What's the simplest CMS solution for my scenario

I have a website and forum now that is fairly well established. I am looking to write more articles for the site and I am in need of a CMS solution. My site is already desinged and I don't want to redo the entire thing with a CMS and I don't want to spend weeks figuring out how to customize a theme to match my site. What I would like is something very simple that I can write articles and easlily submit them. I would like for the descriptions and links of the 5 most recent articles to be listed on the front page of my site and I would also like a archive page that would include all of the past article links. I would like to keep formatting at a minimum as I have a custom header and custom navigation bar on the left. I would like to just inlude this page along with that header/navigation bar. I don't need for users to be able to register or comment on the articles at this point.

My other concern is that I want to make sure that I am not tied down to a specific software package. In other words, something that would be easily convertable to something else.

I am thinking a custom script may be the way to go but I need some templates or something. It seems, on the surface that it would be simple. I would need an article entry page that store the article in a database, a php include to call the last 5 entries in the database to the home page, and an article archive page that would include a list of all the articles with x# per page.

Any suggestions?

thanks in advance for your help.

 

You could consider using Wordpress. you're asking for a lot though and you may consider asking someone to write an application for your needs. If you say your have a well established forum, you may have the revenue to do so as well. Wordpress has an easy templating system and you can export to just about any other CMs. Just a thought, good luck with it.

 

Word Press may be a solution. I have it installed but haven't played around with it much yet. Does it allow RSS export of articles? That might allow me to display the most recent on my home page.

Also, where would I find someone to write a custom application?

 

Yes, it most certainly allows RSS feeds, especially to anywhere on the site. http://codex.wordpress.org is a good place to start for browsing around.

you could post in the 'services' forum to ask to see if anyone could write an application for you.

 

thanks for your help.

 

I have looked over Word Press and I suppose I need to do more research. It appears that this software lists "posts" in full on the main page. What I would like is a listing of Title/Link with a brief description of the article. Then clicking on the link takes you the the main article.

I may just need to do some more reading, I am sounding like a cms noob... which I am.

 

You can surely do that. a function used for that would be the_excerpt(); there is A LOT of flexibility to Wordpress. You can do anything you want with it.

 

Hi

I think you're in a tough situation. The function you want (5 articles on the homepage) is supported by alot of CMSs, however it's not just a simple matter of plugging it in.

Unless you want to spend some time mapping in your existing template then I would suggest you need to have something done especially for you. If it was my though I would be going to a full CMS. You will quickly outgrow your (at the moment) simple requirements and require alot more.

Go and have a look at Mambo and WebsiteBaker, both are good solid CMSs.

Wordpress is great, i use it for my blog, but it really is suited to blogging more than content management.

Hope this helps.

Jay