CloseTools for Managing Your Website Content
Over the years, we’ve seen clients switch to a different platform, like Wordpress, because they want a certain type of content management tool that they don’t see in the site we set up for them in MODX. Often this happened because a new person came on board and was familiar with Wordpress and not MODX, was used to working a certain way, and didn’t see that in MODX.
Like editing your website on the front end, without having to switch to a backend editor? Wordpress has tools like Elementor that let you do this. No need for Wordpress here. MODX has FRED (“FRontend EDitor”), which works much the same way; you edit your site while browsing normally through it, and you see the actual page layout as you work on pages.
Want to use a block-editing system instead? Wordpress, for example, has tools like WP Bakery so people can insert blocks of content, instead of editing an entire page in one long window. This is nice for people who want to do more advanced layout without having to deal with HTML. Once again, no need to switch to Wordpress. MODX has a plugin called Content Blocks that does the same thing. It comes with lots of preset types of layout, just like WP Bakery, and it’s easy for us to add any sort of custom block type you need. Since MODX is so focused on speed, it does this a little differently, though. Take a look at the raw HTML in Wordpress when using a block editor and you’ll see an incredible nest of HTML tags and shortcodes containing all the info the block editor needs in order to edit the content this way. MODX instead uses a special field in the database to contains the “nest,” and when you save your edits, it constructs just the very lean HTML needed to display that content and stores that in the main content field in the database. This way, your page will still load fast, and search engines will be happy!
Each of these approaches has pros and cons — things they are very good at, and things they don’t do as well. If you’re interested in exploring these tools, let us know and we can set up a demo for you, and discuss whether your site is a good fit.