MODx – the best open-source CMS available?

Some background

Some years ago I found myself taking on a large web project, managing a web site with several hundred pages, edited by several people with little (if any) knowledge of HTML, and which needed a serious overhaul.  Initially I tried streamlining the process of dealing with all those static HTML files by creating a simple PHP framework to insert a common header and footer to each page, which significantly simplified the whole process of editing content.  However, it wasn’t long before I realised that a proper Content Management System was what the doctor ordered, and preferably one that was free.

So it was, then, that I started a little research into what CMSs were available, and tried out a few of the demo installations on www.opensourcecms.com.  There were a few that I had heard of, even back then, and which promised fantastic performance, easy-to-use interface, complete cusomisation, and more bells and whistles than you could shake a keyboard at.  Among those I tried were Joomla, Mambo, e107, EZ Publish and a few others.  Most turned out to be quite complex, and while they offered plenty of options for technical people I found them to be a little less friendly for people less web-savvy than I.  I eventually settled with Etomite, which didn’t offer quite so much in terms of bells and whistles, but which enabled rapid development through its simple templating system, and had such a simple back-end interface that I could satisfactorily introduce my client to it.

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