Well this is a very interesting discussion and so I will add my pennyworth.
I have been hacking around for quite a while new to find a suitable CMS for several sites I want to set up (which is taking a VERY long time, for reasons nothing to do with the technical).
I'm looking for something that is easy to learn, requires NO programming, and (of course) has the features I want. Here are some comments from the first site I'm developing:
Typo3 - great system, undoubtedly far more flexible than any of the others, as someone said a "professional" package. BUT way too complicated.
Envolution - liked the language support (allows you to attach a language flag to every piece of content or structure): hated the admin interface, especially the security feature; also hated the really arrogant techno-nerd type community response I got to my newbie questions (and in general - I keep seeing posts where they slag off other developers
)
Xoops - didn't like some things (no proper language support for one), but loved the simplicity and the nice clean look, easy admin interface on balance, good selection of extra modules... and I was already to go BUT fell down on the user permissions in articles and wf-sections (I've already posted on this subject).
Tikiwiki: I finally chose Tikiwiki, which has very extensive permissions and is quite easy to use and understand, reasonably clean interface, did what I wanted for the first effort.
Now I'm back again for another site, and what is critical here is the search engine support (both inside and outside the site). I've posted on this subject too and would be very glad of an answer. But I'm surprised that in the list of CMS that people have looked at there is not Drupal which seems to have nice clean interface, fast loading, and very good taxonomy management for sites with complex, deep content. Also absolutely clean URLs. And by the way, there is no conflict between taxonomy and search - indeed the one should be a support for the other...
Any comments on this and my other posts would be most welcome.
JoelG