Best CMS For Family Based Website?

I'm looking to build a website for "The Family." My first instinct is to always roll Wordpress, but it needs to be a little bit more community based. This is what I've got so far.

Wordpress - Awesome, but comes up short for the community side.

Wordpress MU - Also awesome but not as familiar with it, and I want more than just blogs.

Joomla - Awesome for communities I hear, but always gives me a head ache trying to do anything.

Drupal - I hear rave things about it, but never really given it much of a chance.

Mediawiki - I was thinking this would be the best option. Because it would link who's related to who, and you could post recipes and all the other things that the family would likely do. But I feel It may be a little to technical for many. Especially the syntax.

I want to roll my own site. I know there are family site out there. Any suggestions on CMS's are welcome. Thanks

 

JOOMLA is the best solution for you...
If you want,i can do it for you completely..
Thanks..

 

My vote goes for drupal, the ultimate choice for the community sites...
Really give it a try, I bet you wan't look back to any other CMS

 

Hands down to wordpress, it will suit you best.
but Still Joomla is great for communities, but yeah its tough to handle for newbies. But once you are familiar, its easy.

 

Joomla is actually easy once you get to know it. I use it for a very simple site I just disabled all the modules and components that I don't need.

 

Thanks for the info all.

 

I would suggest Drupal for its capabilities in creating community and any other kind of websites. Here is a write-up you might find interesting:

http://skippy.net/howto-create-a-family-blog-using-drupal

If you state what your specific needs are and what functionality you're looking to implement, I can give you some suggestions on what modules to use.

 

I vote for Drupal, with Wordpress a close second. But the point is that everyone will have their own favorites.

May I suggest to people wanting to decide on the best CMS for their needs go to opensourcecms.com, and look around and play? You can actually try different CMS's, as well as read tons of comments from others.

The problem, of course, is that every CMS has 'problems' with it - too difficult to use, too difficult to learn, not flexible enough, poor SEO practices, not enough community support, no built-in newsletter, forum, whatever... and so on... it's a personal choice you must make.

For a blog - I think Wordpress will be at the top of almost anyone's list... but for a general purpose CMS - there's a number of really good ones out there, and it's going to be a 'personal preference' sort of thing - there are a number of really good ones.

And if you don't end up going with Drupal - I'll try to have a nice day anyway.

 

I've created a CMS for exactly what you are looking for, and because I too was looking for the same thing.

Anyway it's called Family Connections, and is a family oriented cms, complete with message board, photo gallery, calendar, blog, and more...

http://www.familycms.com/

 

Have you considered going with a forum?

Starting with VBulletin 3.7 each member can have their owner picture gallery, customize their own profile, there is a VBulltin blogging add on, and a profile commenting system. The recent versions of VB are a forum with social networking built in.

You said you want to build something for your "family". Does that mean your children, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, brothers and sisters? How big of a family are we talking about here? Is this going to be like a family tree website or something just for your more closely related members.

If your goal is to create a community, then why not use software that is designed to do just that?

 

You can use Wordpress with a CMS plugin. Anyway if you dislike Wordpress then my second vote is for Joomla.

 

Maybe you should experiment with elgg.org a bit they have a ok cms/community software, not many themes though.

 

Expression Engine...hands down. I have used joomla, wordpress, drupal, textpattern and coldfusion. I'll take EE any day.