Light, easily customisable CMS? Friendly for multiple jQuery sliders, etc

Dave!

Hi folks,

I'm just looking for recommendations on CMS's at the moment... There's such a huge selection out there, and for sites that don't follow a standard template I would probably need to get deep into customising, creating extensions, etc., in order to accomplish some of the functionality I want.

For example a site I'm working on at the moment has a few standard 'static' pages, with text that the client needs to be able to change. However it also has lots of pages which all follow different templates/layouts, and have various different jQuery sliders on them.
Some of the sliders have just images, some have thumbnail navigation, some have captions, some don't, etc.

Basically I need to be able to easily create extensions, or work within the existing structure of the CMS, which allows me to make various jQuery sliders (and other things: a location database, for example) editable by the client.

At the moment I'm just finishing completing the site as a static HTML/PHP jobbie, but I'm dreading having to plug it into a CMS! Joomla is very big and powerful, but the learning curve will be very steep, and it seems like I'll have to create a seperate template for each page, a seperate extension for each 'module'/bit of functionality.

Amiright? Thanks for any help!

croo

I've only ever made small changes to Joomla! myself but from others with more experience in this area I believe that if you wish to do some development to extend the CMS Drupal is the more popular option.

yoyo

With Joomla you can easily define module positions on the master template, and through the module controller pick the page(s) you want the module to show on. That should mean you won't need to have multiple layouts like Wordpress would be, unless you want the design of different pages to change significantly.
With joomla modules (such as Sliders) you can add mutiples of modules pointing to a different category of items if you wish (obviously plugin dependent, but most sliders will offer this functionality).
I'd reccomend you install joomla locally and play around with it, its not that hard however like anything there is a learning curve and its possibly "harder" to use compared to the likes of Wordpress, although I think Joomla will work quite well for what you want, and I'm sure you'll be able to find existing components/modules etc (possibly even free) that will do what you require

Nick

Dave!

Thanks guys... Any other suggestions?

Kavrocks

Dave! wrote: »

Thanks guys... Any other suggestions?

My personal preference is FuelCMS because I'm not tied down to the limitations provided by the likes of Joomla or Drupal. Albeit it takes a lot more to get off the ground but I find it easier to accomplish more complicated tasks that with Joomla or Drupal.