Don´t take my frustration/anger as spitting on XOOPS and similar. I loved Xoops, I tryed with Mambo (well before they splited up to Joomla and Mambo) but Mambo was not for me.
I have some knowledge of php but this knowledge does not even compare to knowledge of html. I use SMF forum and it was pretty simple i must say to design it how I want it and so it works fine. XOOPS was something else, I had to work on modules and whole thing months before I finally managed to do it like I wanted it (This forum helped me a lot!). First thing after going online was problems with users of portal since everything was "little" complicated for them and more or less I was doing everything manualy at the end (so dream of less work for me was gone).
Problem with Xoops, Mambo, Joomla, Nuke is that modules which you need haven´t been created yet or you have to work on them a lot. If I would stuck with html site would be very big by now and probably nothing would be lost.
Anyway keep up the good work guys but those who are new to php you have lots of learning to do and knowledge can be a bitch!
Bye, hunden