Well I guess it depends on what you're doing. I have experience with both Drupal and Joomla to name a couple. I like Drupal, I don't like Joomla. Just my subjec

Well I guess it depends on what you're doing. I have experience with both Drupal and Joomla to name a couple. I like Drupal, I don't like Joomla. Just my subjective experience. If what you're doing is really left of field, then yeah, probably you are better off just making something yourself with Rails or whatever. But to answer your original musing, I think it would be worth putting in some time to trial out the ready made options that are out there, you could save your self a lot of time. If you don't like them, you can always start your own thing. It doesn't take long to install either Drupal or Joomla (though I would choose Drupal if I were you). Drupal has a well developed taxonomy system (essentially a way of tagging content with terms) that can be used in a variety of ways (from setting up a very granular access control system to just logically organising content) and is very flexible. It's got a good templating system. It has great community support and good documentation. As you allude, it has a huge amount of plug-in modules (all free, unlike Joomla, where more of a business has grown around selling plug-in modules for cash). But as you are obviously aware, if you use software developed by someone else, you're of course starting from their point of view. I think this applies even with frameworks like Rails... Rails is DHH's point of view. Drupal is the Drupal developers point of view. If you're going to find it useful to stand on the shoulders of giant's, then you have to agree with the giant. :) I've trialled many CMSes, and from the ready made options out there, Drupal is the best option I have so far found.