There are lots of free open source CMS things like drupal, wordpress, …
But all these work with totally user friendly themes, or themes that you can change parts of it. But you can’t actually start from scratch ?
What if you already have a hardcoded existing webpage, where you have your own layout made by your own html, css, javascripts,… and you want some parts of that webpage to get managed separately by an external CMS.
For example a <div> in your website where you nest articles that can be commented (as a blog), with share/like buttons, …
Are there any recommended tools for that? Would it work out with Drupal aswel? It’s lots of work I gues…
Actually you can easily start a design from scratch for most of the CMSs around! There a lot of guides, tutorials and e-books about this subject especially for WordPress, Joomlan Drupal, EE etc…
If you have already a working site and you want to make it manageable etc you may want to consider: Pulse CMS http://pulsecms.com as for social network sharing options there are ready for use scripts around that you can easily implement!
When it comes to choosing a specific CMS (WP Vs Drupal Vs Joomla…) it depends on the nature of your site and what you really need!
IMO WordPress and Drupal are usually a good choice for most of the cases!
How big a website are you asking for? There are really small CMS’s around that are really easy to start from scratch with such as Perch CMS (grabaperch.com - paid) and wolfCMS(.org - open source)
This thread would not be complete without the sound of me plugging for MODx. MODx makes it absurdly simple to convert your existing layouts to CMS pages.
Now, if all you want to do is edit a small part of certain pages, it’s true that Cushy, Perch, or Pulse might be the best choice.
If, however, you want the potential to design your site like a static project, but manage the whole thing with a state-of-the-art CMS, replete with extras for blogs and the whole works, MODx is the way to go.