I’ve got a very simple site — a few content pages and an image gallery. The design for the gallery calls for multiple albums, with thumbnails on the image page. We want an extremely simple, clean design. Usability of the back-end is a priority.
My first instinct is drupal, because that’s how I’ve been building my sites lately, but making it really easy to use is actually a fair bit of work for a simple site like this. WordPress generally has slightly better usability. Is there a great plugin for handling galleries? Any other suggestions?
I would have to say WordPress with a nice theme.
http://www.cssreflex.com/2009/07/13-magnificent-free-wordpress-portfolio-themes.html
Lots of gallery plugins WordPress ⺠WordPress Plugins to use on themes, and there are some free photography-centered themes: WordPress ⺠Free WordPress Themes
I built a Drupal-based site for my wife who works as an artist – http://shoshannabauer.com/
The modules I used were ImageField, ImageCache, Views, and any required modules for those three. It was really very easy, and I was able to give her additional features like fields for Paypal purchasing and links to her ImageKind store front.
Answered a similar question recently, here was my response—
I’m not sure if you’re still looking for one now, but just in case– I’m an artist and I built a simple PHP CMS (no database) for myself recently. Just create folders / add image files / edit text files to manage content. It was pretty useful for me so I decided to release it as open source, it’s called Gallerina. No automatic thumbnails and no pagination, but it’s pretty easy to use and the default style is simple and elegant, good for a visual artist’s portfolio. 🙂
If you’re looking for something more robust, you can check out Stacey (simple elegant interface too, but you can add content other than images) or MiniGal (automatic thumbnails).
Having worked with other CMS like WordPress, I would have to answer Drupal as the better choice.
For a portfolio site, I’m not sure where you see the complexity in Drupal. Using Views & Views Slideshow ( for instance ), you could be done in a couple of hours, even less depending on your design requirements.
But , in my opinion, this is not even Drupal’s strongest point. What I really like is Drupal’s flexibility. You can create a simple content type. Later on, it’s pretty straightforward to add more fields, new taxonomies, more functionality, or even completely change the design.
Finally, within the right environment, Drupal can be pretty fast, which is never a bad thing as far as the web is concerned.
You could try Indexhibit — it’s pretty popular.
If you emphasize on the back end usability, then WordPress will be a good choice. You could even have someone non-technical manage it, if needed with no previous experience. With Drupal, the user may just get overwhelmed about the complexity.
Plus you could have issues with plugin management, as lots of modules are required to make the site work well.