killersitetime

I am researching Drupal, but would still like to hear opinions/advice from other experienced users to garner a broad range of options. One of the reasons I chose this site to ask this question on was the 'buzz of activity' (as well as there seemed to be a lot of experience here). (back to the research board)

Thanks for the reply, insight and suggestion Stefan Couple of questions: is Gallery the only image gallery module about to be used with Drupal? still reading FAQs & other pages, looks like 3 so far: Acidfree, Gallery(2) and image_gallery (sic)... why do you suggest Drupal over Joomla? if the site grows to a large scale, will Drupal still be a good CMS foundation? - if not, won't this be a nightmare to migrate to another CMS? if I want to tweak the site with scripting (such as Spry) - can I, or does it have to be a Drupal module/script only? (never mind, I read the Drupal FAQs) - is this a server side v client side issue?? I'm certainly prepared to learn some PHP and also Drupal. I guess if the initial setup requires more learning than installing/customizing/configurating/tweaking - I start to wonder if I need to hire someone to design it for me. Unfortunately that also comes with the problem of non-ongoing support/coding upgrades...

I'm looking for advice and opinions on the best foundation to start a website. The primary purpose will be a community for artists to share, collaborate and comment on their own & others' work. I would also like to run competitions - both popular vote (with voting statistics) and judging capabilities. Requirements: Galleries Initially visual art (photographs, artwork, designs (JPEG format for simplicity)) - User galleries (individual) - Judging galleries (pre & post judging) - submissions & results - Competition galleries (pre & post voting) - submissions & results - Content/themed galleries (for use with tags (like a filter)) Tags/filters for all of the above, both manual and automated, depending on the type of gallery, so that custom galleries will be displayed based on either user selection/filter or by administrative design (gallery creation) Voting/Rating - Voting/rating options (ideally a rating out of 100, but otherwise to 10 (stars or not don't care, can change the gif)) - but 5 just isn't sufficient Statistics - A wide range of statistics, for the votes, the users, the art/galleries, visitors, etc User Accounts - Capable of 5000 +- users - sound user registration process - membership options (including payment for premium services/access) Security - administrative security - user account security - voting security - gallery security - art/image/file security - artwork protection (watermarks or restricted 'saves') Forums/Bulletin Boards - standard is fine Comments/Reviews - On Galleries - on individual art pages (artwork, photographs, writing) Chat/Message - offline chat/messages (users) - online/live chat messages --- user to user --- groups --- on galleries (live, with other users) --- on individual art pages (live, with other users) . Nice to Haves (Maybe) Social Media (twitter, facebook, digg, etc) Easy to use/administer (with basic HTML/CSS knowledge) Back up/migration simplicity/cleanliness I have looked into Joomla! and Mambo, but both have a big learning curve to do what I'm seeking above. I have looked at Gallery (2) but it seems to lack security. The voting & competition aspect is crucial and while many modules seem to have a voting script, it doesn't look like it will have detailed statistics and customization. Javascript seems to offer potential, but knowledge of backend databases and advanced coding is required. Does anyone know of a CMS or other available application (preferably open source or little cost) that might have the functionality outlined above? I'm hoping that there is a CMS with modules available to do (at least) 80% of it and someone can point me in the right direction. I am also trying to think 'outside the box', i.e.: can a poll do the job of voting/rating? Any experience with this type of functionality? Any ideas, advice or opinions will be appreciated.