvements to the backend manager.
- Fixed issues with uninstalling packages; they properly revert and save zipped copies of older versions.
- Package Download section now grays out packages you’ve already downloaded.
- Manage all Plugins assigned to an Event now easily from an intuitive grid.
- Added new methods for zip compression for installation and packaging that speeds up install time.
- Many, many bug fixes across the framework
As soon as I get caught up on a few projects I have going on I plan on spending some time getting acquainted with it on one of our sandbox environments.
Update: This just goes to show the response time that all of the people surrounding the MODx project have regarding support, etc. I just posted this blog post on my blog and walked to the kitchen to get a bottle of water. When I returned I already had a comment waiting on me from Shaun with Collabpad. Here’s what he had to say regarding the beta 3 release:
You might want to check out 2.0-beta-3. There was an important security fix in beta3 that we recommend users upgrade to.
Thanks for the article! We’re glad you like MODx, and hope you enjoy the future of MODx in Revolution. Feel free to leave us feedback and suggestions for Revolution on our forums (they are super active! it’s crazy!)
Critch on Drupal Security / PCI Compliance
Resident Server Administrator and all around Linux Guru, Matt Critcher, recently posted an entry on his blog about Drupal Security and PCI compliance. Matt has been running Drupal on his site for a while now and it seems to be working out well for him. I always look to Matt for security issues because he has an enormous knowledgebase between his ears when it comes to that sort of thing.
Making your website secure is one thing, but going the extra mile and making it PCI compliant is another thing. In the past I have recommended PCI Compliance only to our clients that do e-commerce, or gather sensitive client data, but it’s rapidly becoming a buzzword in the industry. I first learned about it in 2006 at a conference we attended in Las Vegas.
My business partners and I even partnered with HackerSafe, now owned by Mcafee, to sell PCI compliance solutions and certification to our clients back in 2006. If you are interested in learning more about PCI compliance or securing your website, be sure to give us a shout.
This site is running in a CMS called Drupal. It, like most CMS systems, allows users to easily create, edit, and delete content and manage many features of a website. But, like most, it is not without a few security flaws. Me, being a geek, and having more than a passing interest in security, decided to try to make this site a little more secure, and possibly even PCI Compliant.
It is possible to make Drupal PCI Compliant, but it takes a little work. Now, for the record I don’t have nor do I collect data that falls under this standard, but some people do, and some run Drupal. There’s not much information about the subject on the net, so I figure it’s worth writing about. But be warned that there is a trade-off. By default, Drupal is set up to be more convenient for its users. Putting these modifications in place will make you login EVERY time you close your browser window. To me, that’s not a problem. I actually prefer that to be the case. Others, well, you may not like it as much. YMMV.
First thing that you need to do is to force Drupal to use HTTPS for login. There are tutorials all over the net on how to install mod_ssl or Apache-SSL and configure it for HTTPS traffic, which is a pre-requisite for this. There is currently no drupal module that does just this, but you can get around it using .htaccess. In the root of your website, put the following somewhere in the .htaccess file
You can read the rest of Matt’s post here: Making Drupal More Secure | www.mcritch.com
Projects: BacasMD.com
Greg Smart, Partner and Co-Founder of Pleth Networks, LLC announced Wednesday that his firm had lanched BacasMD.com for Bacas Interventional Pain Management, a Texas-based health care provider.
Bacas treats pain through comprehensive rehabilitation programs and patient education measures to help prevent future injuries. With multiple locations and flexible scheduling, Bacas offers many convenient appointment options. For additional information about Bacas, click here.
The Bacas website was designed and coded by Pleth, LLC and our strategic partner Powell Creative provided graphic design. The website is built upon the popular ModX php/mysql framework and features a robust content management solution for future scalability.
BACAS Interventional Pain Management
Pleth Launches UACCB Redesign
My partners and I couldn’t be happier about the recent launch of the newly redesigned website for the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville. UACCB approached us a while back to develop a redesign for their existing website and they had a pretty clear direction that they wanted to take the website.
My partner Greg took the lead on this project and did an awesome job! He worked closely with UACCB’s newly formed website committee to hammer out the mechanics of the website and with some of our strategic partners who assisted with project management and to content development. Select Shots, a Batesville area photography studio provided photography for the project. To preview the website, please visit http://www.uaccb.edu or click on the screenshot below.
Please note that we will post a formal press release for the media and on our corporate website in the very near future.
University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville | Home
MODx CMS Groups…
I have started seeing a lot of MODx Groups starting to form on various social networks out there. Jay Gilmore, a developer from Canada, has been making his rounds getting the word out about MODx and setting up these user groups, he’s doing an excellent job! Today alone I have seen MODx groups forming on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo Pulse.
If you aren’t familiar with MODx, it’s an open source PHP Application Framework that helps you take control of your online content. It empowers developers and advanced users to give as much control as desired to whomever they desire for day-to-day website content maintenance chores. I have blogged about MODx a few times on here and a lot more information can be found on my partner Greg’s blog about MODx and our experiences with it.
It’s great to see these communities starting to form across the social landscape because with open-source software, the one way to insure that it’s going to grow and thrive is for it to have a large community of supporters backing it’s development and overall direction…
MODx PHP Application Framework.
I am a visual learner so whenever I have a new technology that I want to get up to speed on I usually turn to YouTube. YouTube is not only the best place on the web to find off the wall videos of folks blowing things up in their backyards, it’s also a great resource for boring training videos! I have used it quite extensively to get up to speed on various aspects of PHP and MYSQL programming in the past. Since my partner Greg and I are digging into the MODx CMS pretty heavy I figured I would get on YouTube and see what’s out there, I was surprised, there’s quite a bit of stuff available, here’s a sampler:
If you are wanting to see all that YouTube has for MODx, click here…
MODx Content Management System
My partner Greg Smart and I have been evaluating the MODx CMS on a couple of our clients websites. So far we have really liked the framework. Greg has spent a considerable amount of time working with it, a lot more than I have but I plan on getting into it a little more this week. I am creating a category on my blog to discuss my findings related to MODx. If you have used MODx before or are curious about it, please don’t hesitate to jump in on the dialog with us…
MODx Content Management System | Home
MODx, the Most Promising Open Source CMS
In case you are wondering why we are embarking on our quest to learn the ins and outs of MODx CMS here at Pleth, I figured I would shed a little light on the subject for you.
In the past we have used a few different CMS applications for our clients projects. Our first venture into the CMS world was with my good friend Chris Leed’s project, www.contentseed.com, which is an inline cms written in php and also available in asp if I am not mistaken. It’s a very simple to use CMS that doesn’t take a whole lot of client training. With that being said, Content Seed is primarily suited for smaller projects in my opinion and not really for larger sites that consist of a few hundred "heavy" pages. I prefer to use Content Seed on sites that have like 10 or 15 editable pages at the most, this allows the end-user the ability to have total control over their site content without having to learn a more extensive system.
Our second venture down the CMS road to heartache came with interspire’s Webedit product. This product looked very promising at first but later we would learn that it had it’s quirks and wasn’t able to stand up to rigorous editing. The editor that’s built into Webedit would even go as far as to strip away tags in the code and totally delete page content when the end-user would go in to make a routine edit. Our frustrations grew even more when time after time the support team at Interspire was unable to help us resolve the issue. Not that they didn’t try, I have had several really intense support tickets with them and they tried really hard to get the issue resolved but were unable. I add this to my review of the product because I don’t want anyone who is considering an Interspire product to get the wrong idea, these guys do some great work and also support their stuff very well, we just seemed to be the exception of the rule. I also want to state for the record that I have a few clients that are still running the webedit product and have never had a moments problem with it.
ModX is a solution that Greg happened upon and he and I have both taken a liking it to it real quick. We have it running on a few of our larger "enterprise" level websites and have been amazed at how "stable" it has been. Our support time with the clients that are running it has been cut down dramatically and we feel pretty good about bringing it to the table on future developments now as a result!
Just a little more information about MODx, it was voted as the "Most Promising Open Source CMS" of 2007 at the CMS Awards. That’s saying a lot, there are a ton of open source CMS applications out there… Here’s a blog entry detailing their CMS Award Win…
MODx Content Management System | MODx, the Most Promising Open Source Content Management System
Content Management System – Modx
My business partner Greg has summed up our CMS woes in a recent blog post that can be found here, basically after however many years of business we have been developing websites we still have found ourselves pretty disgusted with 3rd party CMS applications that are on the market. We have many conversations back and forth about what exactly is needed in a good CMS, Greg also posted an entry that can be found here with some pretty good ideas…
A few weeks ago we stumbled across Modx, a PHP Application Framework that serves as a CMS. This 3rd party (open-community) application probably offers the biggest glimmer of hope that we have found in a while. My one position all along is that “no matter what we go with, it needs to be a database driven application instead of a web-based html editor”, it’s just one of those things that I have felt in my gut. Here is a little bit of information about Modx that I have found…
MODx is an open source PHP Application Framework that helps you take control of your online content. It empowers developers and advanced users to give as much control as desired to whomever they desire for day-to-day website content maintenance chores.
MODx is 100% buzzword compliant, and makes child’s play of building content managed sites with validating, accessible CSS layouts – hence Ajax CMS. It empowers its users to build engaging “Web 2.0″ sites today, with its pre-integrated MooTools, Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries. If you’re a CSS designer or Ajax aficionado, this is the CMS for you; and if you like what you see today, you’ll love what’s coming.
Techies call MODx a Content Management Framework (“CMF“): equal parts custom web app builder and Content Management System (“CMS“). With a flexible API and a robust event override system, MODx makes building engaging web projects straightforward — or changing core functionality without hacking the core code possible. Custom tweaks won’t leave you pulling out your hair when it’s time to upgrade.
Not only does MODx help you build sites quickly, but it also is both robust and simple. As far as end-users know, MODx is just an easy-to-use online application; for developers there’s freely available resources and a fantastic end-user community.
One factor that I really like about Modx is that it appears to be pretty SEO friendly. As you know a lot of database driven applications aren’t search engine friendly, this one appears to be promising in that respect. Who is using Modx? It appears that Modx has gathered a pretty large community of developers that are contributing application plugins and post deployment hacks that work very well. Modx also appears to be pretty consistent when it comes to usability and standards compliant issues. Here’s a quick features list that’s pretty impressive…
Strong Web Standards Support – MODx does not force you into awkward and confusing blocks-this or channels-that templating engines or layout rules. You can build XHTML 1.1 Strict sites just as easily as a tag-soup laden table layout. MODx is the dream CMS for CSS designers. Web 2.0 Features (yes, that means Ajax) – MODx is the first free PHP CMS to offer an API that fully supports Web 2.0 Ajax technology thanks to MooTools. Expect to see this grow more and more into our manager over time, but you can make use of it today in your own custom applications including live search, web effects, Ajax communications and more. PHP Application Framework – a flexible API and a event model that allows to override how the core behaves means that you get both tremendous flexibility, but also the ability to customize the solution to your needs and a simple upgrade path. Works in your favorite browser – and yes that means Safari! You can manage your websites from anywhere in the world with an internet connection and IE 5.5+, Safari 1.3+, Firefox 1.0+. Graphical Installer – it’s now easier for less experienced users to get up and running fast with a step-by-stop online installer. Improved Rich Text Editors – All MODx RTEs are optional plug-ins, making for a smaller base download. TinyMCE ships out of the box. Adding new RTEs to MODx is simple with FCKeditor available now as an optional download and Textile, Markdown and widgEditors on their way. Better handling of aliases and menu indexes – Search Engine Friendly aliases are automatically created from the page titles and the system will check for alias conflicts before saving a page. Reordering your pages with Ajax-enabled drag and drop indexing. Robust CSS Menu Builder – Menus made from ULs are ready to go out of the box. Whether you want something simple as a bulleted list for a sidebar or as complex as Big John’s deluxe menus complete with CSS “hover zones”, MODx has you covered. Improved Meta-tag and keywords controls – consider MODx your #1 free Search Engine Optimization CMS. MODx helps your SEO efforts by making it easier to adjust meta-content of your site on a per-page basis. Separate Manager and Web User sessions – simplify your testing and development workflow. Improved Document Parser and Error handling – build better custom applications with a more robust API and greatly improved error handling and reporting inside the manager. Custom Content Types – use MODx documents to manage your linked Style Sheets, Images and Javascript. Transform them into XML, PDF, Excel or Word documents with snippets and this handy new feature. Bug fixes and usability tweaks – a more polished and robust product, bringing us to the home stretch to the official project launch and 1.0 release.
There is also a lot of other features that are apparently in development right now that will be released later but honestly just looking at our client list that relies on CMS I feel like their requirements are already addressed under the current features list.
The past few weekends I have spent a lot of time looking into this solution and am anxious to start deploying it on some of our clients projects down the road.
