Wishlist for startpage - What modules?

On my website i plan to have a structure like this.

0. Principal. There are 4 main topics. Each having it's own Topic page.

1. All published "blogg/newstext/article" (all topics) goes first to startpage in full.

2. After X days article move from startpage => two (2) places. 2.1 the article in full length should go to the "dedicated topic-page" AND 2.2 a shortened version should go to a side-column in the start page as (clasified?) "reacent article".

3. After another time Y the article (2.1 AND 2.2) goes to a threaded or boxed "all topics archive".

Which module can make this happen? (with the smallest effort?).

Is there a rating system module to go along with this?

The News module can do most of it.

I am not sure, if it can take the article off the spotlight after certain time.

But you can have the articles in the side block as "Recent Articles", and it will put them in Archive as "expired article" on a date specified by you.

I was thinking

Perhaps one should think backwords on this and describe the four (4) topics pages as each being it's own blog?

...and instead putting a copy of each blogs new postings on the start page. That basicly becomes the same thing but the system-thinking gets another perspective.

Is it any part that the News module for sure will not be able to manage for me? I see that the AMS module is a rewritten "News". Is AMS much more complicated?

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Is there any basic /important difference between an # article # news OR # blog -system?

/MrG