I need some help choosing a platform - Relatively large scale website - Help please.

[BMFX]

Hello,

Whoa been a while since i was around Namepros. Hope you guys can still help me out really quickly.

I am looking to start a News website for a special niche market. Now i am looking for a solid core platform to use as my foundation of the website.

The general concept of the website is to be a news website - or the core of a community. So that means community news, articles, and such. I would also like to have a users base that is interactive so Forums, Profiles, Direct Messaging, Groups, User blogs and it'd be a huge plus for a nice gallery addon as well.

I have already looked into Wordpress using BuddyPress - while it meets a lot of those criteria it's something that isn't as well rounded for my liking.

I LOVE opensource platforms but of course this is a very large scale website with multiple news posts daily and i am looking for a lot of features so odds are i won't find what i want in opensource so i'll take all suggestions.

I have considered doing the new vBulletin publishing system but i want to see what my alternatives are before i jump in on that.

 

[mdesigner125]

I wouldn't completely rule out open source. Have you looked at Joomla at all?

 

[copper]

Joomla with...
Jomsocial extension
Forum extension

 

[DU]

Joomla with Community Builder extension. CB gives you a lot of integration capability.

Don't rule out Drupal - there are plenty of sites built on that; though the learning curve is likely higher.

 

[NetOctave]

Drupal drupal drupal. Opensource. Check here for sites made with drupal http://drupal.org/cases. I'm sure some of this would match what you are looking for.

Community sites
http://www.kerneltrap.org/
http://www.adaptationportal.org/
http://www.fastcompany.com/
http://www.popsugar.com/

News sites on drupal
Site name - URL - Case study link
New york observer - http://www.observer.com/ - http://drupal.org/node/141187
Popular science - http://www.popsci.com/ - http://drupal.org/popular-science

 

[BMFX]

Considered Drupal never had great success finding plugins but again it's been a while.

Joomla has gotten a lot of recommendations really never considered it, i will look into that. I also looked into IB.Board with ip.content and blog.

 

[richrf]

Unless you have a ton of time, money, and patience .... and don't want the community to destroy your life, I would go for something like a WordPress/vBulletin combination. At least the spam will be kept somewhat to a minimum.

 

[BMFX]

While i don't want to spend forever on development, i do want to take the time and money to make a website that is impressive to my users and our future partners.

At this point, Wordpress with Buddypress was the best "fit" it had everything i needed / wanted. Expect a very unqualified forum system, bbpress is good for a casual forum, but not the best for the core of a website.

Drupal and Joomla are popular indeed but they don't seem to do what i want... and i am not wanting to release a website unless i feel it's an improvement over our competition. With that being said i have started looking into more niche and higher quality back ends.

I think instead of rely on my skills as a half time developer i am going to hire out a professional team this go around. The last thing i want is something lack luster for a major business launch.

 

[richrf]

Just a reminder. There have been thousands upon thousands of hours put into WordPress and vBulletin to ensure reliability, security, usability, maintainability, forward compatibility with new technology (e.g. browsers, mobile devices), etc. I do not think you have the budget to duplicate the results and a development team may deliver a product that may at the end be unusable. I would not put too much money into a project unless I knew that there was going to be a reasonable payback. Good luck!

 

[promo]

Drupal and Joomla are popular indeed but they don't seem to do what i want... and i am not wanting to release a website unless i feel it's an improvement over our competition. With that being said i have started looking into more niche and higher quality back ends.

I know of no website task that can not be accomplished in Joomla. Its free, its extensive and it has a global support base..

 

[mwzd]

Take WP and BP and build whatever else you need on it.

That's the real beauty of open source, the fact that the software is free is just a bonus.

At least imho.

 

[creative management]

joomla is better than drupal

 

[innovativenames]

If you looking for complex website platform, go with Code Igniter, this php framework could building the websites in the way you want, but you need to code from scratch.

 

[Tia Wood]

From my experience Joomla or Drupal is better for scaling and large development. And it's very customizable. You can also write your own components, modules and plugins.

Wordpress is good for basic CMS sites and has a better user interface in the backend. Joomla has more muscle for larger sites. Plus there are many more add ons available for Joomla versus Wordpress.

Hope this helps.

 

[stevearn]

I hope joomla is better than drupal. you can try wordpress this is the best ever.

 

[xtrance]

Joomla! surely is the best available open source, if you invest time to learn it and run the updates regularly. Make sure you get the right extensions from thousands free and paid extensions.

 

[Erdy]

If you are mainly a designer and know very little programming but you like play around with your site then try expressionengine.com. That cms is best for people who don't want to learn php and are mainly designers.

 

[dotker]

opencms anyone? just want to add something to your option.

Id always go with something basic that you can run easily yourself like wordpress but if you got no problems handling joomla or drupal then go with it.

drupal runs larger website whitehouse.gov i think is on drupal. and you might want to try acquia drupal version.. http://acquia.com/products-services/acquia-drupal

 

[creative management]

yes drupal is a great open source

 

[sannu123]

The general concept of the website is to be a news website - or the core of a community. So that means community news, articles, and such. I would also like to have a users base that is interactive so Forums, Profiles, Direct Messaging, Groups, User blogs and it'd be a huge plus for a nice gallery addon as well.

I have already looked into Wordpress using BuddyPress - while it meets a lot of those criteria it's something that isn't as well rounded for my liking........Thanks lot........