natto - 2:54 pm on May 29, 2007 (gmt 0)

I'd recommend that you take a look at Expression Engine (http://www.expressionengine.com/).

To answer your criteria that you poasted above:

1) Squeaky clean code. I like XHTML 1.1 (Usually curbed to 1.0 Strict).

You use your own code for your templates and insert the Expression Engine tags into it so the quality of the code is up to you.

2) Accessible (I like WAI AAA)

Same answer as nuber 1.

3) Flexible (We don't know all of our needs yet, so I don't want to lock us in).

Not sure what you mean by flexible. Expression Engine comes with a lot of extensions and plug-ins.

4) Usable (Goes without saying. Leave fancy stuff behind if the site isn't usable, but I do like pizazz).

Do you want your site to be usable or the CMS to be usable? It's up to you which features you implement on your site. If you don't want to use module X then you're not forced to have it.

5) Has to Have a Powerful, usable calendar module. This is a MUST.

I haven't checked if it's powerful but I'm sure it comes with a calendar module.

6) Secure, Multi-user administration. I would really like the ability to designate security groups. (WordPress falls down here).

I *think* so... but check out the website to be sure.

7) The ability to post articles and pages.

Yes, although for articles and pages you may need the static page module (just Google "expression engine static page module") for these.

8) The ability to radically change the site structure and appearance (Too many CMSs force you to fit their model, or make skinning a major engineering effort -see Gallery 2).

See point 1. You use your own code and can structure the site as you see fit.

9) Simple administration and posting. This site will NOT be used by geeks. Too many CMS systems are designed by and for geeks. That cannot be stated strongly enough. Massive racks of icons, ala PHPNuke, need not apply.

It all seems fairly simply to me (but I'm a web geek) but again, check it out for yourself.

10) It can't be a giant resource hog. Drupal scares me here. It requires you to jack up your PHP memory requirements to 12M.

I can't answer this one, but check the Expression Engine forums for help (available on their website).

11) PHP-based. I don't want to deal with CGI, even if RoR is the basic blood of Web 2.0

It runs on PHP and MySQL.

12) Did I mention simple administration? I really, really mean it. Many people using the site will not even have high school educations.

See the answer to question 9...

I use this on my own website after getting frustrated with having to almost reverse engineer Wordpress templates to fit my site design. I have little to no PHP knowledge yet still managed to get it set up and to include some various if/else statements in the templates.

I downloaded the free, personal use version (the most expensive commercial version costs $250 so I wouldn't say it's too expensive) and use that. Download it yourself, install it and play around.