Is there a simple CMS for designers and artists who want an online portfolio? Basically just something to manage an image gallery page/s, and have pages for each of the individual works.
Or if not, what are some other ways of doing it?
Hi Harry, welcome to SitePoint! 
The good news—or the bad news, depending on how you look at it—is that there is a myriad of options. But really, it’s easy to do this as a static site, so the first question would be: how much access to you need? If the site will just go up and be left as is, you don’t need a CMS at all. But if editing is needed, how much? Some simple CMS options include options like Perch, [URL=“http://mojomotor.com/”]MojoMotor and [URL=“http://pagelime.com/”]PageLime. A more sophisticated and expandable option is [URL=“http://expressionengine.com/”]ExpressionEngine.
Thanks!
Well I guess the portfolio works wouldn’t really need to be edited once they are up. Probably, they would just need to be deleted if new work was going to replace them, and the option to re-order their display in the gallery would be good.
I guess all I’d need is something to upload pictures, titles and descriptions, display thumbnails in a gallery type set-up with the option to move the order of their display, and then a separate page for each with the work descriptions.
Would you recommend building this myself? I have a basic knowledge of PHP.
If the client needs to upload things, definitely go with a CMS, but if it is you updating things for the client, I don’t see the point in a CMS.
If you are up for building a CMS by yourself, sure, go for it, though it seems like reinventing the wheel to me. There are lots of free CMSs out there and handy frameworks, like http://www.yiiframework.com/.
Personally, despite the cost, I lean towards ExpressionEngine, as it is very powerful and makes such things easy, thought I’m not a PHP person so I need something like this. WordPress might be worth a look too, as there are lots of plug-and-play gallery plugins for that.
There are some great looking Wordpress themes for those who want to emphasize their portfolios over other things on their WP site. Take a look at Themeforest and you can get a great theme for $30 - $40 to use with Wordpress - or there’s no reason you can’t modify the default theme to work for you.
Steve