My client wants me to create a CMS website and frankly Joomla is very new to me and it will take too long for this project to learn it.
Any suggestions for other programs that will be more user-friendly for a programming newbie?
(I do know HTML and CSS)

Thanks

Please read user testimonials and decide

http://cmsmadesimple.org/main/what_our_users_say

CMS made simple is one of the easiest to handle CMS I found.

if you're afraid of the learning curve, you're probably better off sticking with frontpage.

No matter which CMS package you want to use on a hosted environment you'll have to learn a number of things:
  * Permissions
  * File Creation Masks (umasks)
  * Safe mode
  * memory limit
  * php capabilities (tokenizer, gd, ...)
  * memory limits
  * determining what is causing certain errors (debugging skills)
 
And that doesn't have anything to do with the particular CMS.  For many of the popular CMS's you will have to have at least a rudimentary knowledge in php to be able to adjust templates and use addons.  At least CMS made simple doesn't require this. 

You'll also have to learn the terminology and underlying organization of the particular CMS no matter which one you choose.  As only by learning how it was designed to work will you get the maximum power out of it.  Not to mention exactly how you build a simple website.

Many of our users have worked with the joomlas, and the drupals many times before and come to CMS Made simple for its simplicity in building mostly static but managed websites.  For the simplicity in adding modules, for building dynamic behaviour into the site, for building menus and building a validated XHTML, and CSS website. 

If this is too much for you, see frontpage. 

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