Which Blog engine do you prefer?

I need some help. I'm trying to evaluate Blog/CMS versus bulletin boards/forum engines. It looks to me like Drupal is the swiss knife of CMS and vBulletin is for forums (I'd rather not have to pay just yet). I don't want to get in over my head right from the start though. I can handle a tad of php and mysql IF necessary, but would like something very "out of the box" easy. I'm on a Mac Mini running the latest OS X.

Here's what I'm thinking of doing and how I came upon the "developing a community" idea. There's something techie I want to learn to do. It's been incredibly difficult to find information on how to it, although I've found other people on the internet asking similar questions and not getting definitive answers either. I know that with enough grit I'll get through it and learn this techie thing and become accomplished at it. But alas, I asked myself, how long will it take me by myself struggling as opposed to enlisting some help from others and working together. I like the format of these two sites: retouchpro.com and digitalscrapbookplace.com. Both of them are running vBulletin. I understand that Blogs are part of the new Web 2.0 and want to stay with the current trends. If I go the CMS route I'd need a blog, a forum, image and video upload, possibly download capability, role permissions, galleries, private areas, possibly chat, and a shopping cart. The shopping cart would be used in the capacity that the shopping cart in Gallery 2 is used, to gather items you want and zip them up for download. Hope that wasn't confusing. Eventually it just MIGHT be used to actually sell things, but not thinking in that particular context right now.

Anyway, could someone give some recommendations? Which direction should I go? Thanks in advance and excuse the lengthy post.

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Submitted by nichi (view blog) on Sun, 07/30/2006 - 17:42
Comments (4)

Comments

 

I'm not too techie

But I think that vbulletin give the most versitility of any one bulletin board. I frequent a board that utilizes it and it's pretty robust, plus the techinical service is outstanding. I would go with them.

Space and Time

Submitted by manicmom on Sun, 07/30/2006 - 15:05
 

It really depends on what

It really depends on what you want to do with a CMS or blog. What is the purpose of your web site? What kinds of things do you want to do with it?

I've found that a multi-dimensional CMS like Drupal or Joomla or others are a little too much for the things I want to do on my personal site. However, I am in the process of building a Drupal site at work for an intranet and it is perfect for that.

Personally, I use Wordpress for my text blog and Pixelpost for my photoblog but I guess that's my way of making a personalized mini CMS.

Submitted by dawn m. armfield on Sun, 07/30/2006 - 15:09
 

thanks manicmom and dawn

I feel that vbulletin does exactly what I want, but you do have to pay for it. Since there's so much open source out there I wanted to try and defray that expense, at least at the start to see if the concept even works first.

I'm wanting to build a community where everyone contributes a bit of their knowledge to acomplish a common goal.

I started researching blogs and CMS because of their rising popularity and, seemingly, more camaraderie. I think I read somewhere that bulletin boards are considered Web 1.0 and CMS are Web 2.0, or the current trend. I don't want to start a dialog on 1.0 vs 2.0 (cause I'm just not gettin' all of that hype yet), but I don't want to invest effort in something that might be considered outdated soon.

And Dawn, how easy or not-so-easy is Drupal implementation? Like I said, I can deal with a tad of PHP and mySQL if necessary. I got Gallery 2 running on my site and that was my first venture into php and mysql. I think I could handle a LITTLE bit more.

As always, thanks for all advise, suggestions.

Submitted by nichi on Sun, 07/30/2006 - 16:41
 

Diving into Drupal

Thanks for the advice. I just went ahead and downloaded drupal. Installed it on my local MAMP server to test it. It sure was easier than getting Gallery up and running. Pretty impressed so far. Don't know yet if it'll be a bit of an overkill for what I'm envisioning, but I'm just tickled I got it working so quickly.

Thanks again.

Submitted by nichi on Sun, 07/30/2006 - 20:42
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