Development

Cascade vs. WordPress vs. MODX

Cascade

Pros:

  • Higher-education focused
  • Fast
  • Secured
  • Non-technical friendly
  • Good technical support
  • We already have connections to people we need
  • If we pay, should be able to have new site up quickly

Cons:

  • Cost
  • Proprietary
  • No access to the backend
  • Not flexible editor
  • Limited plugins
  • Costs will continue to rise
  • Lacking dynamic content

WordPress

Pros:

  • Highly flexible
  • Full-site editor
  • University support
  • Easy to hire developers
  • May be able to get a CDN, like Cloudflare
  • High adoption rate means likely to persist for a while
  • Large community increases chances of quick access to new tech
  • Departments, student orgs, and centers are already on it

Cons:

  • Not as secured (but University has it locked down with Firewall)
  • Might be slowed (database and bloated markups)
  • The markup can be messy
  • Might depend on plugins for dynamic contents
  • Would need to find support on our own
  • May be challenging to sort through all plugins

MODX

Pros:

  • Secured
  • Fast 
  • Flexible 
  • Everything is in place
  • No need to migrate

Cons:

  • Not friendly for non-technical users (There may be a solution)
  • Small community
  • Heavily dependent on the database
  • No plug and play.