14th February 2014
As you know, we get up to all sorts of design stuff at Studio Republic – graphics, branding, marketing collateral and websites. Our websites need to be clever like a fox, strong like a bull and responsive like a spitting cobra. For such an important job we need a mighty Content Management System to provide the means of creating, publishing, organising and storing content, because (did we mention several times already?) content is king.
We’ve looked around at many CMS options, kicked the tyres on a few different systems, and dabbled in various online forums at 2am looking for learned opinions. And for us, MODX is the winning solution, hands down. With new features released at the start of 2014, we think it’s worth shining a spotlight on it for a few minutes.
It works on virtually any web server and it walks a brilliantly comfortable line between being intuitive and powerful – it’s user-friendly even for beginners but capable of impressive functionality and design.
Its open source framework provides a well stocked toolbox for geeks and complete creative freedom for designers. While many systems impose restrictions on layout MODX does none of this; you literally start with a blank page so there are no limits to your creativity. It suits our needs – and our clients’ needs – whether we’re creating a simple brochure site or a complex, dynamic site loaded with interactive features and apps.
It allows you to optimise each page for search engines, with configurable custom URLs and limitless options for adding tags for SEO, which means the site works effectively as a marketing tool rather than simply looking gorgeous. Security is built into the core with varying membership privileges, protected by passwords for different areas.
Everyone has a website these days and increasingly ordinary people are becoming more familiar with maintaining and even building them using off-the-shelf easy website builders. Those are fine if your website needs are modest and you don’t mind that your chosen template will also have been used by numerous others. But a truly impressive website needs to be unique and made with wisdom and an understanding of what’s possible. A rich but user-friendly CMS like MODX provides the ideal tools to make that magic happen.