I have the feeling that more and more people do not use MODX anymore.
So do you still use MODX for new projects? Or did you change to other CMS?
Iām building a new site in MODX currently, and still use it regularly, but I share your concern. Itās still very hard to beat in terms of flexibility and ease of development/modification, but clients are becoming more and more accustomed to visual editing with WordPress et al. so itās becoming a tougher sell. FRED is a great start in that direction, but itās still somewhat immature and it lacks a few of the compelling features of Gutenberg Blocks. Not sure how much traction that will provide.
I have yet to try out MODX3 simply because I havenāt got the time, and I think thatās really the crux of the issue. The folks developing MODX aren essentially a volunteer force, and Iām sure the core team is busier than I am, which means itās nearly impossible to schedule significant development time on a task that doesnāt generate income, so development is slow, and as a community, I donāt think weāre actively pitching in as significantly as we might have in the past. Itās not a great situation, and Iām not sure thereās a viable solution, but I really like MODX and am finding it hard to jump ship.
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I meanā¦ you are asking on the MODX forum. I doubt youāll find many people active on here that donāt use MODX. 
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Yes, and I just discovered ModX a few years ago. I had experience with Drupal before, and I hope I donāt offend anyone, but I hate Drupal and Iāve even found their community members to be some of the smuggest people, lol! Maybe it was just the folks I knew, but it compounded my frustrations with that CMS. Iāve spent a lot of time studying WCAG 2 and Section 508. In my experience, ModX makes designing for people who have disabilities really fast and perfect. I canāt get that level of compliance easily with other CMSs. I know IRC Chat is having a revival because it has this group of people that keep it going. I think ModX might have a revival too and I am so grateful that those people who are more technically gifted keep it going. 
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Funny, I had the feeling more people were using it than ever beforeā¦ 
I use MODX for nearly all my projects these days. Well, at least when a CMS is required.
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I also have a vague uneasiness about the future of MODX. I have no visibility into how popular MODX is but I have the impression the project is embroiled in some acrimonious internal disagreements and this may be inhibiting its growth and adoption to some extent. I have no special knowledge of the situation tho and my impression may not be accurate.
I use MODX for all my web projects and have no desire to make a switch. Itās been a while since I went chasing waterfalls but based on my past experiences with Drupal, Joomla, and WP, I much prefer the way MODX allows me to work. Iāve never used Gutenberg Blocks so maybe I donāt know what Iām missing but ContentBlocks gives me everything I need in a visual editor with all the flexibility that makes MODX so great. Iāll be using MODX until they turn off the lights.
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We only use MODX. period. We will use MODX until we keel over. 
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I like MODx because I would rather write some reusable code to create HTML than fiddle about dragging blocks around on every page. I admit that I donāt use the power of MODx much except for templates and tags. And I donāt use plugins much because they become obsolete over time requiring maintenance. I hardly ever use the editor, I prefer static resources that I can put under version control.
I hope MODx lives on for a long time.
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If I canāt build it in Modx, I donāt build it. Yes Iāve been frustrated at the lack of an understable (to me as a non-php coder) e-commerce system but Iām finding that plug-in systems like Shopify Lite are filling the gaps.
Iām currently building a site for a gentleman in his 80s so he can fulfill a dream of having his own publishing platform. I wouldnāt like to do this in Wordpress. With all the testing weāve done, heās getting along very well with it. I like the simplicity and so does he.
In my experience visual editors / drag and drop just creates confusion and messy pages where the client loses the focus of getting information across to their audience. A proper brief and customised manager with a set of templates has always been the simplest way to go for me and my clients.
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I donāt know the number of sites in the wild, but judging from development activities, I also feel that MODX is not as hot an happening anymore today as compared to, say, 10 years ago (if it ever was trendy at all). Not necessarily a bad thing! A track record that long means a lot of continued dedication from a small group of people, making it a very reliable and stable companion for the people using it. Myself included.
Iāve also looked at other options in the past, but keep coming back for the flexibility and ādonāt get in my wayā mentality of MODX. It may lack more modern features and it definitely has its quirks, but it gets the job done and in the end, thatās what everyone wants.
Maybe you can compare it to the adaptive cycle, a commonly observed pattern in ecology.
For MODX, this cycle would be something like: Evolution was born out of the collapse/release of Etomite. It reorganized and grew more popular until new features and architecture were demanded that would break the existing structure. A period of chaos followed, resulting in a split between Evolution and Revolution. Revolution went on to reorganize itself into a growing ecosystem again, gaining some traction and winning a couple of awards in the CMS sphere. Evolution, remarkably enough, remained in daily use and stabilized itself in such a way that it still exists today!
I think that Revo might be in a similar spot as Evo was back then, before the splitā¦ But for different reasons. Lack of development power means that MODX3 has become a glacial endeavor, where some challenges (ahum, ExtJS) still remain. Fred seems nice, but in my view itās also a distraction that stretches the available resources even thinner. Some extras also seem to have stagnated in their development. SimpleSearch for example, which I would label as essential to the ecosystem, looks fairly unmaintained to me. And if wasnāt for ContentBlocks, I donāt think MODX would have survived the responsive era.
Anyway, this is not meant as griping. Itās (in my view) simply reality. But even though growth (with that I also mean: influx of new developers) may be flattening, that doesnāt mean MODX is going away any time soon. Like I said, itās currently stable, useful and relatively well organized. A long conservation phase could well be ahead for the project.
Forests can stay in that phase for thousands of years btw. Theyāre not as resilient anymore to wildfires for example, but as long as lightning doesnāt strike, theyāre able to optimize resource use and organize themselves more efficiently. I see that too with MODX. Like the proposal during the last bug hunt to explore something like OpenCollective. And although I sometimes spot some disagreements on Github regarding architecture and direction, the overall process of creating and integrating pull requests seems to be very cooperative and professional. Again, many thanks to those few dedicated heroes, whoās brains are capable of computing all that stuff!! And who have to endure the sh*t thatās sometimes being flung at them in the process. It doesnāt look like a very glorious battle to me.
So long story short: Iām also sticking with MODX. If it ever goes away, I am eyeballing the Directus project (clearly still in growth stage) as a potential successor (if still needed). It can attach itself to any existing MySQL schema, so you can hook all your existing data to their headless backend manager. I tried it briefly and it works quite well. You can even use it together with MODX, I think, but guess whatā¦ I kind of missed (ahum) ExtJS and MIGX when working with my custom data! Especially inline editing in CMPs is something that can save you a lot of time in MODX, as compared to Directus, where you have to open a panel, change value, save data, etc. And if thatās still not working for you, you can create an import script for Excel files or CSVs, manage the data elsewhere and fetch it via some API, forge your own front-end with React/Vue or whateverā¦ MODX is the computer that canāt say no!
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I really like MODX, but it has become dated, though it is still an amazing platform. Not only did I write a book about it, I built a pay-as-you-go cellular company on MODX2 (including multiple-tiered commissions, billing, and direct connections to all major carrier backends), as well as a prototype for a PHD on MODX3 (involving pulling publicly available personal information from multiple sources via APIs). I searched today for updates on MODX3, which is how I found this post. The project still has updates on Github, but it has been alpha for a very long time. The changes in PHP coding standards, PHP itself, and the lack of Namespaces in MODX2 are huge problems now, and has been since I first brought it up years ago. I even read an article today where the UI/UX developer expected MODX3 to ship in 2018. I believe we are far past due for an official update and ETA on beta and production versions.
I came across this post when asking this very question myself. MODX 3 has been talked about for a long time now and whilst in roads are being made, it is difficult to see when (not if, fingers crossed) this will actually become beta.
I am always struck by the loyalty to MODX (myself included) from those that use it regularly and it is a great platform (and yes, I am biased) but it is difficult to sell to clients who only ever hear about those platforms which have remained very active especially Wordpress or have good marketing budgets such as (dare I say it) Square Space, Wix (groan) and similar solutions. It is easy to see why clients who do not understand the market are seduced by these other options and itās difficult (not impossible) to āeducateā them about other options and explain the benefits that are available by using MODX.
I really hope that those who have continued to dedicate so much of their hard work and knowledge into helping ensure that there really is a future for MODX do find the time and resources to get it over the line - itās been a long time coming.
As @wshawn says āwe are far past due for an official update and ETA on beta production versionsā.
A few weeks ago I made a list of blockers that need to be addressed before we can tag the 3.0 beta: MODX3 Final Sprint [Mark's personal list] - Google Sheets
While I intended it as a personal list to focus my own efforts, it seems to resonate and others have been picking up the items too. Plus I got offered funding to work on that list, too, so thatās moving along.
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Thanks for the update, Mark!
Iām currently looking for someone to write monthly ānew and notableā-style posts on MODX.today, paid per article by modmore, to provide more regular updates and translate the super technical thatās happening on GitHub into more easily digestible updates of things that matter for the average users.
The core integrators donāt have the time to do that (and I also think that sort of communication should not be demanded from core devs; writing and code are very different skills), so hopefully I can find someone willing to pick up that responsibility for the community.
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Hmm. Great idea. Tell me more about what exactly you want the content to be, or PM me. I always look on MODX Today for updates.
How would we even know how many are using MODX? Itās not like there is some sort of signature in the code that will indicate a MODX site, since people can use whatever templates they want.
I recently had a group meeting with a client whose website I developed years ago in MODX. They switched to Wordpress a couple of years ago when a new executive director came onboard and wanted to āmodernizeā the website, and had a Wordpress programmer she worked with. Well, a few weeks ago, they fired the executive director and the new one contacted me saying they wanted to put the site back into MODX because they just couldnāt figure out how to do certain things. The new director isnāt the most web-savvy, so she asked why MODX would be a better choice than Wordpress. I was about to start listing all the reasons, but the editor, who has worked with them for years and works in various Wordpress sites, WIX sites, and many MODX sites Iāve set up for other clients, immediately chimed in and said very strongly, āWhenever I work in Wordpress and want to do anything a little different, it makes me want to poke my eye out! In MODX, itās always easy,ā That kind of said it all, and I didnāt need to add anything else to convince the director that itās the right way to go. Weāre redoing the site in MODX now.
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Well, maybe, but many people find systems like ContentBlocks and Gutenberg Blocks very confusing and unintuitive. Iāve built all kinds of responsive and banner-driven sites using just Collections and MIGX. They work just fine, and itās easier for a lot of people to grasp what content is where to edit it. For editors who arenāt so web-savvy, or so structure-oriented, my systems provide a way to do everything block editors do in a way that makes sense to these clients.
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