CMS recommendations for static site for a charity

AmbitiousLemon

I haven't posted here in awhile, but some of the best discussions on various CMS's available have happened hear so I thought I'd ask this question here. I have designed a website for a small charity. The site consists of a handful of static pages and a contact form. Thats all that is (and probably ever will be) needed. I want to add a basic CMS to it for the sole purpose of allowing the owner to change just the content of the pages. Something no more advanced than posting to a forum. I also want the CMS to allow me to use my own valid xhtml and css (rather than forcing me to kludge my css into some overly complicated and potentially invalid html). I've looked at jaws, drupal, joomla, plone, radiant, wordpress and some others and none quite fit this formula. While all being totally overkill for the needs of this project many also did not have valid html, did not allow me to use my own html, or did not provide a control panel that would be friendly for a novice. Maybe I'm wrong about some of these and you guys could point out my errors. The site design is currently sitting at emisbearhugs.ambitiouslemon.com. Suggestions of other CMSs or ways to use one of those I mentioned would be very greatly appreciated.

NickE

cmsimple?

you could also just make one, I suppose, if you really can't find anything.

sjeeps

I think you should give sNews a try.

Grahack

Sometimes a good wiki makes it. But there is some work for design/customization (on templates and stylesheets).

jstubbs

Try Textpattern - http://textpattern.com - you decide on the XHTML and CSS, and there are plugins available which can reduce the amount of fields your client sees in the Admin panel.

AmbitiousLemon

Thanks for the help. Having taken a cursory look at each (playing with the demos on their sites and opensourcecms.com) I think I am liking textpattern (can't believe I forgot about this one). jstubbs - do you recall the names of the plugins to which you are referring?

jstubbs

Hi - I think by the sound of what you are interested in, TXP is a good choice for you. I don't use the plugin I mentioned earlier, but here it is:

http://textpattern.org/plugins/643/ied_hide_in_admin

Hope this helps. If you need anything else, best ask in the TXP forums.

Gauzy

another vote for TxP, sounds like it'd be a good fit.

AmbitiousLemon

As I've started to work with TxP its pretty clear it doesn't handle static pages/content well at all. Adding a single static page is an elaborate hack that makes the editing for the client confusing. I really like the way it handles the html and css - but beyond that its so focused on being a blog it doesn't seem able to do anything else well.

jstubbs

Surprising you have problems with static pages - its easy as pie. Create a section for your static page, then choose whether to use the default page for your XHTML or create a new page. Then, in your page, place something like article limit=1 where you want the article to appear.

Your client only has to edit one article. Create the article first and choose the section you created earlier. Its that simple. Adding images or files is possible with plugins.

Hope this helps.

AmbitiousLemon

Not so much problems with static pages, I just find the way of adding them rather round about. Seems like it creates and unintuitive organization for the writers. I ended up sticking with txp though and finished up the site. Used a wysiwyg plugin for the writer. The community at the txp forum is pretty good (some really helpful responsive people too). thanks for the suggestion. I think it worked out well.