Originally Posted by Forbairt

You pretty much need a bit of everything in there ?

From what I've seen Drupal would sound like the way to go

CMSMS doesn't have enough power to handle everything just yet without a good bit of hacking.

the 3 shopping carts you mentioned at the end are just that shopping carts so you don't really get the blog / news / forums aspect with them.

Joomla ... well I just don't like

dotnetnuke I've never used so can't comment on it.

At the moment I'm doing what you're after using CMSMS + zencart but its going to be rather more basic with a lot less posts / traffic I'm assuming.

Originally Posted by gav240z

From the description of what you are doing it sounds like ExpressionEngine - Publish Your Universe! is the tool you need.

I'm not sure if Movable Type support a forum add on, does it? If so I'll have to check it out.

Drupal is excellent, but is certainly not easy to use for someone with your described skillset. I have spent a considerable amount of time themeing my Drupal site and its still not ready for launch. Admittedly I may have done things the hard way by using theme inheritance.

As much as a love Drupal, setting up a forum is quite different to conventional systems. Also the shopping cart systems available seem good, but a couple are still in beta phase.

You will also need to decide what version of Drupal to use. Version 6 still doesn't have many important modules out of beta / alpha testing.


Do you need a system that allows all members to have a blog? or do you need a system that allows a select group to have a blog?

As someone who has used Joomla / Wordpress / Drupal extensively I can say.

1.) Avoid Joomla - especially the community builder component (its buggy as hell)
2.) Use Drupal if you know what you are doing and have time to spend figuring it out and reading documentation - although excellent there is a significant amount of time involved in learning the system and it helps to understand a bit of php - although not neccessary it does help.
3.) Wordpress - well great for blogging but not community sites.

I think ExpressionEngine - Publish Your Universe! is what you are looking for.

Originally Posted by Drake

ExpressionEngine looks good. Is it easy to use templates with?

If I remember correctly about Drupal and Joomla, it appears to be difficult to implement themes with those. Is that correct? Is that where the complexity lies? or is it just more about setting it up?

The website only requires one blog.

Originally Posted by gav240z

Expression Engine is known for being extremely easy to theme with. Joomla is not that difficult in my experience, but it lacks in terms of forum solutions and so many other areas in my opinion.

Expression Engine uses its own template language which avoids any form of language such as php, asp, cold fusion, java etc.. its all done with a tagging system. Also templates are stored in the database and not in separate files so you don't need FTP to make changes to your theme / layout.

I've not actually created a template for EE myself so I can't say how difficult it is, but I will say it appears to be very easy looking at their documentation and screen casts.

EE does come at a cost though, commercial license is more expensive than private. You can also get a very simplified version of EE called EE Core and you can play with its features in there and test templating etc..

EE also has a shopping cart module which supports PayPal etc..

EE will not require major hacks, rather the forum element integrates seamlessly for a hassle free website.

Movable Type may also provide alot of these features, but I can't comment on this system as I have very little knowledge of it - although it does look great also.

Of course if you need a FREE system then you are limited in choices.

Originally Posted by gav240z

Yes it is a bit pricey, but you can run multiple websites with it. There are again a couple of license restrictions however dependant on what you want to do.

I have not used any Joomla shopping cart software, I believe the system you are looking at is meant to be the best for Joomla though.

Frankly my time with Joomla is probably limited, I have used it for long enough to know its not the system for me.