[Discuss] Small website, non-technical users: Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress?

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Bill Horne wrote:
> ...we've been using MediaWiki for the board's website
> ...but we have to move the site to a new
> server which doesn't offer it.
> 
> So, the question is "What's the best compromise between ease-of-use, 
> learning curve, and maintainability if we have to choose between
> Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress"?

I can't answer the latter question, as I have limited experience with
maintainability for Joomla and WordPress. (Though I hear that although
WordPress is less capable, the reason for its rise in popularity is the
easier use and maintainability.)

I will, however, in the tradition of answering the question you didn't
ask, suggest the idea of using Wikispaces, as we do for BLU (and
boston.pm.org). It's free or cheap, hosted, so no maintenance, still a
wiki, so a model familiar to your users, and in my opinion has a better
UI and markup language than Mediawiki. (Though in some ways is less
powerful.)

A CMS tends to be a better bet if your priority is site design
(appearance), while a wiki is better if you are more concerned with
doing collaborative document editing.

It should be possible to write a markup converter to go from Mediawiki
to Wikispaces. One may even already exist. As a plan B, you can
highlight formatted text in your Mediawiki site and paste it into the
Wikispaces' rich text editor, preserving the formating. (You'll still
need to fix up the internal links.)

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/