Thanks (especially for the very first link). :)

I've just downloaded documentation or scripts from most of those sites, although I'd already visited CMSWatch. I'll check them out more thoroughly offline.

I've already bought books on Perl, PHP and MySQL recently, and don't really want to spend any more for a while (techie books aren't cheap).

My main problem is that I have unusual requirements, which is why I'm having to create the program myself.

First of all, I don't want to use any non-standard modules if I can possibly avoid doing so. I'm on a tight budget, so my hosting choices are limited. I'll also be developing the system on an NT machine, though once completed it will also be used on a UNIX server.

Sticking to standard modules should help avoid any nasty incompatibility surprises later.

Secondly, I need it to build static pages, as the content will be added to a lot more often than it is modified. Pages will therefore be viewed many more times than they are updated, making dynamic delivery a waste of resources.

I also want deep directory categorization (4 or 5 levels) and the potential to handle several thousand pages. Oh, and user-friendly URLs without resorting to mod_rewrite (not that tough if the pages are "real" HTML documents).

EasyCMS looked promising, but can't handle deep categories. WebMake would probably be okay if it didn't insist on having custom modules installed.

Strangely enough, Links 2.0 from Gossamer Threads is probably the closest I've seen so far, but it would need to be modified quite heavily to build other types of pages too.

I figured it would be easier to start from scratch rather than modify code that is intentionally obscure and designed to make you want to upgrade.