Hi guy ordered to make site, about books, but he don't know what to put there yet. He asks to be able to login to the site and then add and manage articles himself, and also probably store functionality. By the way he speak about it i get idea that he is newbie in Internet.

Can you suggest free web portal software (except Joomla) that i can use as base for web site the only requirements is Free and Simple Enough to administer by newbie.

Wordpress I would suggest, Joomla is a bit overwhelming for a newbie

Drupal ?
Any software you choose - you will have to get to know it ( to learn how to use it ), so stick with the good stuff from the start. Choose something like Joomla or Drupal. You can use wordpress, if a blog site is all you need.

Wordpress Theme tools:

I used the following free tools to develop my theme.

* GIMP – Free image editing software
* Cooltext online tool to create buttons and logo
* Notepad to edit css, php files
* W3C validator for XHTML and CSS validator
* Firebug add-on to inspect and modify stylesheets
* Browsershots – online service to check older browser compatibility
* YSlow addon for Firebug to test the page download speed
* SubmitExpress metatag analyzer to check the meta tags

Maybe XOOPS will suit your needs? It was the best CMS for me