CMS recs?

[usernamenumber]

The A.S.S. (the company behind the recent production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which I played, about which I really will do a longer post asap) is talking about putting together a website, and I've volunteered to help.

My instinct is to design and code the thing from scratch, like I did for the Second Shift site, but I'm beginning to think that that's old fashioned (or is it?). For a site that doesn't need to do anything special, just text, photos, and videos, should I just deploy a CMS and be done with it? If so, which one? I kind of like the Stranger Ways site, which natbudin put seemed to put together practically overnight with WordPress, though my ideal would be extensible using Python instead of PHP (though that's just a preference-- can do PHP fine).

Anyway, suggestions?

Comments

[laurion]

Wordpress is eminently suitable, because it is also easy for other people to add content. Drupal is the tool of choice for a lot of people, but I feel requires more front-loaded work setting it up. Once it is set up it is quite beautiful, but out of the box WordPress is probably an easier tool. Of course, this means it is up to you how much work you feel this project is getting from you.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Ideally I'd build the thing myself because I think it's fun, but alas I just don't have time, and that doesn't seem to be the way the game's played any more. Even pro webdevs seem to be quite happy to just deploy a (customized) CMS where nothing fancier is required.

[laurion]

People don't build it themselves for a few reasons:
1) Saves time
2) easier to hand off when you eventually do.
3) Reinventing the wheel means reinventing all the bugs other things have already solved, which is a big security nightmare.

Third party open source products are sufficiently capable and attractive and usable that there is almost no good reason to build by hand, no matter how satisfying that might feel as a project.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Seconded on Wordpress. It's what I use for both improbable.com and the in-game sites for Future Imperfect.

I've also heard good things about Drupal, but I know pretty much nothing about it. I think beetiger has worked with it recently, if you want to ask her about it.