want to let my community members create their own pages

Our website, www.fsma.org, is for families whose kids a a serious (frequently fatal) neuromuscular disease.

We would like our members to be able to create and maintain individual pages about their child - including text and photos. People want to be able to individualize their pages a lot (say with a background pattern or other graphics) but we would of course want a common header. Has to be easy for these users to use!

I don't need to manage the rest of the site with this tool, just this section. Most of the CMS software seems to be quite huge - designed for a whole site - and not that easy to set up, and doesn't lend itself to my individualized graphics needs. Can anyone suggest a suitable tool?

I have used open source (for example we use phpbb) and it has its drawbacks (I hate those constant patches) and I'd prefer a simple installation. Don't mind paying some as long as it's reasonable. Have access to MySQL and SQLServer.

Suggestions please?
thanks
bettylou

have you considered using a social networking application for this purpose?

We just had an online event n the emerging tech forum that lists hundreds of them. You can also search the search box for social networking to see an article written on the topic.

Finally, this post
may be of interest to you.

HTH,

Susan

Thanks for the suggestion, Susan. I looked at that thread and the article. All those social networking solutions seem to be things that would be external to our site, if I understand them. And I'd prefer something much simpler than those too.

What I'd really like is my own version of caringbridge.org - pretty well exactly like that, or what some hospitals make available to patients - a private page you can post updates about your child and send the URL to friends.

Have you ever seen a tool like that?
thanks again,
bettylou

Have you tried Macromedia's Contribute? Try a free trial download and take the tutorial. It's so easy to use, tears will spring to your eyes! Hurry, though -- Adobe has taken over Macromedia (makers of Dreamwaver Web software) so everything will soon be very Adobe-complex. Good Luck!
Cate