Here is basically what I need the registration to do: - Allow anyone to easily register on the website using a name/password/email (simple enough?) - Allow registered users to 'sign up' to particular categories and specific users (selected by the admin) to manage those categories. Here is a working example: 1) I am the admin for the entire list (able to add, delete, recover passwords, etc) blah blah... 2) larry1, larry2, larry3 register for the website. After registration they join "Category: John", here they can, for example, leave a message like "I like John's category because..." 3) John is a 'premium user' in charge of managing "Category: John" - Although he is unable to delete users or see the total # of registered users on the site, he is the only one who can 'read' the messages left in "Category: John" 4) 10 days later, a new category called "Category: Bob" is created 5) craig1, craig2, craig3 register for the website....larry1 (who joined 10 days earlier) is allowed log in and enter "Category: Bob", larry1 is now in 2 categories So any ideas on which CMS (and related plug-ins) can handle this? I really hope this made sense to someone...
Drupal's excellent built in user permissions would make it the clear choice for your site, in my opinion.
You can choose a CMS with the company which provides customization service. In this way you will get a CMS + the customization for categories which you need. It will cost you less than developing a script from the scratch.
A lot of small companies and freelance developers customize Joomla. They can do virtually anything based on its platform. It shouldn't cost you more then 1000.