Go the PHP / MySQL route it might be a bit difficult if you are a newbee but in the long run managing things will be a lot easier.

Hint: You can have adsense ads in an include file to make life easier even with php

any sugestions on a good portal system? This will be for an article based website. I will be writing all of my content myself.

Once upon a time I used e107. However I like the look of mambo and joombla.

I know a little bit about PHP, but not enough to do all the coding myself. THat is why I am opting for a CMS system that I can modify...

If you can do the coding, perhaps consider creating your own cms. You can set it to do on the fly pages or to create the static html pages. On the play DB+php pages have certain weight on the cpu if you get high traffic

In my personal experiences I ended up with my own CMS. There are many options available (pre-made) but I don't have the time or will to keep up with updating the code every time they find "another" vulnerability.

Would wordpress be another suitable option?

I need to learn quite a bit more PHP before I go about writing my own CMS...

1: Contact AHN ask for the mini-publisher.
2: Joomla
3: Drupal
4: Wordpress (ick(

is Mambo any good?

I don't think this is really an AdSense discussion.

You are right, I guess it did get a little sidetracked. I was interested in which is the best way to go concerning adsense being integrated naturally.

Thanks to everyone for thier help though.