Community website software

which platform to go for

[StephenSails]

Hi,

I run a pretty popular online watersports news website and online shop. I think now that I have a good level of traffic and page rank I can bolster this by building up an online community.

I am looking for forums, the ability for the user to add their own blogs, upload their own gallerys and so on. I have found a product called Invision which certainly looks like it is up to the job, my question is whether there are any other products I could consider and also whether there are any other interactive features I could add to the website?

Cheers

Stephen

[StephenSails]

Incidentally the current news platform is running on Postnuke so if there is anyway to integrate with this then that is also of interest but not necesarily a priority.

[chance1376]

Currently I use V4B Journal (close enough to a blog for me) and photoshare for the gallery. So those might be something to condsider also there is a Gallery/Blog/Profile module in the works for PN that is 90% finished range by a couple of good developers. You can read up on at this post [forums.postnuke.com]on the Postnuke Forums.
Some other things to consider might be advProfile which is a replacement for the core PN profile. It uses plugins to bring in other info from diffrent modules like last forum post or classifieds. Its not exactly interactive but the members seemed to enjoy it more thand the core profile. I also use flash chat which isn't exactly a module for PN but its a nice chat that intergrates with it. Other modules that I would call interactive that I use is pnFlashgames (arcade),pnphpbb2 (forum), and postcalender. The members of our site hold lots of events related to the topic so they can submit them to the postcalender. Also I plan on installing an intergraed version of dokuwiki.
Hope that helps.
BC

[Casethejoint]

Have you looked at some of more actively developed CMSs for your site? Systems like Drupal, Mambo, Plone? I think this question centres on how much work you want to make for yourself. If you have your end users in mind, then keeping some kind of consistant user environment and style is quite hard with a family of unrelated applications. Then there's the admin side: all these applications have their own array of updates, hacks, integration problems and foibles.

[viggen]

Have a look at Invisionboard it has all those features you are asking for, they can be usergroup defined, meaning certain usergroup have only access to blog or gallery, i use it and i am very satisfied with it...

regards
viggen