Advice on which CMS/??? to use

Hi,

I'm thinking of creating a site and want to get some advice/input on what you all feel the best CMS/method to manage content would be.
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1) The site will have multiple posting users. These users will post chronological information, somewhat like a blog. I would like registered users to be able to reply to these posts, and non-registered to read them.

2) I would like all of the mini-blogs (for lack of a better term) to appear as part of the larger site's content, not as disparate blogs like you'd see on blogger.com.

3) I need to be able to easily add static content pages which appear in the larger site's content as well.

4) I would like a regular forum where all registered users can post and anon can read.
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So, the combo of 1 and 2 would be something like "Joe's Story" where Joe can enter the chronological info and users can then reply/ask questions to Joe for each entry. There'd also be Mary's Story, Jane's Story, and so-on.

I have considered using vBulletin, probably with some kind of portal front-end which should take care of 3, and 4. I'm unsure about this setup with 1 and 2 though. To accomplish 1,2, I think that I'd have to create a forum for each posting user and set the permissions so that only that person can start new threads, which registered people could only reply to. I'm not sure if I could do this automatically or if I'd be stuck creating forums by hand and assigning ownership/permission manually. I've never used vB so I'm not sure of the plugins and capabilities like many of you experience vB'ers are.

I have also thought of using Drupal and have played around with it a bit. It has some form of built-in individual blogs, so 1/2/3 are covered (with some effort) but I'd want to bridge another forum in place of the Drupal one so that users get an environment they're comfortable with.

Of course, you all may have other suggestions or comments on my ideas, so that's why I'm here. I'd like to keep things as simple and cheap as possible (I would pay for vB, but don't want to get much more than that as the idea is not even guaranteed to make money). I'm thinking that the vB+portal system is probably the way to go since the data is mostly forum-esque, but I've been wrong before

Thanks!

 

It actually sounds like a Wordpress + vBulletin combo would be right up your alley.

 

Wordpress multiuser with some tweaking of the main page + vbulletin / smf

 

Wordpress multiuser
vBulletin
Wordpress multiuser
vbulletin