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Hi,
I can understand your position. I started my 1st community site with XOOPS without any prior knowledge of XOOPS ( or any CMS) it took almost 3 months for the 1st hosting. The most difficult part was selecting the modules and theme. There are plenty of choice to choose from.
However It's very difficult to suggest the themes as it's purely personal choice. Also some of them are free where as some of them are paid.
For choosing module, I considered few things which I can share:
1. Check if you can install and test them in your local environment just to ensure it works for you.
2. Check it's compatiable with latest XOOPS core (Xoops 2.4.4)
3. Check the last release date of the module ( avoid un supported module). Sometime the latest release are not on the XOOPS repository but on some other site .(I know it's a pain to find)
I would suggest to begin, pick up a simple theme and all the required module and host it. Let it run for few days/weeks. once fully operational try to work on themes. if you dont know css, html,PHP, customising themes are most time consuming task
It's not fair to compare the modules, but after some research I finally settled for the following :
XcGallery 2.0.4 - Gallery
Video Tube 1.8.4 - Videos
WebLink 0.93 - Links
CBB 3.0.8 - Forum ( the latest one is v4 now)
AMS 2.51 - Article ( the latest one is v3 now)
You can check my site
http://www.AquariumHomeCare.com.
It's running on LAMP with XOOPS 2.3.1 from last 1.5 year without any trouble.
Hope it helps.
Good Luck
Deepak