CMSes are only really effective if you webhost meets all the requirements they have. Out of all the CMS systems out there I highly recommend drupal over all others, and it is really for one reason. Drupal will check itself against versions and security protocols and will tell you when your site is no longer up to date or secure. Drupal also has 3 levels of development. Current stable version, future version in beta with known bugs, and more future version in Alpha being developed.
This kind of community gives you the best in standards, it is like the Ubuntu of CMSes out there in my opinion.
However, a CMS is all about the content and all about creating content from with in the site, so it may be not used to it's fullest by some people or developers.
some links for you to look at:
www.drupal.org
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html (gui tools help manage mysql databases so well, i hate php myadmin)
http://browsershots.org/
http://www.w3schools.com/
Firefox addons that are a MUST to have for web development:
Firebug
Measureit
Web Developer
Color grabbers (there are many of them)