Which CMS would you prefer for a community script?

[Karc2007]

I thought a long time to build up a small community for my site. (it should be for people from indonesia and people who are interested in indonesia... connections between people, who are married to indonesians etc)

First, I looked around for free scripts.. I didn´t like any of those really. Then, I looked for paid scripts.. PHPFox seemed ok, but I also heared a lot of negative opinions about it.
Every script out there, seems to be far from perfect.

At the end, I decided to do it myself in joomla or drupal, but I never worked with those programs.

Thats what I want to be included:

blogs for users (perhaps WordpressMU?)
Profiles (editable)
Picture Gallery
Polls (shouldn´t be the main problem)
Forums

Can this all be combined in joomla or drupal (with one username and login per user? - at least for profiles, Picture gallery and forums.)

Which one would you prefer? I heared a bout a joomla + cbe (kolloczek.com) combination which should be ok.

What skills do I need to do this? Can I make it, when I never worked in drupal or joomla with a little bit work and patience?

First I will try to do it myself, if I fail or not happy with my work, im also ready to pay someone for it.

What would I have to pay, if someone would built it up for me?

I will also ask around somewhere else fro prices and what people can do for it.

thanks for any help,
Marc

[Hob Bramble]

Personally, for what your are attempting to do, I wouldn't use either Joomla or Durpal - not because there is anything wrong with them, but because you're aim is for a community. Durpal and Joomla both have plenty of add-ons which can be used to create a community website, but considering what you're looking for, I'd personally recommend picking a forum software and adding modifications to it to create for community (i.e. rather than taking a CMS and adding a forum modification).

If you use a forum software, two of your requirements (profiles and forums) are already taken care of. Many forums also include polls by default, so thats three, depending on your choice. As for a gallery and blog system: several forums have either a modification that adds a galleries/blogs to them, or the integrates them with another gallery/blog script.

Here's a few examples of forums you could use, along with any necessary modifications (all of them have forums and profiles built in, obviously). The first two, phpBB and punBB, are free - the second two, vBulletin and Invision Power Board, are not:

1. phpBB - http://www.phpbb.com/
Polls: Built-In
Gallery: Simple integration with Gallery (http://gallery.menalto.com/)
Blogs: The Blog Mod (http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=226958)

2. punBB - http://punbb.org/
Polls: Easy Poll (http://www.punres.org/desc.php?pid=60)
Gallery: PBB Gallery (http://www.punres.org/desc.php?pid=70)
Blogs: User Blogs (http://www.punres.org/desc.php?pid=372)

3. vBulletin - http://www.vbulletin.com/
Polls: Built-In
Gallery: Several modifications available, such as: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92875
Blogs: The vBulletin Blog (http://www.vbulletin.com/features_blog.php)

4. Invision Power Board - http://www.invisionpower.com/community/board/
Polls: Included
Gallery: IP Gallery (http://www.invisionpower.com/community/gallery/)
Blogs: IP Blogs (http://www.invisionpower.com/community/blog/)

Obviously, I'm not saying that you have to use a forum system, I'm only recommending it. With a CMS, you'll most likely have to add modifications for everything you are looking for, but with a forum, the forum, profiles, and often polls, are already there, so you've got much less to do. In addition, forums are already set up with a community in mind - something not all CMSs can say.

[Kyliemeg]

For what you want to use the site for, I would recommend vbulletin. It has all of those abilities and is easy to maintain and navigate if you are a beginner.

[Tearabite]

i do every one of the things on your list at my community using Drupal.. I started the site 2 years ago and it now has ~15,000 members. When i started, i knew zero about PHP, CMS's, SQL or unix, and only knew a tiny bit of HTML, yet i was able to get Drupal up and running myself..

[Karc2007]

Well... I already own a license of vbulletin maybe, I will wait till 3.7 is published.
Link: vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=249460
If i´m not statisfied with it, im going for drupal. (I will begin learning drupal anywasy)

I just hope, they releasing it soon.. if all the stuff works well its great, but perhaps I will still use it in combination with Wordpress MU.. (because users should be able to choose their own blog-style. So I have to find some way of bridge then (there is a bridge released yet, but it doesn´t seem to work without problems).

thanks again for your help,
Marc
Indonesia-portal.de

[okpara36]

i do every one of the things on your list at my community using Drupal.. I started the site 2 years ago and it now has ~15,000 members. When i started, i knew zero about PHP, CMS's, SQL or unix, and only knew a tiny bit of HTML, yet i was able to get Drupal up and running myself..

YOU ROCK !!!! ;)

[Suri.CMS]

Well... I already own a license of vbulletin maybe, I will wait till 3.7 is published.
That's a good idea, I guess. vBulletin 3.7 seems to be worth the wait with packed 'community' features.

[floop]

socialengine is the best community script.

[markn26]

good luck waiting for vBulletin, they could not possibly be any slower in releasing that thing. It should have been released about 10 times over by now.