What is the best way to create an online community with little knowledge?

[HelpLFF]

I work for a non-profit organization and we are looking at creating an online community for the non-profit community in our state. We would like to have a facebook element where consultants can post their biographies and skills and where organizations can post their mission statements, what they do, and what they're in need of, a calendar aspect where participants can post upcoming non-profit events and training, a message board/forum aspect where participants can post and ask questions, get feedback, and discuss, an article aspect as well, maybe like wikipedia where issues within the non-profit world could be defined and answered by participants.

The dilema is our lack of technical knowledge. At this point is seems like the two options would be to use over the counter software and to hire someone to create it, or to hire a software firm to come in and create the community for us.

Our question is what would be the best way to go about this? Is there software available that someone could use to create our ideal online community or would it be cheaper to hire a software firm to just do it for us? What is the upkeep involved with a community like the one described above, would we be able to do it ourselves, would we need to hire a company to take care of it for us? I have seen mention of boonex and joomla are those viable software options or should be look at others? Any advice would be helpful. Hopefully the masters at Webmasterworld can help us out!

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, HelpLFF!

Community software can be complex stuff to create from scratch. I'd recommend using either commercial or major open source software and, if you need to, use some custom coding to add special features you need or to integrate components.

Communities do require constant involvement. The busier they are, the more effort they will take. I'd try to muster the resources internally if you can, and use volunteer help if that's feasible. Hiring out community management can get pricey.

[Timetraveler]

Hi rogerd - Can you recommend some top companies that will customize open source communities for you? For my project I don't think it's really necessary to start from scratch but high customability of something like mediawiki would work.

For me the hardest thing is always finding a specialist to work with that is flexible, good with all customization, and does quality work.

[hummingbirdhill]

My church has asked me to instigate an online Bible study in discussion forum format.

The program is to be purchased; price is not an issue.

The program must permit registration and personal password login.

Although I designed and constructed my own teaching website, I am not a programmer, so this program needs to be rather simple to configure and maintain.

Can someone with expertise on this matter please advise me on some feasible options for this type of discussion forum? (I don't know where to begin!)

Thank you very kindly.

[jbandp]

www.Ning.com - Free, fast and good.

[hummingbirdhill]

Thanks for the suggestion, jbandp.

Does anyone have either positive or negative experience with phpBB?