Is Modx3 still being developed?

General
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Hi there, does anyone have any news regarding Modx3?

The last update I found is from March 2019.

I mean absolutely no disrespect, but Modx manager is really starting to show it’s age and lacks basic features ( for eg. Search system for pages or chunks ).

Yes, Modx is very secure, I won’t deny that, especially the advance install. But have you tried Gutenberg for Wordpress ? It’s really amazing, even if you don’t like Wordpress…

I’m not writing this post to rant or anything, but I am actually worried, I have few websites using Modx, and I am starting to consider moving to another CMS (mainly because of the lack of updates and new features).

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Hi @carlo_13,

It’s on alpha2 at the moment and almost to beta. But yeah, it’s definitely taken a lot longer than expected. There have been some huge fundamental changes in the code base in order to modernise it.

I’m not sure what you mean about the search though, that’s been a part of the manager for a long time. Just click the search icon up the top left and type. It will display any resources, elements (chunks, snippets etc.), or users that match.

I’ve used Gutenberg; I know it had a lot of backlash from the Wordpress community when it first came out but I think it was a wise move giving much more customisability than just a TinyMCE editor.
MODX has two different systems that are comparable to Gutenberg which are actually more customisable but they do depend on your taste I suppose.

Content Blocks by modmore is an excellent premium extra which works in the manager and can do what Gutenberg can, plus anything else you configure or build into it.

There is also Fred the Front-end Editor or Friendly Editor if you will.
Fred is a free extra which works mostly outside of the manager and you actually edit the page directly on the web context. It’s also highly customisable and you can choose how much of the page you make editable for your clients.
https://fred.modx.com/

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MODX3.org is a community website that represented a community initiative for the release of MODX 3 and that website and it’s content was managed outside of MODX.com,

MODX 3 is actively being worked on. You can follow remaining PRs submitted for MODX 3 and progress as it happens for an Alpha 3 and soon a Beta. We recently posted how people can help test and evaluate some of the contributions to help get MODX 3 out. You can read more about it on the official MODX blog.

If you want to try out MODX 3 as it stands today, just ask for a trial to MODX Cloud and we have the alpha available there for you.

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For more sophisticated searches (including Regex searches) in the MODx Manger, there is CustomSearch (Price is for one person, but unlimited sites).

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It would be nice to see a drum up to MODX3 to get the excitement going. I struggle to find any relevant information on what MODX3 is bringing to the table in terms of features that make it better than the current stable version of MODX, it’s USP or why we should be using it over other CMS’s that are available.

People need a good reason to donate their time and get involved.

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I totally agree with you, there is a lack of communication. Problem is, I don’t really have time to check the updates on Github and Slack to see what is going on.

A good example would be Bootstrap’s blog: https://blog.getbootstrap.com ( ok, maybe the music videos are a bit cheesy :laughing: ) but you know what to expect. The articles are clear and detailed.

Another thing that would be great: ask the Modx community opinion (even here on the forum): What features we would like to see in version 3?

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I’m pretty much past caring about topics like this, even with “I mean absolutely no disrespect”, topics like these suck pointless energy from the few people that are actually trying to make things happen. Every free minute one of those people spends on writing up what’s available on github to another platform, is a free minute not spend on the actual work.

And I do mean free - the few people that work on MODX3 largely do so in their own personal unpaid time alongside a regular job, families, and dealing with a global pandemic.

Want to see MODX3 quicker? Then find a way to pitch in.

Don’t ask what you can do, as that again only takes time from people who already struggle for time, but find something that matches your skillset and just start doing it. The MODX project does not have a top-down organisational structure, everyone just pitches in.

Wether you’re testing, documenting, writing up forum/blog posts about recent improvements, funding the developers doing the work, or doing actual code work yourself: those are actually meaningful to help move MODX3 into beta. Don’t say you don’t have time while expecting others to do all those things.

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I probably should not have locked the topic earlier - didn’t mean to silence anyone or prevent a discussion. But I do hope that my point comes across that topics like this have an actual negative impact because they drain energy that’s already in short supply. To change that, more people need to take action, and not rely solely on the few people already doing what they can. There’s enough on their shoulders already. Don’t complain - well intentioned or not - but step up if you want more progress.

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There is a nice extra called ModDevTools that offers search & replace functionality through chunks and all.
It shows the path of your current resource as well, which is really neat when you have lots of resources.

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This makes it sound like the project is now limping along and nearly dead. Perhaps it needs some cheerleaders or something. I’m not sure how a system like Wordpress keeps its volunteer participation level high.

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Do you genuinely think there’s a fair comparison to be made with a community led by a company that has seen $617 million in funding, has 1200 employees and a 30% share of the entire CMS market?

I’m not saying we’re doing everything right and there’s nothing we can learn from them or other open source communities, but they operate on a vastly different scale.

What did I say that led you to that conclusion? If it’s the part that the few people who work on MODX do so largely in their own time, then MODX has been dead for over a decade as it has always been that way.

The only thing new here is a pandemic (and family expansions here and there) which limits people’s time a bit more than normal. We did lose some good people over the years, but gained new ones, too. That’s not reason for concern as that happens everywhere, it’s just more visible in a smaller community like ours.

My impression is also that we’ve never had as many different contributors as we do today, which does lean into integrators falling behind on reviewing work from others, and not getting time to innovate themselves. An insane amount of work has already gone into the MODX3 alphas, don’t forget that.

I’m just tired of pretending there’s some secret pool of developers, designers, marketeers, technical writers, people / communication / community managers, and cheerleaders waiting around until the moment enough people have said they’re getting impatient: one like = one extra contributor! No, people will need to step up and actually do something that fits their skillset if they want a net positive impact.

If cheerleader is the role you can see yourself in, then I look forward to seeing that in action.

Also one thing I’d like to clarify about the “don’t distract/ask what to do” thing. Anyone that is serious about making a positive impact but is stuck for some reason should definitely ask for help when they need it.

To illustrate the difference: you can always ask if you’re battling with creating your first pull request, or get stuck running a local copy of the new docs site for easier editing, or if you need access to something. But I’m not going to tell you what you should work on, there’s plenty to choose from if you just look in the right place and know your own strengths.

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Basically it was what I quoted that gave me the impression there were so few people working on MODx now that communication about MODx development could be enough to cause the project to never get finished.

Then, the idea that it’s too much effort to communicate the work being done over in GitHub back to the larger community on the official website, is what prompted the cheerleader thought.

Your response clarified things a little better though.

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I have the utmost respect for all the selfless people who have made MODX what it is today and continue to improve it.

That said, in fairness to the OP, and other commenters here, this was written in 2012:

“In 2013 we will release MODX 3.0. . . . The MODX 3 release will also mark the official deprecation of both Evo and Revo, bringing the confusion as to what’s the official recommendation to a close.”

I love MODX and am still committed to it, and yes, it’s our fault for not contributing more, but there’s no denying that going eight years without reaching a beta release for a product announced in 2012 is not encouraging the casual observer to get excited about contributing. It also makes “limping along” a not-unreasonable characterization, imho.

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Look, it’s absolutely fair to say MODX3 is late. I’m not denying that. We could talk forever about all the dramas from the past and mistakes in prioritisation and planning that have been made, pointing fingers in all directions, and not get a single thing done in the meantime.

I want to look and move forward.

The current situation is that we have a third alpha released after an amazing sprint and an increase in core contributors. MODX3 is here, and has actually been for a little while.

It’s not yet considered “done” or “stable”. Some say that the alpha doesn’t go far enough in replacing legacy code, some don’t like certain design changes, some are disappointed that features are missing from the alpha which were promised by people who vanished from core development after their funding ran out. It’s a compromise, and work is ongoing to continue making it better.

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There is one thing I know for certain. Every single person involved with the core in one way or another, (past, future, and present) is aware this release is taking longer than anyone wants it to. It’s totally unnecessary to shame them and tell them to their face (or behind their back) that they’re not meeting expectations.

Saying things like “dead” or “limping along” actively chips away at the motivation of people putting in their best effort for the community’s benefit. I can’t stress that enough. By stating something like that, even if you perceive it to be true or a fair characterization, you’re actively making it harder for the people that care to continue to care about the work they’re doing. Prefacing a comment with “I have the utmost respect for…” doesn’t absolve that.

Basically… why should I bother donating my time and energy to make MODX better, or even just give the slightest damn about what goes on, for people pronouncing it dead? Might as well take up woodworking instead.

Now to avoid even more speculation… I’m not at that point (woodworking does sound fun), and am committed to MODX and getting MODX3 ready, but I am fed up with doomsayers actively making things worse, best intentions be damned, hence me pushing back so heavily against this type of discussion.

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Bob, you’ve made a tremendous positive impact over the many years. I would not be a core developer without your help on the forums a decade ago, even though you yourself are not actively involved on a core code level. Everyone using MODX has at one point gotten help from you on the forum or found what they were looking for on your site. I hope you’ll join me in encouraging this amazing community to explore similar ways to have a positive and lasting impact on the project like you have.

MODX 3 is not going to be complete this month or next month, but there’s movement and active contributors doing what they can. The more contributors, testers, cheerleaders, documenters etc that we can get involved for this massive undertaking, the better.

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Right, perhaps my cough communication cough wasn’t clear.

Hypothetically, if I have 2 hours available for MODX work, I can either spend 2 hours reviewing a few pull requests that actually improve MODX, or fix issues/implement a new feature. Or I can spend those 2 hours drafting an article that talks about about what other people did. I can’t do both with only 2 hours, so I need to prioritize.

Personally I consider my skills as a developer (and role as integrator) most valuable to the project, so I mostly focus on technical stuff.

Everyone involved with the project makes similar choices, based on their own skills. Currently that leans more towards development time for most because of the technical changes in MODX3 and wanting to get that finished, so more time for communication would either need to be “added to the pool” by someone new, or it would come at the cost of development time from existing contributors. It’s always a trade-off, but I wouldn’t put it to the extreme of “never get it finished”.

I’d personally love to see new people step up and take on the role of regularly communicating progress on GitHub to a wider audience (eg on MODX.today) on a regular basis (e.g. biweekly/monthly). Ideally someone that’s a naturally good writer so they can get it done in half the time it would cost me or another developer. :wink:

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@markh - Thanks for your very kind words.

You make some excellent points. It certainly wasn’t my intention to discourage anyone, though it appears that I have. Feel free to remove my post if you think that’s best.

There are many, somewhat complicated, reasons why I’m not a core developer (though I have contributed to the core on occasion). I doubt if anyone is interested in hearing all of them, but at this time, my spare time is taken up with working on the MODX 3 revisions for the second edition of my MODX book. Once that’s done, it’s likely that I’ll be writing about MODX 3 in my blog.

For both of those, it would be immensely helpful to have a list of significant changes in MODX 3 (if such a thing exists), without having to wade through the changelog.

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Hi everyone,

I’m sorry I didn’t reply earlier (I’m actually the one who started this topic). Also, I wanted to apologies if any of my words came out rude, it was not my intention at all.

I agree with pretty much with everything that was said above, and yes, if everyone could give some of their time to make Modx better.

Believe it or not, I actually did in the past:

  • I spent some precious time converting Discuss to Bootstrap ( modx previous forum system ) ( https://github.com/carlo-13/Discuss ).
    Believe me it was awful, the template was divided in lots of small files, divided in lots of small folders… and the plugin was later discontinued.
    Just like Modx community, I’ve also switched to Discourse which is an amazing forum software ( I frankly believe it’s the best right now ).

  • Same with Articles, I’ve forked it on Github, but I’ve also tried to get people attention more than a year ago on this forum: Reviving Articles plugin
    It’s a shame because I really think that if Articles was improved, it would really bring more people to Modx.
    I believe @joshualuckers is in charge ( I don’t know him personally ), but it looks like he doesn’t have much time to allocate to the project.

I was thinking, maybe we could try to set some funding/milestone, based on donation from the community. But it’s important to set clear goals.
I would be willing to list the things that could make articles better, and even manage the project ( set objectives and milestone ).

Like a said I’m not a developer, but I have ideas, and maybe I have a more “out of the box” vision.

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Good points. I posted a proposal to revamp the MODX security permissions system a few years back, but I don’t understand the security architecture well enough to do it myself. I was hoping it would find its way into MODX 3.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Pods plugin like feature