CMS advice/suggestions/recommendations

Hi there everybody,

I'm looking for advice and recommendations regarding a CMS for running and maintaining a web site. First off, I have a background in web site development, though I haven't done any professionally for five or six years now. I know HTML and CSS, and I've dabbled a bit in Javascript and PHP (enough to generally be able to tweak existing scripts to my liking, though not good enough to sit down and write a new script from scratch). I've never used a CMS before; I've always hand-coded static pages, with maybe a bit of scripting thrown in to display the current date on the page, or create rollover effects, or what have you.

My wife is a Highland Dance teacher and runs a dance school. I made a website for the school several years ago, but it's severely out of date and unfinished. We also moved a few times, so it's taken a while for her to get the school established again and build up a body of students. Now that she has, we need to revive and improve the website.

My basic requirement is to set up some way for my wife to add, edit and remove content herself — class schedules, information about upcoming competitions and performances, and so on. She is not very techy — she uses email and Facebook, and uses Word and Excel, and that's about it. She's not about to learn HTML and FTP or whatever else. So I need to set up something simple for her.

For now I'm envisioning probably two types of pages; some static pages with contact information, biographical information, and the like,  and some topical pages with more time-sensitive information, such as class schedules, competition details and entry forms, etc. I figure the latter could be set up along the lines of blog posts or news articles: arranged chronologically, from newest to oldest. The front page of the site will probably be a mixture of both types of content, with some static information about the school, maybe some photos or whatever, and say the five or ten most recent blog/news items. Eventually I'd like to add more functionality, like a small eCommerce setup to sell CDs and other fundraising items for the school, a discussion forum for the students to use, and so on, though that can come later on.

I have two further requirements:  first, I want complete control of the site's HTML and CSS. I don't want to be stuck with a template or theme that I can only edit certain aspects of. Second, I'm looking for something light and lean in terms of overhead.  As much as I'd love a VPS or something along those lines, we can't afford it right now. So I need something that will run effectively in a typical, shared web hosting environment. (We're using BlueHost, if it matters.)

Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?

Last edited by Crunnluath (2011-03-10 20:52:36)