http://www.missionenvironment.com I downloaded a free template and have been trying to get this site up and running for a while, but I duno if I got a bad template or if Joomla is not right for this project, but I have having a very tough time. You can basically see what I am trying to do with this site, but it is not going very smoothly. I am considering just trashing this and designing the site by hand. What do you think?
depends what you want to do with the site. the thing about Joomla that frustrated me was that you can't really add static pages and scripts. so until you tell more about what you want to accomplish, hard to say.
I want to basically revolve the site around two articles: Why to take action How to take action Each will be just a numbered list in which I will continue to add content. I want to be able to have the front page update stuff and layout easily, which is the hardest part I have come across in Joomla.
Joomla templates are not easy to work with either. custom Joomla templates run hundreds of dollars. If you are a techie and can work with them maybe ok but definitely a headache for newbies/regular ppl.
what do you mean by "update stuff and layout easily" your layout seems fairly simple and straight forward. as far as not being able to add static pages and scripts. that's not exactly true. there are mambots and modules that do will let you do that. run-digital.com for example has a mambot that allows you to include php into articles very much like a include file. so by update, do you mean that you want to frontpage to show the tails (latest) of your two main articles??
Adding your own pages and scripts are no problem. Search on Joomla.org and you will find two different solution for doing that.