The limits of Drupal and others

Hi there,

For three days I am constantly trying out different CMS systems to finally find the perfect one for my existing and any future sites. First, I wanted something very simple... after a couple of suggestions I have been trying one-page CMS (which didn't really provide the specific features I wanted) to others like CMS Made Simple. They seem to be great but it has its limits too. After reading a little more about how others manage their contents etc. I tried it with a more complex one: Drupal. It has been said that it is very SEO friendly and very customizable through modules.
I found it great -- converted my site's theme to Drupal theme. Now I found the limits again: It's hard to manage several dynamic menus. It's a little complicated to design particular articles (e.g. with an image). This is done through nodes but you have to create them by yourself somehow. Well I also found that some useful modules are not updated anymore to the Drupal version 4.7, which slows down everything. I would probably need to hire a coder sooner or later to exactly accomplish what I want. Of course, I could code it by myself but I ain't got no time for this no more.

I now seriously think about Joomla since it has a big community. I once again looked at the CMS (the fourth time I think) and didn't find it really complex anymore. This has probably happened because I stepped into the features and complexities of other CMS' first Anyway, I want to be sure that it is worth it that I spend my day today to migrate the theme AGAIN, so any advice would be helpful.

I want to do the following:

Have a homepage with a small top menu (these have been the primary links in drupal). Those links should refer to other pages with their main menus. Those main menus should be easily customizable. I want them to be dynamic in some cases. In other cases I don't... Is that possible?
Also I don't want to be restricted in the total "depth" of the articles. Let me explain what I mean: As of now, I see the possibility to add sections, and assign categories to these sections. This allows to have the homepage show the sections, and the section pages to show the categories in their own menu. Is it also possible to allow "category pages" to show their own menu with "sub categories"? Maybe I can specify that they display only a particular section? Anyway, I just want to be sure that all this can be done with not too much research.

Thanks in advance!

 

I'd go Wordpress route, it's fast, slick and does validate. Joomla is like an old elephant YMMV

 

Really I tried that already and found a LOT of limits!