I am looking for a php content management system to download and am looking for some advice.
CMS Recommendations
do you have any requirements or things you would like it to be able to do?
Here you can look for the CMS thats right for you 
. Sorry, no advice though. From my experience, the CMS's that are already out there offer the same things. Which drove me to make something as similar called a "Comprehensive Information Vault". Stores your information in a differant way other than SQL .inc files or .htaccess. Could "possibly" end up being more secure than .htaccess. Its a secret for now :p
Added: Not really advice but PHP Fusion caught my eye when I first started with CM Systems. Very clean & smooth looking.
I need only the most basic system, I will have at most 3 layers of directories. I dont need any messaging features. the most important features are plain text content management, easy to change skins and security -- sounds basic but so many CMS get so fancy while neglecting to do the basics very well.
thanks for your input.
Sounds like PHPX is what your looking for. A Demo of PHPX is found here.. Its small, straight forward, loads fairly fast and the Administration panel looks pretty good (use "admin" for both the username & p/w to login in as demo Admin).
Maybe that helped a little more 