BleepingComputer.com: CMS for Article Management Website?

Hi everyone,

I've a question about CMSs. Apologies if this isn't the appropriate place to put it as I've browsed and mostly seen coding related questions, but I'm not sure where else the topic would be appropriate.

Background:

My friend wants to build a website that focuses on writing, submitting, and approving articles. The idea is he wants users to be able to register for the site, and submit articles which will go on to a sort of moderation queue where an editor or something similar to that will approve it and publish it on the website. He wants the articles to be categorized into different types of categories. Basic functions would be submitting articles (in front end), approving (in back-end), and other front end things such as listing popular articles, latest articles, browse a list of categories, possibly a list of authors/contributors, and so on.

Another catch is that he wants to have a forum on his site as well, and wants the accounts to be integrated with the website. To put it simply, ideally a user would only have to sign-up once, and will be granted access to both article submission and an account for forums. Another thing is if its possible he would want to display something like "Latest Forum topics" on the homepage of the website as well.

Here's a website that he stated has pretty much the functionality he wants:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Arti...tg/daily/stf/64
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What I've Done:

So I've researched a bit, and found that Joomla seems to be a popular free CMS that basically manages articles the way he wants. As for the forums, he and I are familiar with phpbb3, and I've found some modules that would enable integration between them (like JFusion). I've installed Joomla, and I can categorize articles into categories pretty easily, and I think the interface is pretty user friendly. However, I've also found reviews saying Joomla isn't very easy to use for moderated article submission (because of things like no notifications, no way for users to check their submission status, etc), which I've found made sense. I have found several components that have been suggested as an easier work around for Joomla's limitations.

So my question is:
To anyone who has experience with this kind of website, how did you go around building it? Joomla seems to be very popular, but do you know any other (free) CMSs that might do a better job? Or did you use a paid solution that offers more sophisticated functionality that caters exactly to your needs? Do websites generally use free CMSs and then customize it on their own?


Thanks!

I have used joomla in the past it is a great piece of code, but i think that wordpress should be able to do what your looking for, articles could be submitted as comments and then the comments can be approved (notifications are sent also)... I'm not to sure how it would intergrate with phpbb though...

Ah I did not realize Wordpress could do a similar thing. Are we able to categorize comments into categories like Joomla? Also, does it have modules/extensions such as 'Popular 5 Articles' or something like that? I don't mind coding such lists myself but I'm quite a beginner in the area of CMS, at first glance although Joomla has such modules it's difficult for me to find out how to modify the position of the list (like currently I'm only be able to place the 'popular list' in the menu sidebar). So I'm wondering if Wordpress comes with such things but maybe less flexibility as well.

i don't think you can put them into categories, but there might be something in their plugin database, have a look http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Thanks for the link! Also, do you happen to have any experience with Drupal? I've been googling around and the generul consensus seems to be Joomla for small websites, Drupal for something big. I'm not sure how big my friend's website would be but he's ambitious so he'll definitely want to expand his website gradually if he can. However Drupal seems to require significant IT skills to make a decent website compared to Joomla, is this true?

i've never used it before, sooo can't really help you with that one! sorry!