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CMS is driving me batty

So for the past month or so I've been in search of a content management system, and it's been driving me up a wall. I've been trawling forums, checking out demos, reading documentation, examining comments, and generally making my head spin with too much information. The idea is to put together a portfolio site for a group of artists that I'm a part of, to show what we've done, plus have a private forum for discussions. I want everyone to be responsible for uploading their own images, with descriptions for their work.

I swear that there is nothing out there that meets my requirements, or at least in a form that won't take weeks worth of work to get it to do what i need it to do (I don't have the time to play Administrator all day), or not confuse the hell out of the people that will be using it.

I know what my requirements are, and I feel like so many people out there are looking for the same thing. Is it that difficult to have

1. A system that's XHTML compliant and uses CSS for layout?


2. an EASY interface for novice users, like users who have no idea what HTML is or does, or even really care what it is? (So no copying of image tags or any such things...uploading images through a web interface can already be a problem)


3. a simple, integrated image gallery? (i.e., ONE LOGIN FOR ALL FUNCTIONS)


4. a simple integrated forum?


5. the ability to separate private from public sections? (i.e., forums that you would only see when you're logged in)


6. Little or no cost? (open source, baby)

I've been looking at blogging-type systems, and they seem to have some advantages. I feel like the new version of Movable Type might be able to do the job, also as I'm familiar with using it so the learning curve would be smaller, but I don't have $100 right now to plunk down (there are 11 authors). I would love to lean towards Wordpress or Textpattern, their strong point seems to be the interface and the ease of modifying the templates, but image support is poor without some kind of plugin. I don't want to deal with a Coppermine plugin, it seems to defeat the purpose of choosing a system that's known for clean XHTML and CSS. Plus there's no native forum, although supposedly there's a plugin for PunBB in Textpattern.

I've also been looking at full-blown portals, such as PHPWebsite, e107, Mambo, etc. And I've decided that they are completely BLOATED. ugh. They have so much extra crap (do i really need to take a poll of how my socks smelled yesterday?) that is useless, and I can't stand the boxy layout. And it seems almost impossible to eliminate all of those useless bits and get away from a boxy layout without spending, oh, five hundred hours trying to decipher how exactly the whole damned interface works.

Sorry about this rant, but it's been bugging me for weeks. Is there really nothing in between that will work?

Posted by tracie at April 25, 2005 11:22 PM