I have a family member, that I am trying to help set up a web presence for. Although I myself am very technical and have done a number of things around web hosting and application servers, this person is not.
What I looking for is ideas for what might be the best software solution to get him off on a good foot. From what I can tell of his needs I'm not looking at traffic or storage or commerce issues at all, the primary concern would be something inexpensive that would be very easy for him to modify content as he wished (he said he has a number of long technical papers he would like to have on the web for potential clients, not sure if he means to put up PDF's or the text on a page).
To this end my thoughts are to use a web host that I can set up a CMS (like Drupal, which I have had some experience with, but I'm open to anything easier). I can help with some of the initial setup but I really want to be hands-off after that.
Any thoughts or suggestions to find the best solution possible would be much appreciated. I feel like I can find a host OK, once I am sure about what combination of software would work best for him - CMS or anything else.
Thanks!

You can have a look at phpWcms, Joomla / Mambo / Elxis, Drupal etc. There are many cms out there - you may try the demos at opensourcecms.com and see what fits your family member.
I like phpWcms because it has a very nice system for file management and the way the pages are built - it is definetely worth look.
Another option would be to find a host that provides also a sitebuilder (ideally for free) like rvsitebuilder, sitestudio, sitebuilder etc. - these builders are designed to work for non-techincal people.

Wordpress.
Easy-shmeasy, and a quite simple back-end.
In this case, IMO, dedicated CMSs are really overkill for the kind of site you're describing ......... but a Wordpress installation with a sharp template would serve him well.
:D Bailey

Is it really a CMS you would need or just a wysiwyg editor?

First of all specify the project for yourself. Understand what should be done there. Knowing that do some search to find out more information about major CVS what were suggested above. Do some research, read documentation. Maybe that will be good idea to test all of them there.

one of these CMS's should be sufficient for your needs.
1.Joomla
2.Drupal
3.Mambo
4.Elxis
5.SMF
6.MODx

Thanks all, good suggestions - I did spend some time looking through OpenCMS a while ago for some of my own web sites, but what I am lacking is a good feel for how well a novice could update them. Drupal was good for what I was doing but I feel is too complex for him to use.
Wordpress is something I was strongly considering, though since it's more presenting sets of static information infrequently than a kind of blog I was not as sure about that... but at this point it's probably more than flexible enough to serve.
The sitebuilders some hosts offer are what I was wondering the most about, as I have never used them - does anyone know of a place that lets you demo the site builder to see if it would suffice?
Thanks again!

one of these CMS's should be sufficient for your needs.
1.Joomla
2.Drupal
3.Mambo
4.Elxis
5.SMF
6.MODx
Isn't SMF a forum software???
As for wordpress, it's quite versatile. It can be used to serve up static pages and various templates can be created so each page could look different if you wanted or the frontpage can look different than the rest of the pages.

I think the sort shoud be:
1, Joomla
2, PHP Nuke
3, Wordpress (design as you like for a CMS portal)
4, Mamboo
5, Drupal

You can set static pages in wordpress at settings/writing. In addition, some themes are set up so that you can easily configure static pages. Try ithemes.

I´m using a small and easy cms called Zimplit, it has a online editor, so no admin area, only login and edit text, photos or menu structure directly on website.It´s a quite new system and still growing and developing and most important- it´s free. You can take a look at zimplit.org for more info or for testing demo.

My vote goes for drupal cms - it has built in seo.

Drupal if you have the time
Joomla is a great solution, but dont expect it all to be free, and prepared to see some backlinks on components.
Wordpress for single author CMS like site is great, and several times easier than the above 2.

Wordpress for single author CMS like site is great, and several times easier than the above 2.
WordPress support multi-user blogs and multi-levels like subscriber, commenter, editor, administrator. And yes, WordPress is great! :)