New to CMS - Can I Do This... ?

Hey guys,

Never used a CMS before, not a fan of blogs and prefer to stick to good ol' HTML sites. I know, I'm probably living in the dark ages and don't know what I'm missing so I'm branching out!

I'm planning on creating a site to use as a travelog. At the moment I use http://www.travelpod.com and, while I like it, I would prefer to host all that content on *my* site and serve up my own ads, etc.

Because it'll be a personal site I won't need most of what they've got. If you look at http://www.travelpod.com/cgi-bin/gu...&tweb_show_unpure=&tweb_mType=TPOD#ENTRY_LIST (sorry about the long URL!!!) in the right-side column starting with the black bit (below the map) and work your way down past the article you'll see how the articles are organised and that's what I'm looking to do.

I'd also like to incorporate photos - having certain photos attached to certain articles but then the option of viewing them all as part of a larger gallery as well.

To top things off, I'm a bit of a design nut and love making sites that look good. Do you have a lot (any?) control over layouts and images and, if so, is it difficult to learn how to make changes? I love the look of http://hotzone.yahoo.com/ and am curious about whether it is possible to produce something like this while using a CMS.

Sorry about all the questions, I'm trying to get my head around this!!

Thanks loads,
Kirsty

 

Most CMSes allow you to skin them exactly the way you want. If you really need to hack things apart, and you aren't much of a coder yourself, you can normally spend around $100 on Get A Freelancer and have it all done for you.

With Open Source stuff, everything you want is possible.

 

I would recommend Joomla + a few bucks.

The trickiest part for anyone new to CMS's is the templating. Buy, or get free a template you like, start building site and then maybe tweak the template as you grow.

I have found Joomla have a low "technical entry point"