Which CMS do you recommend for this type of job? (I'm going nuts)

I'm going to be putting together a site in the near future. Here are the features I'd like to be on the site. Maybe someone can point me to a CMS that will do the following:

I've tried out so many, but most of them require such a steep learning curve it would take forever to test them all in depth.

1) Multiple types of users.
-> System Admins (can do anything)
-> News Posters (can only post news)
-> * Posters (can only post content relating to *)

* = Can be anything from articles, tutorials, etc. Basically different types of content.

Each user for each group will be able to post/edit/delete their content, but not other content by different users or content they don't have access to. System Admins however can post/edit/delete anything.

2) Each type of content (news, articles, etc.) would have the following features:
-> Can be ranked (1 star, 2 stars, etc.)
-> Can have comments (posted by registered users)
-> Can be archived
-> Can be displayed in multiple ways (just the headlines, or the full "article")

3) Comment system would be straight forward. It doesn't need 500 options or threaded/flat views. Just a customizable way to display flat comments.

4) "Modules" for polls/quizes/shopping cart/forums, etc.. If forums aren't present, at least a way to link the CMS into an existing forum (pref. SMF) so users don't have to create an account for the main site AND the forums.

5) Ability to theme any aspect of the site without needing to read a 900 page book.

6) An admin frontend for non-system systems that's easy enough to use for the average joe. Average joe would be the guy assigned to post content. The system admin frontend can be as complex as it has to be.

7) Eventually all user types would need to be broken down into subscribed users or not (to be able to access restricted areas on the site). Ability to have a fully automated subscription system in place too. A user would goto some type of subscription form, pay by CC or paypal/etc, and have their accounts upgraded in real time (or upon payment method being verified).

8) Performance must be quite good on shared hosting with a fairly large user base. Obviously it's impossible to tell how popular this site will be, but I imagine it has the market to get thousands of hits per day. No one likes a site where it hangs for 3-4 seconds to load a page.

That's about it. None of the things I listed are in order, all of them are equally as important.

 

Antelope, check out the e107 system. It can do everything you ask. You can set different levels of Admin and decide exactly what each Admin can and can't do on an individual basis. You can set up as many classes as you like and again decide what each class/group can and can't do.

All the other stuff such as polls etc can be done, too. There are plugins for just about anything.

It's free software and their site is at http://e107.org/news.php Check out the forums. You can get all the plugins at http://e107coders.org/news.php

If you want to see an example of an e107 powered site, check out mine at www.nemsplace.co.uk

 

i would suggest joomla ( its seems to be everyones fav. around here and is mine to). It can do everything you need "right out of the box" except for the following;

1. Comment System
2.quizes
3. shopping cart
4. Forums

Although all these can be added with a simple download and quick installation. Joomla's preferred forum is SMF, which is what you wanted so thats a plus. There are a bunch of different shopping cart extensions that again just need to be installed. http://extensions.joomla.org/ you can go there and check out all of the extensions for joomla, there all free ( i believe), and very easy to install.

Joomla also has a great support community, with people always willing to help.

 

Drupal is perfect for this, you will need to put on some of the add-on modules

 

I had some performance issues with Drupal, which instantly made me uninstall it.

Everytime I'd access a page it would hang for at least 1.5-2 seconds before it started to render the page. Oddly enough it happened on the main drupal site as well, so it wasn't just occuring on my install. In both Opera and IE.

It would connect with the site, and just do nothing for a while...then boom, it would instantly render the site. Almost like it wants to connect instantly, but can't because it's looking up 5 trillion things in the DB.

I tried out Joomla quickly (at opensourcecms), it seems reasonable, but I have a feeling it'll be a CMS where I'll need to postpone the project for weeks just to learn how the CMS works (to get a full understanding it). If that's what I need to do, of course I'll do it.

Haven't heard much about e107, but I will check it out. Their site loads quick, and content wise it seems to have the basics down (would just need to tweak the way it looks). How easy is it to skin?

A friend turned me onto WordPress, saying it can also do the things I ask with nothing more than installing a few third party plugins and minor tweaking. One thing I noticed up front with WordPress was you can modify the layout and skin it without almost no need to learn the CMS itself.

I was super impressed right off the bat. The themes are 100% css, and each page's layout is controlled by the css + wordpress tags.

ex. This is the code for the main index page:

<?php get_header(); ?>

	<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

		<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

			<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
				<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
				<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> by <?php the_author() ?></small>

				<div class="entry">
					<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
				</div>

				<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p>
			</div>

		<?php endwhile; ?>

		<div class="navigation">
			<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('&laquo; Previous Entries') ?></div>
			<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Next Entries &raquo;') ?></div>
		</div>

	<?php else : ?>

		<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
		<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.</p>
		<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . "/searchform.php"); ?>

	<?php endif; ?>

	</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Code (markup):

Instantly by looking at that, you could think to yourself "ok, If I change this tag to here, and put that there...it'll effect how the news looks". Very straight forward IMO. Unlike some other CMSs that required watching 1 hour tutorial videos and editing core files + template files just to do something as easy as changing the way a piece of news is outputted.

Can e107 be theme'd as easy as this, or at least somewhat easy?

 

I've never scratch built a theme. I just picked a theme that was generally what I wanted and then changed the header and logo images, etc. To get detailed info on skinning you'd be better off asking in their forums. There are a number of e107 sites just for themes, too. I would suspect, though that it isn't one of the esiest to theme from scratch, though.