*Message snipped to remove other CMS names, hopefully the point comes across*

Hi

I hope this is ok and in the correct area. I hope you all can give me some suggestions.. I know this is going to be a large project and I am ready for that. The problem I am mostly having is figuring out what CMS to use and finding one that does not have a huge learning curve, yet has lots of potential. I also am not a coder and know very little about code.
I am also finding it hard to find a theme/template/skin I like, as well as the modules/add-ons.
I have read dozens of comparisons from different review sites and I have an idea as to what ones I am thinking will work. However I could be wrong.

***** Sounds like it would not work, because it does not have granular capabilities and I am pretty sure I would need that from what I can figure out about that.
***** is known for having a huge learning curve and takes a long time, so that one will not work.
I am looking at XOOPS, ****, ***, and ****, you can read about them here http://bit.ly/aYu088

Please feel free to suggest others and to tell me which you think would be best and why. Also a slight idea as to how hard it would be to set up would be great.

This is a bit of what I would like to have:

Social Network Site
Members
Branches -
Categories(? Categories may be changed or the wrong name completely), Groups and clubs
Everyone signs up as members, than they have the ability to create public/open “groups” where anyone can join. Or they can create private/ closed “groups” that only the owner selects who can join, via invite or request. However, everyone can see the information on the main page description about the groups, closed or open. But a section where members of the groups can have private “conversations” and content from members. Also the ability for members to become “fans” of the groups that are closed. Fans can follow groups and receive information updates on the closed groups.

Examples:
Member A , Member B, Member C Join the site.
Branches Ideas
3 or 4 Main Categories with subgroups of those. Like –
Categories 1 – Countries – UK, USA etc
2 Sub- Categories England, Ireland, Scotland ,Wales
3 Sub-sub Categories London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff
4 sub-sub-sub Categories – smaller towns, borough, etc
5 Groups – could be restaurants, friends that meet every weekend and want a cool way to show the crazy things they have done or a Animal Shelter that wishes to show what they do.
1 Clubs – This would be fan “clubs” of anything in the ‘Groups” or “Categories”

Member A owns a Pizza TuT in London, so they create a “closed group” about their Pizza Tut Restaurant in London, where they post specials, location hours and some pictures, or even a video that shows the outside as well as the inside of the restaurant. But members can read/view the group or fan it or like it.

Member B loves the Pizza Tut in London, so they decide to become a “fan” of the Pizza Tut group and can read what they have on special etc.

Member B notices on the Pizza Tut group page how many people have become “fans” of the Pizza Tut in London since it joined the site. Member B decides to create a “London Pizza Tut Fan Club” group. Member B is the owner and makes it a public/open group so that they do not need to keep accepting membership of other fans. But Member B still designs the group page and the content they want on it. They also send out a notice to all “fans” and the owner of the Tut – easy click thingy..

Member C reads about the “London Pizza Tut Fan Club” in the pm box or on one of the other notices they receive about updates. They join the “fan club”. They add what they like about it to the groups open contribution area.
Member B makes member C another contributor to the groups main info sections.

Members can be in any of the open groups or sub groups, they do not need to be in the UK group to belong to the London group.
The groups and sub groups are set up that way for easy locating and browsing the sections. If a main grouping is missing something then a member can add it.
Members and groups can be set by location for easy to find in search.

Example
Member B moves out of London. Where they move to the town is not listed in the groups categories. They add to the “3 Sub-sub groups London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff” area the town they moved to. They do not own the group as it is an area. 3 Sub-sub group now looks like this ““3 Sub-sub groups London, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Suffolk”

Make sense so far?


I want it to have an easy way for me to add or change the pages, layout and adding of modules/plugins and also to be able to change the “theme/skin” of how different areas look once it gets bigger. If there ends up being a lot of restaurant type groups, then I would make a page theme just for restaurants.. understand?

Social Network announcements –
I know that there is a away to do have it set-up for a member to send updates from their members profile to their other places like facebook, twitter etc. Plus they can also receive updates from friends facebooks , twitter etc to their members profile on other sites and with some browser gadgets. I want this for the members profiles as well as the main section of the site and for member owned groups. So that members and group owners can do everything they need to right there on my site in their profile.

Video and Audio capabilities-
So that members and groups can add music or videos to their areas.

Instant messages, private messages and emails.
Any member can send these out and receive a notice in their email or msn or any other IM service

Photo Gallery
- For everyone

Forums

Popular rankings scale
- For groups like restaurants etc, where when members vote, rate the restaurant or become fans of it the popularity ranking increases or decreases and the restaurant moves up or down levels.

Search –
Search by post code, nick, location and group type etc

I have already purchased my domain and have a host, because I had some crazy idea it would be pretty easy once I was in there to set things up. Except, I just cannot decide on what one to go with.
The package I have includes the following and a bunch of other stuff:
• No Limits UK Webspace
• No Limits Data Transfer
• No Limits MySQL Databases
• No Limits Email Mail Boxes
• No Limits Email Forwarders
• No Limits Junk Mail Filters
• No Limits FTP Accounts
• No Limits Sub Domains
• No Limits Shared SSL Webspace
• SSH Access
• Perl, PHP4,5, Python, Miva, Sun ASP
• Fast Hosting Direct Control Panel
• Free Fully Featured Website Builder

There is a bunch of other stuff, but I think this is a good start to what I want.
Any and all suggestions would be great. Sorry for such a long post, I just wanted to make it really clear as to what I want.

Can XOOPS do all this and then some? How long and difficult would it be for me to set it up?

thanks

Sometimes this censoring words is such a bad thing. I understand this is due to spam issues in the past.

How I understand you want something like facebook. I am not sure the idea is impossible but sure will not look intirely like facebook but alternative look is surely possible.

If you use the forum you can make categories reflecting the different countries, branches etc... where users can write if they are members of a specific group. In the beginning these groups area admin, user, anonym but you could make any group you'd like specifying what content each groups are allowed to see, edit, post.

See for instance this for a more social network approach in Xoops

Thread about the socialNet module

All this you ask is possible with xoops, but Xoops is not ready to go with these feautures, you'll need to put in some work but.. Create the groups (group UK, group Ireland etc ect) and tell each group what they can do. Check the demo of socialnet and see if this is something you can use, and it would be possible I think.

Sorry looks like I did not explain this very well.

The category areas (the towns, countries and cities) are just areas that can be searched to see what is there.

I will try to explain this a bit better.

If a member or guest comes from London, they can register or brows the different groups by the area London, or by the post code. They would find all the groups and members that are in the London area.

They could then look at the profile pages of any of the groups or members.

For someone to create a group they need to be a member and the group would fit under a couple different types. For instance, restaurants, colleges, universities or societies would be the types. The member would then name their group/club something appropriate and be able to add tag words for searching.

A group profile/page would have the ability to have:

Video and/or audio and/or pics

A descriptive section about the group

Where the group is located - if something like a restaurant

The ability to have updates posted from other sites they may be on, like facebook or twitter.

The ability to send updates to other sites they may be on, like facebook or twitter.

A update section or if a restaurant the weekly specials

A section for people to vote on the groups popularity

A members profile could have all this as well

I hope this is a bit clearer

Ok that was a bit clearer.

The profile module you can set up how you like, adding forms / displays of whatever information you'd like (Dont know about the video though) but certainly city, country, area, gender etc is possble to add the profile module simple.

Still id like you to check out the soicalnet module I told about in my previous post.

Another great module is the yoghurt social networking module but I am unsure if this is still being developed or this is progressed into socialnet module.