This my Answer to the stackoverflow question: What is a good CMS written in Python (and not Plone)?:
The pinax project is a kind of django bundle with some modules to build community sites. It is a good start to build your cms on it. There is a video available presenting it a djangoconf.
Feature List:
- openid support
- email verification
- password management
- site announcements
- a notification framework
- user-to-user messaging
- friend invitation (both internal and external to the site)
- a basic twitter clone
- oembed support
- gravatar support
- interest groups (called tribes)
- projects with basic task and issue management
- threaded discussions
- wikis with multiple markup support
- blogging
- bookmarks
- tagging
- contact import (from vCard, Google or Yahoo)
- photo management
(from their website)