Hello!
Last year I became disappointed how some issues were handled within CMS Made SImple community and left it looking for another CMS.
I played some time with MODX (Revolution), but it was too young, not many extensions etc. After that, I decided to use Concrete5 which is nice CMS and I've invested into its marketplace by buying several add-ons (ecommerce, pro blog, pro news, google maps, some themes etc.). In order to have my small company site finished I had to order custom payment gateway which was done by 3rd party. Everything is nice...except that I do not like C5's business schema and control which they force upon users by connecting add-on licensese with the community site.
I 'll probably have to finish our small 'company' web site and launch it in C5, but I'm looking into the future and here I see only two candidates: SilverStripe & MODX.
I like MODX concept of template variables (TVs), snippets...while I very mu appreciate that SS offers Postgresql support and Sapphire seems to be nice framework.
I know that installing & playing with both CMS-es is unavoidable (though I played with MODX in the past) and I'll do it, still I'm looking for some piece of advice which CMS would be more suitable for our needs & skills which are:
1) Having simple 'business' site for our 'company' which sells 'services', so we need simple webshop - nothing spectacular for those selling hundreds/thousands products, different categories etc. Of course, I'll need to order (again) custom payment gateway and the guy who did it fo C5 wrote me " if you need a payment addon for some other cms with a clear API, we can do it.", so my question is what is the future of ecommerce SS module? I've found out it's not any longer officially supported, but wonder whether one can count on it for the future? (MODX will soon get VisionCart 1.0 release of its ecommerce module.) Besides that, we'd need some basic News module, Google maps for contact pages...
2) For our personal needs, we want to have another site with the list of open-source stuff we'll be workin on, as well as decent blog module. I haven't tried module for SS, but it looks OK. Am I right? (Pls., don't recommend me WP :-) )
- Based on my choise between MODX/SS, I'd put chosen CMS on some other relatives/friends sites who have similar needs as described in 1) & 2) above.
3) If I'm correct, SS is more suitable for usage with one's preferred code-editor and development of the site can be kept under DVCS (I mostly use Fossil SCM), while with MODX one works only withing admin. Is it true? If it is, it is big advantage of SS.
4) Considering we are not full-time (PHP) developer, although familiar with several programming languages, I bought "Beginning PHP 5.3" book and plan to learn, I wonder how much is SS suitable for someone who is not fulltime PHP coder and what is the learning curve in using Sapphire?
5) I'm excited seeing the plan & design for 3.0, so do you recommend to wait a bit with migration from C5 to SS (if it is recommended choice for us) 'cause 3.0 will probably change a lot developer-wise or SS/Sapphire-2.4.x knowledge won't become obsolete? There is 'old' SS book done by Ingo, but I see that Packt is preparing a new one: https://www.packtpub.com/silverstripe-2-4-module-extension-themes-and-widgets/book. Is the old one still relevant for 2.4.x or the new one is recommended?
6) Both MODX & SS seems to be (more) open (source) projects, so being supporter of open-source, I tend to believe that those communities are more suitable for me in the long run. Atm, I use Archlinux, but very soon I'll migrate to Free(PC)BSD, but hopefully there are no issues using SS there. (My hosting is running Debian.)
Any light you can shed to help me decide is welcome, especially from those which are (somewhat) familiar with both CMS-es (MODX && SS).
Sincerely,
Gour