I need a cms for a client. I dont know much about cms. The client will need to be able to update the site themself. What can I use? Not joomla please.
We need a bit more information on what the website will be about, what content it will provide and which direction you plan to take it before we could recommend a CMS.
Dude cms does not always refer to content management system. It also means course management system. What is what???? ;-)
The site will provide text information, images and video clips. It a company web site with tabs for navigation, also drop down sub tabs. There is an existing web site with a design that I am granted rights to use, but the design have to be coded again. I dont know what you mean by "which direction you plan to take it"
By that I mean what you plan to do with the website once it's completed and online. I can't post live links so search Google for 'opensourcecms', you'll find a website that has demo's of the most popular CMS'. Then you can decide (with your client) which would be the best to use.
try cmsmadesimple.org. I've used it a couple of times w/o much trouble. The occasional "quirk" as w/ all opensource software, but the forums pretty active so if you do run into trouble you can always get help there
If converting a site that wasn't planned for having a CMS originally I'd recommend taking a look at Adobe (Macromedia) Contribute. It's not right for very large database driven sites, but for sites that are essentially static coded, it's a nice easy setup. The software runs on their machine, making the templates for it is relatively painless, and the options are pretty good. You can get a 30-day trial from the adobe site. cmsmatrix.com is a very useful site for comparing the real full featured options, but most CMSes are quite complicated and require a lot of planning.