Meet Fred, the Friendly Editor

While working on MODX3, we wondered if we could fundamentally advance how MODX users work on sites. Our simple goal: make creating websites more efficient, empowering, and fun. That’s why today we are thrilled to announce Fred, the friendly editor.

By Ryan Thrash  |  Updated: March 29, 2019  |  3 min read
Meet Fred, the Friendly Editor

While working on MODX3, we wondered if we could fundamentally advance how MODX users work on sites. Our simple goal: make creating websites more efficient, empowering, and fun.

That’s why today we are thrilled to announce Fred, the friendly editor. Once you work with a Fred-powered project, we think you’ll fall in love.

What can Fred do for You?

Fred is a free, open source Extra that brings visual drag-and-drop content editing and creation to MODX. We poured over 700 hours into ensuring it makes working on MODX websites both engaging and delightful.

Layouts that previously took dozens of TVs, subpages, or form fields (and many front-end review round trips) can be easily produced from the front-end. The video below provides a small glimpse into what you can achieve with Fred.


We think Fred far surpasses the power and flexibility of any visual content builder or theme system on any platform. It allows non-technical users to create beautiful, engaging content intuitively and interactively. It also offers organizations a way to have a living pattern library that completely adheres to their internal design standards.

It truly is empowering.

A Bridge to MODX3 … and Beyond

While Fred’s user interface follows MODX3’s lead, it actually works in version 2.6 and above. You can build new sites and landing pages in Fred today on top of already proven and already powerful software. When MODX3 is out of beta, Fred will be ready for it too.

We decided early on to build Fred using Vanilla JS. You don’t have to worry about getting stuck with a bloated or instantly obsolete framework, and can use whatever frontend framework you like without conflict. It’s up to you to decide what Fred will be.

Start Using Fred Today

You can learn more about Fred at https://fred.modx.com and see it in action by grabbing the Public Snapshot in your MODX Cloud account. Or, you can start from scratch by installing it for free with the MODX Package Manager.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll create with Fred. #CreateWithFred