Sandbox

Hi. I'm looking for opinions on whether Joomla is capable of this for a site and any thoughts on what components I'd need.

I'm volunteering to build a new website for an annual Contemporary Dance festival. They had an old website (read: like 90s) and I've updated it to something "newer" but still entirely hand coded. I'd like to build them a CMS based site that will allow them to do their own updates. They want a lot of the usual features like newsletters and stuff that isn't an issue, but here's where I'm stuck.

They basically want to create a new site every year to match the look for that year. And they want to archive the previous year's site. Only a few updates will be made during the year, for example adding their Submission Guidelines (maybe a form) when the time is right, but then a full fledged listing of events, artist profiles, press releases etc leading up to the festival.

I'm not sure how to handle that part of the update/archiving with any tool. It's all not-for-profit and I'm volunteering my time. I have PHP/MySQL skills and I'm not afraid to jump in and get a little dirty. The template will be an issue too (ie: finding one).

Anybody with any thoughts - I'd love your input.

Thanks,
Jeff

Templates: There are free ones around that are pretty nice if you filter out the horrible ones.  I'm partial to http://www.joomlashack.com because they are 100% XHTML valid and good lookin'.

Function: Joomla can definitely do what you need.  Almost entirely with the core and no additional components.  Joomla installation takes about 15 minutes if you've done it before so a new site every year is no problem.

-I would suggest using Facile Forms component for the Submission Guideline part.
-JEvents component for the listing of events.
-Community Builder or static content pages for artist profiles depending on how you will need to access them.
-The core Blog feature for press releases.

Thanks for the reply. I'd forgotten I even posted here! Your comments were very useful. I hadn't seen the JEvents or other calendar apps. Due to the fact the festival is only 10 days, I hadn't considered that an essential part of the site, but I can see now that it should be.

CB seems a little overkill, but it might bring an interesting dynamic to the site.

thanks again!