Should I use Wordpres, Radiant CMS, or something else?

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My web host supports Ruby on Rails and Wordpress, amongst others. From what I understand, Django which is based on Python has strengths in doing web sites, and Ruby on Rails has strengths in web apps. And, here’s a link I found on the difference between web apps and web sites. Writing in Python is something I would like to do, however I don’t believe my shared host supports it. Conversely, PHP is also a candidate for creating web apps and web sites. Within PHP web frameworks, there’s [URL=“http://cakephp.org/”]CakePHP, [URL=“http://www.symfony-project.org/”]Symfony, and [URL=“http://framework.zend.com/”]Zend Framework, amongst others.

I decided that whatever technology I ultimately will use, will be both a web framework and a Content Management System. Reading before that if your website is more content based; a content management system is good for that is something I researched. I have narrowed down my choices in technology to Wordpress or Radiant CMS. The CMS I will choose will be for a blog and an interactive educational portal web site.

My question is, which is better if you are both a web developer and web designer and want one that it is good for good programming practices, clean code, good design, etc.? I would like my site to be unique, so I believe I may be leaning more towards Radiant CMS, except I possibly may need validation. Anybody with any experiences on these two CMS, I appreciate any insights, or feedback. Also, if you feel there’s a technology I’m missing that’s good for the kind of web site I mentioned, don’t hesitate to respond!

P.S. I realize I may get opinionated answers and that’s OK!

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I use wordpress due to the good indexing in search engines.

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Wordpress really beats Radiant in terms of Support and available addons. As it was initially designed as a blogging platform you will already have 50% of your goal covered and without any coding you will most likely find plugins to fit the rest of your needs.

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Those we both insightful answers. I guess I’ll be sticking with Wordpress, then! It will be hard not to! :slight_smile:

ChrisWeigman: I had a feeling that Wordpress would more likely be a winner, since I read reviews everywhere that stated it has more plugins than CMS, such as Joomla! and Drupal and your answer confirmed that. You gave me and everyone else additional insight, too.

I’m thinking that it would take a lot of coding to do what a lot of these plug-ins can do. I was considering Drupal as another option, since I heard it has more flexibility, but I feel that Wordpress is already getting the features that many of us, including me were looking for. And you can’t beat the community support!

I don’t think there’s any other blog CMS that can match the benefits of Wordpress as a blogging platform. Anyone can feel free to share if you have experienced something that Wordpress doesn’t do that your current CMS does.