The best CMS system for small websites...

Definitely joomla, easy to customised and lots of plugin to use

 

Jomla is free and it is great CMS for large and also for simple and simple websites.

 

i think if you've never used a CMS before. Joomla and Drupal will come with difficulties for you. I prefer drupal as I think it's easy to use, but if you want to do anything like create a theme from scratch then you will need some knowledge of css/php and html. I'd go with what others are saying, use wordpress very simple and easy to use. Plus there's loads of SEO pugins you can use for it.

 

People recommend Joomla and Drupal because they know then now, and like them, but they are not the easiest to use, and learn for a noob.
If this is your first time out, Word Press is going to be your best bet, with he best support, easier to customize, and the most places for you to find answers when you need them fast.

The difference is like Gasoline powered engines, and Diesel powered. Both will run your car and certainly diesel has some characteristics that are attractive over gasoline....... but you have more options for service, customizations, and repair with a gasoline powered engine because it is the standard that the majority of vehicles on the road use, and it is what most service stations are configured to support, and the platform that the majority of aftermarket engine parts manufacturers make parts for.
You can also buy Gasoline everywhere.

Joomla and Drupal certainly have their following and are fine platforms, but the community of developers, and support is much smaller than Word Press.

 

I've used wordpress, joomla and drupal, and I still have live sites in joomla and drupal. Which one to use depends on your technical skills and the features you want.

Wordpress is good for a small and simple site. Joomla is a good CMS for someone with light technical skills and who wants a visual interface. Community support is strong. But it's also poorly coded.

Drupal is good for someone with strong technical skills and has a great, tightly written backend. But it's definitely not a system for someone who is weak technically. It's also not intuitive, and the community support is weak as well.

If you want a strong but inexpensive commercial system with technical support, take a look at ExpressionEngine. It costs $250 U.S. for a one-time license. It doesn't have as many add-ons as Drupal or Joomla, but it's much easier to use and has far more flexibility than the other systems.

 

Is it really ? I've never used it, but that's the first time that I have heard that.
Very interesting.

 

Um... Joomla 1.5 is not poorly coded. Joomla has its issues, and I've pointed them out across several threads, but this is one of those cases where I have to disagree.

Joomla 1.5 now uses MVC framework, which is the standard approach across PHP, Ruby on Rails (which really set the standard for this approach) and other languages. Cake PHP, Code Igniter and several other PHP application frameworks use MVC at the core, just like Joomla. If Joomla 1.5 is poorly coded, so are many other projects, using this logic.

Now, Joomla falls down in documentation. Sure, the API docs are online, but this doesn't give me practical code snippets to give me concrete examples, which is why so many are put off by it at this point. Does it run slower than I like? Yep. Do I think at times it's a bit "heavy" and could have been made lighter? Sure do. Could it have been coded better? I think so. But poor coding? No, sorry, I cannot get behind that.

Getting back to the OP...

For a SMALL website, I'd have to understand first what "small" means. Joomla is more high-powered, and a bit more complex, so I'd be leery of recommending it for a boutique or personal site that is not going to grow. There are some very good light-weight CMS platforms for that kind of site. I've said before that I've used Website Baker to develop such a site for someone who found WordPress too complicated, and she's been running her site for over three years now using that platform with no complaints and has rarely ever asked me any subsequent questions. Her site was the textbook example of a personal site - she's not trying to run a forum, profiling, messaging, etc. She wanted a site she could use to collaborate with fellow writers and run a fanzine. Because of being a "techno pagan" with no desire to handle anything complex, there was no way I'd use Joomla for her solution. But, she needed to be able to add modules and expand functionality. I ultimately chose Website Baker because it has a module perfect for someone running her type of publication, and it was easy to set up and for a non-technical person to run.

I personally use Joomla for the simple fact that I find it easily extensible and it has a plethora of readily available plugins, and I have a strong technical background where I am very comfortable with it. I use it as a framework, and not necessarily as a CMS - primarily because I was too lazy to use Codeigniter and build my own from scratch.

But, that's ME. That solution may not work for the OP or someone else. In the end, the tool must be appropriate for the job and the person running it.

 

Let me try that one again. Joomla definitely has some strengths as I've mentioned above. My version of "poorly coded" means that compared to other content management systems I've used, I have run into more issues than most with security, the integration of add-ons (some integrate easily and others cause great pain and suffering) and the inflexibility of the templates.

For the record, I'm not claiming to be a Joomla expert. I use it for one of my sites and get by OK. I still recommend it to people depending on their circumstances.