Content Management Systems Nebwie

[Clarrie]

Part of my job is to manage 2 websites for a company, and they're both quite small. All websites i've worked on have been relatively small and i've used dreamweaver exclusively for creating and uploading sites, and have pretty sound knowledge of html and php.
However one of our sites is rapidly expanding and changing more and more frequently, and i have a lot of trouble with the .htaccess file (as in i don't currently have one....)
so its been suggested i implement a CMS and use asp to manage the site....
i've never used a CMS before - how easy are they to pick up and handle a site with?
also are there any free/open source systems that WPWers can recommend?
or generally any advice you can offer on this subject?
Sorry if i sound very dumb, this is quite new to me!
thank you so much for any advice you can offer!

I've used Joomla on quite a few sites - and also Mambo, which a lot of the other Joomla supporters haven't mentioned.

Joomla is a spin off from Mambo and the two share a lot of the same attributes, as well as many of the same add-in components and modules. Don't know enough about the politics of the split to comment on it, but having used both a lot feel I can comment on usability.

Personally I prefer to use Mambo, as I find the pages easier to understand when I need to carry out modifications, but that's perhaps familiarity.

In practice, both are good, and the core systems of both can be used to generate compliant sites, provided you setup the templates correctly.

Where the compliance side falls down is usually in the use of third party add-ins - some are good, others less so.

Deployment and setup is very easy, provided you are with a compatible host.

Although there are stacks of free templates out there, I recommend creating your own to meet the meets of your client - most of the free templates are aimed at being all things to all men[women!], and sometimes end up being a bit over cluttered. Starting from scratch is very easy, and I now find it much quicker and easier to do than modifying a free template to suit.

Both Mambo and Joomla have new versions on the stocks and due for imminent release.

[UCSI]

I know you are looking for a free CMS, but maybe you should take a look at Contribute - you stated both sites are small - Macromedia (Adobe) Contribute is very user friendly and produces the same clean code you establish in your template design - since you already developed the site in Dreamweaver - it is a snapt o enable it for Contribute - you can 'lock up' all design elements, but the client can still update their own content, add/delete pages (if you let them) and so on - even to a point where changes have to be approved by you first. Very in-expensive for $150 per seat.

Might be worth checking out - I have used it on numerous client sites (smaller clients) and they ALL love it!

Good luck:)