[Arkinia]

I'm starting up an entertainment news magazine, and I'm looking for a script (or combination of scripts) that can create a very well-integrated community.

I'm not interested in anything like PHPNuke or any other CMS -- I have my own design and layout, and I want everything to be easily integrated and customised to fit in with it (PHP includes? I don't know). Anyway, this is sort of what I'm looking for, and I'm just wondering if there are any scripts (free or commercial) that have all these functions or, failing that, have the ability to be easily (read: cheaply if done by a programmer) integrated with each other to accomplish the same thing.

What I want is an article management system that allows me to post articles (possibly with multiple user levels). It has to have distinct categories (so some articles only show up in some sections) and it must allow for comments.

I've been looking at PHPCow and ArticleLive -- I want something that will easily slot in to my design.

Next I want a seperate thing for news stories. These will go in a seperate area, and again must have categories for the different types.

The next thing I want is blogs -- not for all users who register, just for the website staff. I want this to be fully functioning, but again, must be able to be slotted into a pre-existing design.

Lastly, I want community forums. This is pretty basic, and I've been looking at vBulletin and PHPbb.

now for the hard part: I want them all (as I said) to be interconnected. I mean this in the sense that:

[+] Registered Users -- any user who registers an account on the site will have a shared login/profile for the forums, news/article comments and blogs. On their comment posts, I want their forum avatar to appear. If I click on a username on the comments, I want it to redirect to their forum profile -- stuff like that.

[+] Admin and Staff -- I want admin and staff to have the same cross-platform integration as the users above, except their name must also link to a profile from their blog postings and articles they have written. I want their profile to be beyond the basic forum profile too -- I would rather it link to a custom designed page (i.e. it can be created by me manually, but it has to be linkable from the forums, blogs, articles and news)

Some examples of what I'm looking to have:

NEWS: 1up.com
STAFF PROFILE: 1up.com
BLOG: Telltalegames.com (note comments w/ avatars -- same as forums)
BLOG COMMENTS: 1up.com
ARTICLES: ew.com

I've considered a mixture of wordpress, movabletype, phpbb, vbulletin, articlelive and phpcow. If anyone knows what the best route to take is, please, please let me know. Similarly, if you are a PHP programmer with the know-how to accomplish this, e-mail me with your estimate.

Thanks!

[Nico]

If you're willing to pay for this, you're better off in the "Job Offers" section. Do you want me to move this for you?

[Arkinia]

yeah, sure. Thanks!

[Christian]

Moved to Job Offers.

[Zaiaku]

I've done a few sits like this especially when it comes intergration especially on design, vbulletin is the easiest way. Very easy to customize if you famliar with a template system. Everything you are asking for can easily be done with vbulletin only. But remember that vbulletin is a forum. If you want the same system without the forum feature and cut down on some cost woodpress would be your best bet. Although vbulletin would give you a large amount of room to expand easily and fast. Profile customizing is very easy in vbulletin again becuase it runs on a very organize template system.

If you already have a design and layout in mind I could easily tell you how long it would proably take for you to achieve it in vbulletin. You could pay for someone to do the work for you but it wouldn't be worth the money. You could do all the work by yourself or maybe with the help of one other person.

One tip I would give you. If you decide to go with vbulletin I would suggest having someone on your staff or admin that known the vbulletin software very well. That was small things could be customized that not readily available aswell as there will be able to have you up and running asap.

[Acecool]

Not to be harsh on VB, but their template system blows... It grabs it from a database, instead of flat file.. So if you have tons of users visiting then you will need a monster of a server to handle everything, and have it properly configured.

I would rec. phpBB3 :-)

It uses flat templates, and all that..

News you could setup to be a specific forum
Staff Profiles could be all users in a specific group on the forum
For blogs, you could use phpBB forums, and load it up on your page, comments would be replies..
Articles.. Do you just want text stored? I can make a plugin very quickly for that..

[Zaiaku]

Serveral huge sites use vbulletin. It doesn't need a moster of a server. This site running on vbulletin as well as most professional sites use vbulletin. I have used phpbb3 but doesn't offer ease of changes as much as vbulletin. As well as the east to cusomize as much as possible. Sincet phpbb3 isn't as easy to customize as vbulletin most using phpbb3 usually have the same look.

I feel he still better off with vbulletin.

[svranch]

Hi - we can do this for you.

We can offer a great rate right now of $40/hour.

Plus the way we do our business is a win-win situation for both us and the client... We work on a Time and Materials basis. The client can buy as many or as few pre-paid programming hours as they want at $40/hour. Our programmers then work with the client and when the hours run out, work stops until the client either buys more hours, or discontinues using our service. All the code worked on from the beginning is the client's from the beginning.

See some samples of our work at:

http://www.ladysword.com/portfolio.htm

I will also send you a private email. Feel free to call me for more info: