Hello everyone! Mostly a note to say hi to the community, any help is appreciated. Please keep in mind that I'm a photographer first and a geek second. I understand terms like aperture, circle of confusion, and focul length. I'm less good with chmod, XSAS, and PHP. :))

I am a new (1hr and counting.) XOOPS user. I am in the process of building a photography community Web site and I have tried a couple Content Management Systems. (Mambo and Drupal.)

I would like to build a site that has:

A forum where people can post and comment on photographs.

Needs: Thumbnails, Recent Comments, Recent Posts, Good Community Feel, Upload Capabilities, Posting Limits.

A place where people can start their own weblog with upload support.

Ability to feed news and content to the front page.

At the least it needs the functionality of this site:

www.photocritique.net

I would like to eventually build something like this site:

www.photonet.com

or better like:

www.deviantart.com

My latest effort is with Mambo, which you can see in all its non-glory here:

www.groupf11.com/public

I'm starting over in XOOPS here:

www.groupf11.com/home

What version of XOOPS should I be using? What modules or add-ons would help me accomplish my goals?

What advice (besides give it up) would be useful to me. What are the best online resources for new XOOPS users. Thanks in advance for any help offered!

I think, you'll be able (with some work) buld site with quality near DeviantArt
Just thinking:
Quote:
You can do it in only forum (with some limitation) - post topic, attach images to it... but I think, separation will do job better.
XOOPS have a lot of different Galleries (instead one Coppermine), and some choice of forums. I know norhing about galleries quality and neeeded featues, remarkable differences - it's a not my area of interests, but I think I have all public-known in XOOPS world galleries on my Modules Proving Ground, and you can try it on this site (frontend and backend as admin), russian interface of any module can be easy killed on request
All (AFAIK) modules have comment capability, not sure about presence of "discus in forum" from a box... Needed blocks exist, rating of images - also...
For blogging you can use special blog-modules (WordPress exist as a module, Weblog widely used..) or select something else - I saw blogs on News, AMS, WF-Section, Soapbox.
Quote:
It a matter of selecting correct blocks and placing on correcr page only... "Latest..." block have most (maybe even all) modules

My Personal Opinion is "Now it's more easy and safe for you start with 2.0.13.1 - all known modules work with this version, it has less (or none) glithes, 2.2 add-ons can be invisible or useless for your needs now".
And you'll be able update site later, when and if it will be "must do" step

I agree. Out of all the cms's out there, XOOPS is by far the most simple to get into and learn. Using the 20131 version will probably benifit you the most. There are some very nice galleries out there. xoopsgallery will allow users to create and manage their own independent galleries. And there are tons of people willing to help out with any questions you may have. If you were unsatisfied with mambo and well pretty much all the others. XOOPS is definitely right for you. Good Luck and feel free to post any questions you may have. Happy XOOPing!

When you finish your research, will be nice if you can expend a min to write down your thoughts using both CMS.