Wordpress & Drupal - Start with WP and Migrate to Drupal Later?

Building a new website - need easy CMS to start

[cfbif]

I'm building a new website - news aggregator (think BNet.com) needing the following features:
- User registration/profiles.
- Easy to add new articles from outside RSS feeds or manually through input interface.
- Ability to store a summary of a news article that would display in search results with the option of clicking a link to view the full article.
- User commenting and rating functionality (lower priority)
- Embedded image and video (lower priority) support.
- PDF support (this may just mean ability to open Acrobat Reader in a frame of some sort).
- Possible we'll want to implement a subscription service where some content would only be viewable by paying members.
- Community forum(s)

Three entry points into the content:
- Search engine. FullText search. Keywords (tags) search. Advanced search limiters - by product, subject area, date range, etc.
- Categories. Group news into certain categories, examples would be: news about a particular industry segment, subject area, etc.
- Product browse. Would want to the ability to browse to a product (not products we're selling, products that we have information about - think CNet). You'd be able to access news about each product and be able to review the product itself.

I was a software developer for about 5 years fulltime - SQL, VB, ASP, etc. Been out of the dev world for about 5 years, so I'm rusty and behind the times as far as new technology goes. Was thinking of starting the site with WordPress - reason being that I figure I can get something up and running quickly. If the site catches on and I want to expand beyond what WP is capable of, I'd invest (time/money) and shift to a solution like Drupal.

Few questions:
1) Based on the limited info I've provided, does it seem like WordPress would support what I need it to.
2) If the answer to #1 is yes, how difficult would it be to migrate a site from WP to Drupal?

Love this site... Thanks for the help.

-cfb

[ergophobe]

How difficult migration will be would likely depend on the complexity of the site. I've used both a fair bit, but I've never actually migrated. If I think it's going to get highly complex, I just start with drupal.

By complex, by the way, I do not refer to content presentation so much as user interaction.

For something like you're doing, I would just start with drupal. I don't mean *you* should, I'm just talking about lazy old me who falls into what he knows and is comfortable with. In your case, with your background, no matter how rusty, I don't think getting started with drupal would pose a huge obstacle.

On the other hand, you might check out some of the Wordpress extensions/sister projects like
- Buddypress (community/profile features)
- bbPress (lightweight forum from the Wordpress people).

I think porting a complex site, beyond just a blog, to Drupal from WP would be a hassle, but there may be scripts out there for it.