Help: Upgrading to CMS?

[SwordBreaker]

http://www.projectcoe.com

Let me fill you in on our story first. Sorry in advance for the read.

So we are game media site that has been around for about 5 years. We take pride in our content, management, writing ability, and the fact that we didn't go poof after 5 years among all the other sites. It's almost like having a 2nd family and stuff. None of us get paid of course and the creator is responsible for the server fees. Nonetheless, it's still fun to write!

Our huge disadvantage is that we're using an archaic manner of updating our content. The creator and executive director has to manually HTML everything we send him via e-mail or Google Docs. I know that templates are present, but it's still a chore updating from his end as this eats up his time from actually contributing as a site. Plus, our content does not get uploaded on the fly.

So we've been going through the process of our 3rd redesign, this time hopefully armed with CMS integration. Problem is, none of us are professionals at at at this. We gathered that private web development companies offer to set everything up for us, but the ranges we pay are extremely variable and extremely expensive. Luckily, however, one dude answered our call and is helping us free of charge...he's currently setting up a CMS-based redesign of COE. It's going slow, but well enough. Again, we really know nothing about what's going on and what options to we have...so we can't really interact as much as we wanted with our "CMS expert programmer"...except for the fact that we'd like to make our site "blog-based" with integrated community features like comments, customizable and easy to expand upon, and ease of use from our point of view...like each of us posting content on the fly. We were hoping to have this redesign done by the time E3 comes around since this will be our first year attending as a site, yet it doesn't seem that this will happen. So the temporary solution I had right now is to setup a free wordpress blog so we can cover E3 as fast and efficiently as possible.

http://projectcoe.wordpress.com

Upon setting up this account and sharing it with our team, we were amazed be how packed wordpress is. For a free blog, it has EVERYTHING we want for our next site redesign. I learned that wordpress.org offers the open-source blog software for free and it's up to our expert to integrate these features to our upcoming redesign. So for now, using wordpress and integrating it with our upcoming CMS redesign is the plan, unless you guys suggest otherwise.

I've been browsing the net for the past hour for other open-source blogging software and it seems that there are a couple of them besides wordpress. The thing is, it's kind of hard to tell the difference between them in my point of view. I learned that wordpress is one of the best and has a lot of plugins for us to use and expand upon. "Movable Type" seems like a close 2nd...but my impression of that is that it's more "business-oriented" and not as casual-friendly as wordpress.

Again, though, I can't really tell what the difference will be and what's the better software...so I was wondering if you guys have something to add. What's the best route to go in terms of integrating CMS? Open-source seems like a nice start and very practical as long as the programmer can manage it and stuff. I wonder if you guys have other suggestions than wordpress that's better and more practical.

I don't think private companies are an option currently an option 'cause of the price. There is, however, stuff like SquareSpace. Area 5 Media a.k.a. CO-OP have been advertising it like crazy in their episodes and it seems really cool. I just need to check the price on that and see whether it's worth it or not. If you guys know of any reasonable prices or offers or good services, by all means inform me.

Finally, any advice on interacting with our CMS programmer? Any information that I need to know from him? Any suggestions to help/encourage him?