Need CMS Suggestions

I need to make a simple business site that's mostly static content but may include a few articles here and there. Mostly it's just going to include information about the business, services offered, pricing info and then the occasional related article. I don't really need any advanced features, just something easy, quick and should be able to achieve a professional look without tons of work. I've been learning Drupal for another site I'm working on but it seems a bit of overkill and since I still don't know it very well might be a bit too much work for a simplish site. I know Wordpress is an option but I still feel, even with a lot of the available themes, it feels a bit too bloggish looking (which is understandable). Are there any other simple, easy to use, and quick to deploy CMS options out there that anyone would recommend? Is CMS Made Simple any good? Or should I just go with Wordpress?

 

Hmm actually WordPress is incredibly flexible and can be used for many types of websites. There are so many sites utilizing it and you'd never think it's WordPress working down there..

 

CMS Made Simple has actually been highly recognized. You can review past winners and runners-up at Pakt Publishing and see that CMS Made Simple is rather highly ranked.

You've already indicated that Drupal is overkill for your project. I'm thinking, based on the information you've given, you need something with a plugin system so you can add function as you want. So, for what you need, take a look at Joomla and don't rule out WordPress. You can overlook the "bloggy" appearance through the smart use of templates and the right plugins. Although WP is still missing core centralized/shared user environment that traditional CMS platforms have, WP I predict will have that functionality in the near future. Also, you cannot beat WP for the amount of plugins that are available - almost 6,000 last time I checked. Regarding Joomla, I don't know your experience with it, but it is powerful, extensible due to its MVC framework core, and over 3,000 extensions available. I personally think it has a lower learning curve than Drupal, but some may disagree with that. It also has a slew of templates available; unfortunately the best ones are commercial (though many are cheap).

Bottom line - your project requirements, skills and budget always dictate the tool, not the other way around. If you're looking to ramp up fast, and want a core that you can readily expand in the future, you may really want to look at Joomla and WordPress. If you don't need a lot of additional functionality, you could look at CMS Made Simple (which also has third-party plugins and has a solid history).

Whatever you do, choose a system that can grow with you as your needs change.

 

The above is a concise depiction of how to approach your needs for a CMS. I can only echo the same :

Pick a CMS that can can advance with you.

 

No matter if you need simple business website or complex one I would recomend Joomla or Wordpress CMS. Both of them are free and they are easy to learn if you don't know anything about joomla or wp.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I'm gonna go with Wordpress and strip blogging related stuff out. For the purpose the simplicity is just too much to pass up. I don't need the multi user capabilities or even the extensibility, although I've got most of it done yesterday afternoon (except for fleshing out the content) and found I had to use several plugins to get it to behave the way I want. I was just curious if there was any non-blogging CMS with the simplicity of WP but I guess not. I hadn't actually tried CMS Made Simple but they advertised as being simple...but from what you say I guess not so much (well not like WP at least). I actually picked Drupal for my other site for the "ease" of customization (once you know what you're doing) and extensibility since it was a personal project to learn more about web development that had no real timetable. I wanted to be able to get a basicish site for the type of site I wanted up and then as I learned be able to slowly extend it's features and capabilities. It's been difficult jumping in without knowing any php (which I haven't really had to meddle with much) or css but it's coming around and I'm accomplishing my goal of learning.

 

I still do not do any programming in any language. I do know CSS.
Some people call CSS a "programming language", but I tend to disagree.

You will not need PHP to use Joomla and I hope not with Wordpress.
Drupal... I cant say... never used it.

But Joomla was not that hard. Good luck

 

Yes, I agree with shazin, in my opinion Wordpress is becoming THE platform for big, medium and small websites... just check the plugins they have, you can make everything with it.

 

Use WordPress with a CMS template. Take advantage of the static nature of
WordPress Pages as opposed to posts. You can also get plugins to do just about everything including rearranging categories and removing dates. The only thing I have not been able to do with WordPress is rearrange post order.