Hello ranters.
I have a question. After beating my head about choosing a CMS for the first time, I am still not sure which CMS to use.

The website is supposed to be a portfolio, but the photographer/designer (client) does not have any idea on how to use HTML, which means he cannot update his website regularly.

For me, this first of a kind project.
Using WordPress makes using custom themes a pain.
Using NetlifyCMS, I kind of have to depend on GitHub.

Another idea is to create something similar to Instagram.....where the client can only add pictures.....what are your thoughts guys?....

I'm not a web dev guy, but I'd say go for the most straightforward approach that gets the job done, whatever that turns out to be.

Usually WordPress if you want the client to take care of it themselves, because there are tons of WP devs around who they can hire to make changes assuming you're not available and they need something major done. Also there are tons of WP tutorials and stuff which the client could refer to.

I don't know if it'll cover your needs perfectly or not, but you can try Grav, it's pretty simple and it doesn't even need a database, which for a picture-only site is probably overkill.

https://getgrav.org/

@RememberMe I agree. But with WP it's kind of a hustle to get the design you want. However WordPress is still the best and "easiest" solution

@ethernetzero wow. I had never heard of it before somehow. It looks really promising.

@M1sf3t that's an interesting idea🤔I would definitely like to give it a go, if it does cater to the clie-...oh wait nothing caters to the clients🤪...but seriously.... I'd give this a try

WordPress sometimes can be too much for some clients. But I'd use WordPress limiting the admin options to their account. How about a headless CMS? You build the front-end in React, Angular,etc. And connect it to Prismic.io or others headless CMS services.

@wolfmaster8 I've gone this route before. I've used Cofoundry CMS with DotNetCore and Vuejs. Paying for the service might be better in this case for dev and client. I had to build a lot of entities custom but it turned out well.

I've spent ~40 hours the last 2-3 months trying everything and choosing a CMS I'd use for the next couple of years.

I've been developing with WordPress for ~5 years - users like it, WP Core is shit, you have to work against the clutter it includes by default. The end product depends on your skills. I always developed a custom built theme with MVC (Typerocket), Twig, etc.

Grav is great. Sometimes it can be limiting, but for really simple sites it's great. Also features Twig templates.

Twill is amazing. It is what I use now. It's a Laravel package, meaning that you have to know Laravel (you actually code Laravel, Twill is just a layer of control above it).

Craft CMS is also good, it's a solid foundation, but it's built on Yii, so you have a full-blown MVC (just like with Twill - Laravel). I almost settled with this one, unfortunately it's not free for commercial use.

Just point them to Wix or something, you save nerves and they save bucks. Win-win as you are now free to take on other work that you can provide actual value with.

Gatsby with a transformer that converts markdown files to html? Tim Ermilov on YouTube showed how to easily do that.