CMS - Update / Redesign

We would like to develop a new version of our CMS. We resell our CMS to clients and as a part of setting up a new website will overlay a clients graphics over and around the CMS. We do not need any graphic design or logo design, except for a basic demo design that will be used before we apply a clients' graphics. The CMS should be written in PHP using MySQL for storage and should be expandable in the future so that we can add features like a simple newsletter, photo gallery, private login area, news article feature, etc.... ## Deliverables The interface for editing should be more reflective of the website design i.e. a heads up display so that it appears as though you are editing your website, not just a text box. I will post a PDF with a diagram of what I mean by this. I expect this to be a custom coded system, not based on joomla, wordpress or another open-source CMS. It should be packaged so that it can be installed on a cPanel server relatively easily, i.e. setup DB and user via cPanel and then run a script which creates required tables and prepopulates basic information. This will be an ongoing project starting with v0.9 of the CMS, moving on to create a newsletter, gallery, blog, calendaring, private members area and document sharing plugins (these will be created individually over the next year). During this time I also imagine small changes or improvements would be made to the CMS. The requirements of this project include: - WYSIWYG page editor - Image upload utility (directly accessible from the same page as the editor) - Resource upload utility (same as image but for PDF, DOC, XLS) - Basic site options i.e. meta tags, title, link style, page alignment, menu style - Edit header and footer - Completely scalable i.e. pages and subpages can be added as needed - Modern AJAX/Ruby like interfaces i.e. if one option is selected then another may roll out, I would like to stay away from standard text boxes, and old style items (does this make sense?) What's not expected: - To be able to edit the graphic design of the website, we'll manually apply the design to the CMS, the user can only edit page content, add/edit/remove menu items and alter basic elements like link system What would be desirable: - Ability to easily edit CSS for the wesbite i.e. change page headers or menu styles for the entire site in a WYSIWYG editor - Future ability to apply different themes or templates i.e. select from pre-configured list of themes that have been programmed such as a winter or summer theme - Ability to insert code snippets i.e. flash content, javascript, etc... I've attached a PDF with a graphical overview of the new interface for the CMS, I call this a heads up view, where you see your actual site as you edit as a reference. I am open to using a new language or new technology (the old CMS used PHP, a little javascript and a mysql backend), the main goal is that it is easier to use, more dynamic and interactive, yet still just as reliable. I would like for it to feel a lot newer with dynamic features that languages like AJAX offers, but it in no way has to be programmed in AJAX, etc... By dynamic features, I mean page loads like those found here: <[login to view URL]> and forms like these <[login to view URL]> I am open to suggestions, though would prefer to see a small demo before committing to something new. Any questions please ask.