One last note in the Open Source versus Proprietary discussion: As I finish rooting in the corner for Open Source solutions, I feel that I must point out that there are always anomalies. As I myself have experienced projects that have outgrown Open Source solutions, it does happen! Sometimes you have projects that push the envelope beyond what Open Source can do. Even though Open Source offers worlds of possibilities (being that extension are always being developed to extend the core function of open source), it is the core structure of data management that ends up being the defining factor in some cases of Open Source versus Proprietary.
Again, most web design projects do not require special function ability that is setting the world on fire! As a matter of fact, there are many published stories of businesses that built million-dollar enterprises based on open source. One interesting piece of information is that as of July 2012, Wordpress is listed as the 19th overall busiest website in the world on www.alexa.com! While back in 2007 Joomla boasted that over 30 million of the worlds websites were using Joomla!
As I have already alluded to, the two big dogs in the world of Open Source Content Management are Joomla and Wordpress. While both are designed to have easy install and set up (even if you're not an advanced user) to achieve a custom design and correctly configured website, you are best served hiring a professional to set up and customize your site. Aside from ensuring that a custom and professional image is conveyed, there are many facets of a CMS such as component installation and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tweaks that are critical with the initial set up and configuration of these sites. Once your site is set up, accessing your control panel is as easy as logging into the Admin Section of your site. Here you can edit your web sites content (articles) using a Wordpad editor that is similar to Microsoft Word. You can edit text (fonts, colors, sizes, & links) add images to gallerries, post blogs, sell items and more!
In closing, there is another overall benefit to being able to keeping your site fresh. Aside form not looking foolish when your site holds outdated information, the more often your site is updated, the better search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing crawl or index your sites content! As frequency of site updates is one of the many criteria that is important to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
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