I'm searching for a CMS solution for a community-based website consisting of the following features:

• Blog/News & Reviews section
  
• Forum
  
• Shopping cart/product catalogue - probably the single most important aspect
  
• Easy customisation using templates
  
• RSS Feeds
  
• A centralised membership database so that once you are logged in on the home page, you can post in the forum, comment on the blog, submit reviews etc without having seperate logins for each section.
  
• Scalability - I'm not expecting a huge amount of traffic, but I would like a system that could hold up under the occasional large spike in traffic
  
• Easy to upgrade
  
• Easy to use and setup - I know some basic HTML and a bit of scripting in asp (but not php or CSS) and have set up a WordPress blog previously. I'm not exactly an expert, but I can do the basic and intermediate stuff. Although ideally speaking, I would prefer something that just works well out of the box. The trickiest aspects I would imagine would be the shopping cart/product catalogue part. I would need a system that could provide that functionality without me having to tear my hair out.

From doing some research here and elsewhere, I have come across the following solutions. These appear to be the most popular ones:

• joomla - seems to be really good and has decent functionality
• drupal - ditto for drupal
• Typo3 - complex, but extensive functionality
• cmsmadesimple - really simple to use, but I wonder how well it compares with joomla, drupal and Typo3
• DotNetNuke - appears to have great functionality, but I would prefer to use a non-Microsoft solution to reduce licensing costs
• cmsMS
• MODX
• ZenCart
• osCommerce

I don't really know too much about the last four.

What would you guys recommend?

What about Movable Type Community Solution?
Movable Type Community Solution: Create a Powerful Online Community

__________________
Hosting & Domains|Plesk Vps Hosting|Geek / Cool Stuff|Films.ie|Cool Sites|Monetisation Tips|Movie Chat


Energise your forum! Click here for info

At a quick glance, that that looks like an excellent solution for a community type website. How well would it support e-commerce functionality? I'm a bit concerned about that aspect of it.

I'm not sure about the ecommerce side of things, but you could ask on their forums

__________________
Hosting & Domains|Plesk Vps Hosting|Geek / Cool Stuff|Films.ie|Cool Sites|Monetisation Tips|Movie Chat


Energise your forum! Click here for info

Will do. Thanks for pointing me in their direction.

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.

__________________
Forbairt Media | Web Design & Development Galway / Dublin, Ireland - coming soon ... ( vague but descriptive isn't it )
Recent Work: Safari Club African Safari Holidays - Malawi Safaris
Other Stuff: FluffyLinkulator Rapid Inclusion Service Tools

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.

__________________
Adwords Qualified Individual | Search Engine Marketing Consultant | Web Analytics (Google) Expert | Web Designer (XHTML / CSS)

Datsun 240z 260z Club of Australia
Classic Japanese Cars

It does - check the link I provided

__________________
Hosting & Domains|Plesk Vps Hosting|Geek / Cool Stuff|Films.ie|Cool Sites|Monetisation Tips|Movie Chat


Energise your forum! Click here for info

definitely gonna need to start investigating again ...

Anyone actively using MT4 apart from Michele ?

Yeah I did . Seems like it has good features, but I'm confused is it written in PERL or PHP or both? I think that is what initially put me off it. Seems very similar in feature set to ExpressionEngine - Publish Your Universe! both seem like great products.

Only reason I'm not using EE or MT is that I needed a community photogallery much like Coppermine but EE doesn't have one that can be used by all website members, rather only certain admins etc.. It just doesn't have the permission system that say Drupal does.

In Drupal you have the Image module which provides this functionality or you can use CCK but I'm not that advanced at using it yet.

Another words, certain licensing may affect which system you can use when considering a commercial cms.