Hey everyone,
soo, I know I should know better but I let myself get dragged into doing web administration for some relatives again. (Yes, I'm the "guy who knows about computers".)

I've made it clear to them though that I'll only set up the site for them and that I don't plan this to become a neverending story. The basic idea is that I'll install a content management system for them and they will then manage the site on their own using the fancy CMS UI.

It's been a while since I've done active web development though. (=not just playing around with HTML5) and I haven't really kept track of which products all the cool kids are using these days. (except jQuery of course)
So, I wanted to ask you guys if you could recommend me a good CMS to use. Requirements are as follows:

• A blog
• A gallery section
• A guestbook (optional)
• One of them is a graphical designer who has done web design before using WYSIWYG editors. They'll want to change the look-and-feel of the site. (This will be their job, not mine). So a skin/template system would be good, some UI controls even better.
• (As a matter of personal dignity): Generated HTML should be at least Web 1.9 compliant.
• Platform will likely be PHP+(My)SQL though this could be changed.
• The software should be free.

So far I've thought about using Joomla or Typo3 though I've not really worked much with them yet. Does anyone of you have any experience with them or can tell me praise or horror stories about them? Or do you know something better? I'd be grateful for help in any case.

(Only condition: I'll NOT use anything that has "Nuke" in it's name. I've used phpNuke once and the experience was traumatic enough this one time.)

I've had some decent success with Drupal 6 (which is not the current version) using Acquia's fork. If you also install the zen and @fontyourface modules, you can do CSS skinning pretty easily. I haven't tried doing HTML5 with it yet though.

I HEAR TELLIGENT MAKES SOME THING CALLED COMMUNITY SERVER YOU SHOULD CEHCK IT OUT!!!!!~~~!!

I've used joomla, dotnetnuke, community server, and wordpress.

 Joomla: little more complicated than wordpress, and requires some performance tuning.

 Wordpress:  simple easy lots of plugins

 DotNetNuke: complicated, very very complicated

 Community Server: just look at any front page article comments or search the forums.

galgorah:

Wordpress: simple easy lots of plugins

WordPress is good and would be my recommendation BUT it's a bad idea if you don't have an admin. WordPress needs constant updating. It also is probably harder to use for all non-article-related functions, such as organizing photo galleries, etc.

blakeyrat:

It also is probably harder to use for all non-article-related functions, such as organizing photo galleries,

 

It may or may not be possible to misuse its extension, Comicpress,  for galleries.

I really like CMS Made Simple, I built my whole personal website on it and it JustWorks™.

I started off using Drupal and really didn't get on with it, it was massively complex and then ate itself when I tried to upgrade to the latest version...

The really nice thing about CMSMS is that pretty much everything (bar the really basic core) is a module. Makes it easy to get exactly the features you want. Only downside I can see is that it might be a little bit too simple if you want to do anything really fancy.

 

I've also heard good things about Joomla but have never used it.

 

 

 Oi!

 Typo3 does all that. I must admit that I haven't used Drupal / Joomla so I cannot reliably compare, but I believe the initial setup of Typo3 is overly complex. (Learning TypoScript just to skin your site is a pain... ).

Once the site is setup tho, management (and even reskinning) is a breeze. I have used it extensively and some things annoyed me in the long run (performance, problems handling huge user base), but it's features were still worth the shot.

 I also believe you should stay away from Wordpress if you want anything else than a front page with a list of articles...

Wordpress is absurdly easy to set up and manage. The design guys in the shop I work in love it, and started using it before they even knew PHP, so I'd say its a good bet. Never used it myself, mind you; I'm judging from watching them show interns how to set it up, etc. But yeah, If i was going a personal website, it's probably what I'd use. The main reason it needs frequent updates is that its so popular, there's a lot of crack-bots throwing attacks at you whenever a security patch comes out, hoping you forgot to do the update. Its mostly add on modules that need patching- avoid slapping in to many of those, and you maintenance tasks will but much simpler. Even when updates are needed, they are typically quite easy to run- you can literally do drag & drop updates (and module installations, config, etc).

angrysoul:

Typo3 does all that. I must admit that I haven't used Drupal / Joomla so I cannot reliably compare, but I believe the initial setup of Typo3 is overly complex. (Learning TypoScript just to skin your site is a pain... ).

I haven't used Typo3 in anger, but I did do some proof-of-concept work with it for a couple of sites which in the end didn't get built. There are some template modules which IIRC allow you to set things up without learning TypoScript.

angrysoul:

 I also believe you should stay away from Wordpress if you want anything else than a front page with a list of articles...

Have you ever seriously looked into Wordpress? It's a lot more powerful than you're giving it credit for. Even with templates and plugins that can be installed from the web admin interface it can be extended to a huge degree and moving the blog part of it off of the front page is trivial.

Joomla or Drupal are overkill for something this small. I'd definitely recommend Wordpress with the NextGEN gallery and a few other plugins for other features.

Cursorkeys:

I started off using Drupal and really didn't get on with it, it was massively complex and then ate itself when I tried to upgrade to the latest version...

 

Drupal
My experience: 1 website. 

Found it reasonable to get it looking how we wanted it thanks to liberal use of Firebug or similar.  A bit of a challenge to get working exactly as I wanted it but was able to modify the PHP enough to get it as it was needed. 

I updated the site last Friday.  Modules were a doddle.  Core upgrade was a bit trickier but following these instructions got me over the line.

Be careful of modifying of modifying the core files as this will make upgrading more difficult.  Use the "Hacked!" plugin to see what's been modified.

 

dfcowell:

angrysoul:

 I also believe you should stay away from Wordpress if you want anything else than a front page with a list of articles...

Have you ever seriously looked into Wordpress? It's a lot more powerful than you're giving it credit for. Even with templates and plugins that can be installed from the web admin interface it can be extended to a huge degree and moving the blog part of it off of the front page is trivial.

Wordpress
My experience: 3 websites.  

I'd agree with dfcowell here.  Wordpress has many plugins and I'd be surprised if you couldn't find any that met your needs.  The Wordpress Codex is a good resource and it's definitely worth searching for existing plugins using as many different search terms as possible to try to identify something you can use.

Be careful when using themes that you find by Googling.  One of our sites had one that was doing some sort of dodgy link-through which we only discovered when the site being linked to was down.  This caused our site to give the white page of death.  Not 100% sure what was going on but when I deleted the theme and all was good.

Having used Wordpress I would not go back to Drupal.

 

Question: A few people have mentioned updates; are there any CMS out there that don't require at least periodical updates?

 

 Hey,

  Actually i am late answer about this question answer but wordpress and Zoomala best CMS.

Used Xoops, Wordpress and Drupal in some measure.

Xoops is supposed to be an all-singing all-dancing CMS with an extensive range of modules, but can be somewhat complex to set up, almost starting with an enterprise-wide framework that you've got to scale down. The caching caught me out a few times, too - there were occasions when I was quite happy to scrap it.

Wordpress seems to do it the other way around - start with a simple blog and extend it through the use of modules etc. I also tried hacking Gallery for someone to produce an eCommerce site (that was a mistake). I'm toying with the idea of replacing some of my CMS-based websites with Wordpress.

Drupal seems popular with many people - as though it's Wordpress with a few of the common modules already fitted. My workplace use it for their website, but I've not played with the functionality too deeply as yet.

(weird - if you click away from the Quick Reply window, you lose your cursor when regaining focus. Anyone else noticed this?)