a free CMS like Joomla says tons of time and gives ability to modify on the fly
Absolutely... With boxed turnkeys like Joomla and others there is absolutely no need to beat yourself up building your own. All the features are already there, just go to the back admin and toggle them on or off as you like. And the addons are incredible for adding any other features you might like such as photo albums and such. Just upload them into the addon folder in the directory and turn them on in the site admin and it is installed and ready to go. :)