These are the functions I'm looking for:

* it allows people to comment on a certain item (saves comments)
* allows people to rate the certain item (and save the rating) on the website
* allows people to make their own user accounts and sign in
* saves specific user preferences
* users can upload images, links, and other data
* has access to a forum (I'm assuming you could just install PunBB or VBulletin on the CMS?) [people can post, saves posts]
* people have profiles that they can edit
* maybe maybe a purchasing power system that stores how much they have
* it allows me, the designer, to add my OWN style sheets, XHTML, and PHP with relative ease

And which is easier to learn? Additionally, I just checked out a 2 hour long tutorial on Joomla! and it did not say at all how to apply your own themes. For example, sure, I can find a theme on the internet, but personally, I use PhotoShop, XHTML, and CSS to design my own websites. The only reason I want to use these Content Management Systems is for the PHP I don't want to code: searching, user data and so on.

What do you think?

If you do have an idea, can you tell me how hard it is to apply my own XHTML/CSS to these CMS's? I couldn't find it anywhere.

Any insight into this would be hugely appreciated because I'm about to spend the next couple of weeks studying the CMS that can fit these needs.
Thank you!

Definitely Joomla if you want a ready made php based CMS. But you need to learn a lot to code all these features. And Joomla Templates are indeed easy to design with XHTML-CSS. If you're doing good in design, Joomla template coding won't be a great deal for you. But the features you want are really hard to code from the scratch, specially when you're doing a startup.

This link may be useful for you.
http://docs.joomla.org/Tutorial:Crea...omla!_template

joomla is best if you want php based cms. i am working on joomla from last two years... i think joomla is better than Drupal.

I would recommend you drupal. Everything joomla can do drupal can do it too.

I'm making a similar kind of thing, that allows users to post entire pages without taking up much space.

Anybody who wishes to help is welcome to.

And from what I've seen and heard, IMAO Drupal is more professional-looking. But I know nothing about either of them, I don't use them, but a quick Google reveales this:
http://www.alledia.com/blog/general-...right-for-you/

Drupal is very flexible CMS system and have enormous potential for future growth.

Having said that,
Joomla is pretty must easy going... and you can go with your basic version of the site up and running soon.

Drupal needs some learning and even some extra steps to gets the requirement done. But As said earlier ... Once development is done ... it continues to help your site growing with tons of possibilities.

Here are some more places who are discussing on similar topic:

http://drupal.org/node/109428

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/d...est-004645.php

http://www.databasepublish.com/blog/drupal-vs-joomla

Regards
Kaushal