CMS Solution with Social Networking integration

Hello-
I am in the process of building a website that will feature a newsletter, blog, and social networking capabilities. I would appreciate some suggestions on how to best go about doing this. Should I:

a) Build it in a CMS system and then add a prebuilt social networking package (like SocialEngine) into it, or
b) Build it all in a CMS package and use extensions available to that CMS package to extend its capabilities. (If so, which CMS would you suggest?)

Thanks for your assistance!

 

Hi Mike,

How good a developer are you? Thats what it comes down to.

First of all, take 2 seconds to make a list of the complete features you want the website to have. Don't just look at the social networking parts, - list everything.

Then, make a small calculation of the time needed if you were to do this yourself while playing with a CMS like joomla. How much do you value yourself at an hour?

Take this amount and compare it to social networking packages like joomla, dolphin, dzoic, etc.

Unless you are an experienced developer (even with joomla or wordpress or drupal); you'll spend hours and hours on it. You'll find that most social networking packages already come with newsletter, blog, articles, etc capacities.

Once you have an idea of what you need, compare features and price of different solutions.

 

Bump...

I have an interest as well... posted some thing similar in the Social Network area (sorry can't post links yet, but a search of my posts and you will find it)