For awhile now, I've thought about redesigning my current site with a fresh design, some new features and an easier way to update the content. Right now I have a few hundred static HTML pages and sometimes I feel like it's going nowhere (traffic is good, but the design is VERY simple). I've been working on this site for a few years now, it's pretty popular, but I feel like the design does the content no justice.

So anyways, I've been thinking about a big redesign and all, and someone suggested to look into CMSs. I looked at a few, like Xoops, Mambo, phpWebsite, PHPnuke and e107 (a few others too) and some of them look interesting, like the phpWebsite one and e107 (very appealing). I looked at Subdreamer, which appeals because it can integrate with IPB, but that's not a big deal... and it's somewhat expensive when you compare it's features to other free ones and weigh its unique ones.

Basically, I'm not sure if a CMS is even what I need, or if it's worth it to use one. But I also want to make sure that the site is redesigned correctly, so that I won't have to completely revamp it in a year or 2. What I'm really worried about are 3 main things:

1. Will it be easy for my users to use it? That's my main concern, because if it's not easy for them to use, they'll go to other sites.

2. is it easy to keep the content maintained? I still want to be able to create/edit my pages in notepad and dreamweaver and easily update them.

3. Most of my pages have been crawled by Google and have a very good pagerank when compared to my competetors. If you search for something associated with my site (that is also on a competetor's site), my site is nearly always ranked first. I would really like to keep my current page names and directory structure. I have no idea if this is actually possible with a CMS...

So what I'd like to know is: is it worthwhile to use a CMS for my website's content? Thanks for any ideas! :)

Well, I would say absolutely. It's easy to use, easy to maintain and your surfers will love it. I strongly recommend you to use Joomla, I am buildig all my new sites on it these days.

Not sure about Joomla since you already have some site structure wich could be hard to replicate in Joomla. We do build sites based on it too (and a lot!), but some things are just easier to be done differently. For example - I was contemplating for a long time to build my web site on Joomla (Mambo at that time), but finally decided to have custom build CMS designed specifically for my site. It works faster, has same features I would ask of any CMS for that matter (like Site Map, Search-Engine Friendly URLs, portfolio, WYSIWYG editor and such). What made a difference is that
- no one knows the code, so less hackers will be tempted to try on our web site;
- no features we don't use;
- no third-party components that may or may not require displaying copyrights - with our own CMS we have no problem putting just one - us :)
- no hassles with further customizing the script - with open source software there's always a chance something like Mambo team breakup could occur leaving you hanging in the air;
- we just like it that way :)

Not trying to say Joomla is bad. In fact I was running my own personal web site on Mambo since version 4.0.7 :) My point is - it is possible that investing in your own custom-made CMS would make more cense. Besides, it doesn't cost that much :)