I have been talking to a few people and have come to the conclusion that i want to use a CMS for a community based website I am creating. Users will be able to use the forum, get access to pages based on memberships, and be able to give back to the community by creating content and having it published.

I am debating whether i Should use Drupal or Joomla. Drupal seems to be more geared towards community based websites but has a steep learning curve. Where as joomla is easier to use, has more mods but doesnt seem to be as extensible as Drupal. I dont mind learning what i am going to use so even if one is harder to use i am willing to learn it.

Another issue with my website is a forum. I have mostly narrowed it down to using either vBulletin or phpBB. based on either CMS has anyone had any experience on those forums and how they integrate into the CMS's? I have looked into vbDrupal but the versioning is kinda far behind the actual Drupal version (drupal is on 6.1 and vbDrupal is on i believe 5.7) so there are security issues.

Which brings me to another point. Since many people will be posting up things like profiles ther will be a limited amount of personal info on the site so i am also taking site security into account

Since many of the things on my page are membership based I also have to keep in mind the ability to do memberships do grant access to ares of the forums and a given page so even if i do use a CMS and a forum is it possible to intergrate the database (using MySQL/PHP) so if you sign up you have an account in the forum, a profile of some sort and be able to view pages based on your membership/group type. I have looked into these a decent amount somewhat already and want your guys's opinions.

And so Far i am leaning towards Using drupal. Thingking maybe vBulletin but not sure. Either vBulletin or phpbb would be fine. I just want whats going to work best for functionalities sake and security also.

any help or past experiences would be greatly appreciated, thanks

phpBB is garbage. I think it's the most attacked bulletin software by spammers. You'll spend all day just filtering out the spam. VBulletin is the way to go for that but it's not free like phpBB.

Do you have a static IP and SSL cert yet? You'll need one if you want an https connection that's actually secure.

As far as the Joomla or Drupal...don't really use either so I have no suggestions on that one.

I've used Joomla before and it's fairly easy to use. If you haven't already, check out the Community Builder extension for it. I've played around with Drupal a little bit, but it didn't impress me enough to recommend it or even to actually install it. I've never used it before and I don't know very much about it, but you also might want to check out Dolphin: http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/.

I do have a static IP address,yes. Not sure about the SSL cert but now that you say something i definatley look into it. thanks.

I have looked through both joomla and Drupal and i am leaning towards drupal. I have tested it on my local machine and works smoothly. I havent had a chance to test out Joomla yet though

Actually, vBulletin is attacked quite a bit by cross-forum post spammers as well. Look back through my posts and you'll see usually 1 cross-poster a day that I've caught alone (if not more). And that's just me...there are plenty of other regulars on here who have a very good eye for nailing spammers.

Personally, I'd suggest at least a partial DIY approach. Why?

1) Because it's usually what I say in these situations.

2) You require a certain level of customization and knowledge, and will continue to do so as your site grows (if it grows), that won't be met in the script community. Certain elements (e.g. the forums) might be okay (even Kijijoke uses vB, I think) but overall you're going to want to want something that's uniquely yours if it's to be successful.

Look at the really successful websites...I mean the ones that grow astronomically. The Googles, the Amazons, the Youtubes, even the *BARF* eBays. They don't use scripts...if anything, they have scripts cloned after what they started. There's a lesson to be learned in that.

Heh yea i never use ebay. not sure where youre from but here craigslist.org is the best. then MAYBE if you cant find it anywhere else.

Anyways. I had considered going the custom route but im not much of a coder yet.I learning though. I use lynda.com, sitepoint.com, and have a dreamweaver with asp, cold fusion, and asp book (im going the php/mysql route)
(<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Dreamweaver-CS3-ASP-ColdFusion/dp/0321461061/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204957380&sr=8-23">found here</a>)
not to mention all the boards i use and they all have been a valuable asset.

The book i have (and lynda.com to an extent) have tutorials on how to make a basic cms (fairly limited though). My only thing with that is that im only one person. It would take me ages to make anything significant.though i know i would eventually get what i wanted but would take longer. and i font have a whole lot of people to help me out with it either. I had even thought of making one that specifically works with Dreamweaver (what i use now) but more i would have to learn. Not that i wouldnt want to, just time.

I know all the REAL web buisnesses run on proprietary cms or other software and i do plan on my sight getting big which is why i was considering doing my own. but yea, just a lot of things to consider.

oops the link above didnt work like i had hoped, here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Dreamwea...957380&sr=8-23

I'd say go with drupal for sure. If you don't have SSL, there is a mod that utilizes some other type of authentication scheme that is supposedly pretty secure (I don't have a link).

Durpals built in forum isn't very good to start with, but look into the advanced forum mod. It isn't as easy to setup as most drupal mods, but you can make your board look alot like a standard phpBB/vBulletin board, but without the additional risks that using those bring. Drupal is pretty well locked down, and is xHTML Strict compliant (most of the time, certain mods aren't perfect).

If you do go with drupal, don't use 6.x, stick with 5.x. 6.x is great and has some wonderful features, but most modules haven't been ported yet. I setup a 6.x site just a couple of weeks ago, and then ripped it down and switched back to 5.x. You can always upgrade in the future, but downgrading is pretty much impossible.

You'll also want to look into a categories mod if you go with the advanced forum.

Drupal appears to have a steep learning curve, but it really isn't. Just a few days of reading and you'll feel very comfortable with Drupal.

Joomla makes it easy to start without doing any reading, but it's very difficult to really do anything that is in any way advanced. Drupal is the opposite. Your first few days are hard, but everything after that is smooth sailing.

I have decided that I am going with drupal. First off yes I can get an ssl cert. And second is with the drupal version. I put up a drupal 6 site to test it out and it pretty much installed no problems including the mods I installed. So what would the pros and cons of going with 5.x instead of 6.x and vice versa. I know for me I like staying up to date so I used 6.x, not to mention I saw that they were working on a 7.x so I figured that 6.x was my best bet. I know that some of the mods are still in dev but I don't plan on pushing out untill another 5 to 6 months or so.so if its going to be that long should I still use 5.x? Or 6.x? I know 7.x is still way to early to do anything with.

As with forums I tested integration with phpBB 3 and had no problems. If I can use phpBB as a forum I got the that it was far advanced over the drupal forum, even with the mods for it. I havent had a chance to try to integrate vBulletin yet (I have a copy for another forum I run and could just use a copy offline for testing purposes). So which one should I use then.I know phpBB was supposed to b easier to integrate so I was going to use that.but if I can integrate vBulletin I want to use that since it has so many features that I want.

6.x definetely has alot more potential, and by itself is much better than 5.x
6.x is still pretty new though, so the main downside of using it is a limited module choice and less documentation for it. If you're not brining your site live for another 6 months, using 6.x would probably be fine. The main problem is that if you ever change your mind, switching to 5.x is going to be VERY painful. Switching from 5.x to 6.x is not nearly as bad, so I always suggest people start with 5.x
If you want to dive right in to 6.x there is certainly nothing wrong with that though.

I know that alot of the more advanced but heavily used modules (CCK, Views, most WYSIWYG editors, etc) are still being ported to 6.x

There are alot of modules that you might not think about right now, but you may want later on. I know I'm a big fan of URLify and Clean URLs and other related modules. They made your URLs more readable for both humans and search engines. There are also alot of great modules for things like automatically generating site maps, analytics and adsense, etc.... Make sure you decide on your full site setup before going live and you'll save yourself alot of headaches.

Using phpBB3 certainly isn't a bad idea though. Drupals forums (even with advanced_forum) can leave some functionality to be desired. I think you'll be very pleased in choosing drupal as your CMS though. It seems to get better every day, and the community is one of the most helpful you'll ever fine. It's rare that you see a RTFM response anywhere in the forums.

yea i have seen some of the options for mods that are out for 5x and not 6x. i like some of the options but not all necessary really. Also since its going to be a while until i put up the site i am willing to wait that time when more mods are ported to 6x. Though I am working on another site for a friend that wont be so demanding and i am going to use 5x.

If you are even semi-familiar with PHP, it is also pretty easy to work with Drupal's API. It is by far the best I've seen so far. It certainly wouldn't be very hard to either port 5.x modules to 6.x if you're ever really in a bind, or hire somebody else to do it. It's such an easy API that it shouldn't cost much. In fact, I'm sure contacting the project maintainer and offering them even a small "incentive" would help get things done quicker. In 6 months though, I'm sure that most "important" modules will have already been ported, or replaced by new modules.

Yea i am currently learning PHP 5 (and some PHP 6, i want to be knowledgeable to its advanced functions when its fully operational) and mySQL. I am currently reading through 2 Books and using lynda.com for video training (awesome and worth every penny). Once i'm good with php I'm going to pick up the pro drupal development 2nd ed. when it comes out. I'm not really going to plan on writing my own mods but i want to be able to test, debug modify, and tweak mods i have or need to fit my tastes. And if it would be really simple to port a mod to 6.x and just nobody has done it and i know i can I like to do it to give back to community and to learn.Well not to say i wont ever make a mod but its not a plan im aiming to do.

Still having to learn php somewhat is part of the reason that my site wont go public for a while. I want to make sure that if something happens to my server and/or page that i will be able to take care of it and not have to rely on anyone else. But by that time i also plan on having others on my team.

Going back to second post briefly how frequently is phpBB attacked/hacked etc, I ask because I'm using latest version - phpBB3. It's also integrated into my main site for user login and provides restrictions to certain areas of the site. Although I've looked at the database backups and various things like that and I think I've got my back covered should anything majorly go wrong.

I subscribe to the RSS feeds of many different security websites (both the black hat and white hat, because you have to know what both sides are saying to truly be secure). I'd say I see a new vulnerability for phpBB posted every other day or so. It's one of the most common web apps attacked. It has a huge install base, it's run by people who generally aren't very tech savvy, and forums are great places to harvest lots of information about people and to post spam on. I'd say that Joomla! is also one that I see come up alot. Both of these web apps are constantly critized for the poor layout of their code. It's difficult to read and in massive need of re-write in many areas.

I'll continue to spout my "Pro-Drupal" rehtoric by saying that it's one of the least attacked CMS/BB/webapps out there. I credit a responsive community and clean code. It's actually one of the main reasons I choose Drupal and why I don't integrate phpBB into my Drupal installs. If you integrate phpBB into your CMS, now both your CMS vulnerabilities and you phpBB vulnerabilities are holes in your websites security.

My advice would be Drupal and I have used it on a couple of sites (check sig). As has been mentioned above the new 6.x series has been released and I am currently looking into that but the sites in sig are 5.x. As for the forum it is fairly easy to integrate phpbb(2/3) into it and only have the one log in. I myself have been looking into this for another site I am building and have just been testing it out on my local machine. 6.x is pretty short on modules at the moment but things like clean urls are in the core so works straight away. If you want a lot of modules it will be better to use 5.7 for now and upgrade it later and you could still integrate phpbb3 if you want.

one of the things i strive for on my sites is security. I want to make sure all my users and any information they have is safe. could you possibly psot some of those rss feeds (the black and the white)? I agree on of the ways a good friend of mine stays clear of viruses (win xp) is that he is somewhat of a hacker (not the crappy hacker that most people think of when its brought up but a real hacker. He does it to learn, not to destroy (unless its his). its a bad association that most people have with hackers is that they are all bad.) Anyways, i have learned form him that you do have to learn about both side if you want to be secure, so i totally agree with you. I didn't even think to look up rss feeds for that.

If phpBB is that vulnerable to add to Drupal i might not use it. But i would then like to integrate vBulletin in a similar manner (not vbDrupal). I mostly want just the member logins to talk to each other. They would be on separate sites/domains (both are on the same server).

http://www.rootsecure.net/?p=secnews_rss_feeds
http://www.milw0rm.com/
http://www.securityfocus.com/rss/vulnerabilities.xml
are just a few
Some simple google searches should turn up alot. Also subscribe to the mailing list and RSS feeds from all of your software vendors. On a typical LAMP setup this means at a minimum you need to be tracking.
Your Linux vendors website
Apache's Website
MySQL's Website
PHP's website
If your running ssh, ftp, dns, etc.... you need to be checking the providers security information for every single piece of installed software, every proccess, every service, EVERYTHING!

Yes thanks for those links. I hadn't even thought to do all that so much for my site (still a little fresh on knowing how to build doing dynamic sites). I do that somewhat on my pc and I will be subscribing to these. It also gives a little insight overall as im in the process of moving to a linux box (ubuntu) due to that I will b hosting my own server and I'm trying to get used to the interface. Thouhg my friend will be doing most of the server side work being as its a hobby of his.

So if I try to integrate vBulletin with drupal how much of a security hole would that be, compared to phpbb? I'm sure not as bad but is it a viable option for a site that is planning on growing with a large community? I still want some of the options it has. Also keep in mind that I'm not wanting to do a full integration. Just membership and signups

Well, the more software you install, the more holes you open up. That's a pretty universal truth. vBulletin isn't especially bad, and that integration shouldn't really hurt you that much. What does vBulletin offer that Drupal w/ advanced forums doesn't offer that you need? I know that vBulletin is better overall, but what are the specific features that makes you want to choose vBulletin?

Also, if you are setting up a webserver that is going to be nothing but a webserver, I'd highly suggest you take a look at Cent OS. it's the same as Red Hat Enterprise, except free. I run Cent OS 5.1 for my unmanaged dedicated box. It's not all that hard to run. Ubuntu is a GREAT desktop linux distro, but it's meant for the desktop. Cent OS (RHEL) is designed to be a server distro from the ground up. Just something else for you to consider.