If not intelligent AND patient, don't read this - this needs simplified answer!

Although this isn't a direct solution... what your asking for is very much on the blog side of things, that's where I'd begin. To be honest for what you describe I would use Wordpress. No doubt that won't fit your needs, so I will offer some input of how I would begin going about this. Firstly you want the main page showing all the posts, chronologically ideally I assume. I would use a big block for that; setup from within your template, the reason for this...you can get some handy off the shelf RSS publishing code/modules, this can look at the RSS feed for all the articles and display automatically.
With that to one side, now to consider your left/right block containing autoupadated links that go to certain topics, I think a combination of CCK node reference and node in a block http://drupal.org/project/nodeasblock, so another content type called topics would allow you to achieve that, although referencing requires no coding just modules it can still be a pain to get working. Sorry if this is all useless to you!

Cheers

Your topics need to be categorized. Go to taxonomy, and create 4 or 5 different vocabularies, one for each topic. Each vocabulary has an ID number. Make sure you write down that that number on a piece of paper. Assign each vocabulary to a page content type.

When your writer creates a page, he/she will be able to select the topic from a drop down list.

Now, copy and paste this code into a block, set the input format to php code, and save.

<?php
$vid = 1;  // Set the vid to the vocabulary id of the vocabulary you wish to list the terms from
$items = array();

$terms = taxonomy_get_tree($vid);
foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
  $count = db_result(db_query("SELECT COUNT(nid) FROM {term_node} WHERE tid = %d", $term->tid));
  $items[] = l($term->name, "taxonomy/term/$term->tid") . " ($count)";
}

if ( count($items) ) {
  print theme('item_list', $items);
}
?>

You will see that it says in the first line:

<?php
$vid = 1;  // Set the vid to the vocabulary id of the vocabulary you wish to list the terms from

That is where you will put the ID number of the vocabulary whose pages you want to display in a block. You will need to create a block for each ID number you have written down.

Upload the pathauto module; you will need an hour or so to learn how to use it. Basically, you will be able to have your URL look like this:

http://mysite.com/topic-a/page-title
http://mysite.com/topic-b/page-title
http://mysite.com/topic-c/page-title
and so on

Then what you will do is limit the block visibility of the blocks you created above to those specific pages which have the matching vocabulary ID (topic-a, topic-b, etc) in their paths.

For example, a block which displays the titles of pages from topic b will appear only on those pages that are created with the path that looks like this:

http://mysite.com/topic-b/

Try this out and see what happens. Then we can talk about your front page.

I had to laugh when I read your post. I think that using foul language is not a good idea, and I particularly do not like name calling ("retard"), but I understand and sympathize with your frustration.

Others will have other ideas about how to achieve what I have described above. You will need to use whatever method works best for you.

The first thing you need to do is to understand the basic concepts, and _why_ those basic concepts are there.

Your topics are entries in a "topic list". They're the vocabulary within a taxonomy entry.

A "node" might be a page on a site. Or it might not. It's a much looser term, describing a "thing" on your site. That might be a single page. It might be an image. It might be a calendar entry. It might be a classified ad.

So - your first step is to understand how _your_ "simple shit" actually works. Because, sure as eggs is eggs, it's different to _my_ "simple shit". Or to any other Drupal user's. If you want a CMS that fits _exactly_ your requirement, don't let us stop you writing one.

Or - perhaps a bit easier - tailoring a generic framework to fit your particular requirement. All the tools are there. You just need to figure out how to apply 'em to your particular requirement.