MODX (originally MODx) is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

and

web application framework A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build and ...

for publishing content on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

and

intranet An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in ...

s. MODX is licensed under the GPL, is written in the

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

programming language, and supports

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported Fork (software development), fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Developm ...

and Percona Server as the database. It was awarded Packt Publishing's ''Most Promising Open Source Content Management System'' in 2007.

History

The developers Raymond Irving and Ryan Thrash began the MODX CMS project in 2004 as a mashup of DocVars for Etomite and Raymond's web user add-on. In March 2005, all references to "MODX" were removed from the Etomite forums, coupled with a request from its founder to cease MODX support activities there. At this point, MODX became a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

of Etomite. By May 2005, the MODX forums were online and Jason Coward joined the project leadership team. In 2007, Raymond left the project on amicable terms. The following year, Shaun McCormick joined the project leadership team. In 2008, MODX users created a new logo and branding for the project. In 2010, the first version of MODX Revolution, a complete rewrite of the CMS, was released. MODX LLC was founded in May 2010. May 2010 also saw the first official MODX conference, MODXpo Dallas. The event's main sponsor was

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. In July 2012 ClipperCMS, an independent fork of MODX Evolution (MODX 1) was launched. In October 2012, MODX LLC launched MODX Cloud, a cloud-based hosting service for MODX sites. In March 2013, MODX LLC split MODX Cloud into another company, SiphonLabs. This separation was short-lived, and MODX Cloud was re-integrated into the parent company in July 2013. In June 2013, Mark Hamstra—a well-known developer in the MODX community—launched modmore. modmore is the first major source of premium add-ons for MODX. In November of that year the second official MODXpo was held in

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

, Germany. In January 2014, MODX was added to the

BitNami Bitnami is a library of installers or software packages for web applications and software stacks as well as virtual appliances. Bitnami is sponsored by Bitrock, a company founded in 2003 in Seville, Spain by Daniel Lopez Ridruejo and Erica Bre ...

installer library. John Peca joined the core development team, replacing Shaun McCormick who moved on after the SiphonLabs event. In July 2014, MODX 2.3 was released to the public. The release—the biggest for several years—features a significantly updated manager interface and various minor feature improvements. In September of that year modmore hosted the first MODX Weekend in

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

The Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. In August 2015, MODX 2.4 was released to the public. This version introduce package dependencies for MODX Extras, as well as numerous security, stability and performance improvements. In November 2015 the MODXpo Conference was hosted by Kochan & Partner in Munich, Germany, with speakers from across Europe and the United States engaging in a 3-day exposition of MODX and the future of the platform. In February 2016, MODX 2.5 was released to the public. In November 2017, MODX 2.6 was released to the public. In July 2018, the alpha version of MODX 3 was released. In July 2018, a free Extra called FRED for visual drag-and-drop content editing and creation was released - for versions 2.6 and 3 of MODX. In November 2018, MODX 2.7 was released to the public. On March 30, 2022 MODX 3.0.0 was released.

Current version

In March 2022, a major version update MODX 3.0 was released. Current Version is: 3.1.2 (rel. 02-Apr-2025)

Features

MODX allows for full segregation of content (plain HTML), appearance and behavior ( standards compliant CSS and JavaScript), and logic (PHP snippets). Additional MODX features include: * Graphical web-based installer. * Supports PHP 5.6 and above. * Supports

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

rich-text editors. * The Manager application works cross-browser and cross-platform, including

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

, and

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

(Firefox and Safari), and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

(Firefox). * Can be installed under IIS,

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

Lighttpd lighttpd (prescribed pronunciation: "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible. It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the ...

Hiawatha Hiawatha ( , also : ), also known as Ayenwatha or Aiionwatha, was a precolonial Native American leader and cofounder of the Iroquois Confederacy. He was a leader of the Onondaga people, the Mohawk people, or both. According to some accounts, he ...

Cherokee The Cherokee (; , or ) people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern ...

nginx (pronounced "engine x" , stylized as NGINX or nginx) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Russian developer Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 20 ...

, and

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

s. * Supports any

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...

library, including jQuery, MooTools, ExtJS, and

Prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...

. * Recursive

parser Parsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is a process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar by breaking it into parts. The term '' ...

for nested functionality. * Complete control of all

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

and

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

structure for

Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as ...

(SEO) purposes. * Object-oriented, MVC compliant core code. * Role-based permissions for the Manager. * Ability to customize the Manager on a per-deployment basis. * Ability to install add-ons right from the Manager. * E-commerce integration via Foxy Cart.

Extensions and modules

Additional extensions or modules for MODX (installed to enhance the CMS or add additional features) are called "Extras". These extras are installed within the manager as "Packages", delivered by package providers. Out of the box MODX comes with one "Provider", which is MODX's own core package platform. Additional package providers can be added by administrators, and a number of providers are found on the MODX forums.

Translations and community

MODX has active, global end-user and developer communities. These communities have translated MODX into their native languages, including: Alsatian, Bulgarian, Chinese,

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, Japanese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese ( Brazilian and European),

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

, Serbian,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, Swedish, and Turkish. Other active communities reside in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Recognition, awards, and publications

Packt Publishing

In July 2007, MODX was awarded Packt Publishing's ''Most Promising Open Source Content Management System'' award.Packt Publishing 2007 award

CMS Critic

In 2012, MODX won CMS Critic's ''Best Open Source CMS (Critic's Choice)'' award. In 2013, it won ''Best Open Source CMS (People's Choice)''.

Reviews

Linux.com reviewed MODX on January 14, 2008. Its author concluded that "MODX is an easy-to-use, standards-compliant, search-engine-friendly, functional, and extensible CMS…". sitepoint.com reviewed MODX on May 13, 2016. ". MODX is not my recommendation for a non-technical person to build a website, but it’s a great choice for a developer who needs to give clients protected access to editing content. MODX is excellent, with a pretty strait learning curve, if you’re a developer and want freedom to design how you wish."

Publications

Several MODX books have been published, including: * Bob Ray - MODX: The Official Guide * W. Shawn Wilkerson - MODX Revolution: Building The Web Your Way * Antano Solar John - MODX Web Development

References

External links

* {{Application frameworks 2004 software Free content management systems PHP frameworks MySQL MariaDB