Which CMS would you prefer for a community script?

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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..

 

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

 

YOU ROCK !!!!

 

That's a good idea, I guess. vBulletin 3.7 seems to be worth the wait with packed 'community' features.

 

socialengine is the best community script.

 

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.