amazing, simply drop the folder, load the url of the site, the most basic of mouse click and voila, the site is up..

postnuke and phpnuke were pretty simple too. but required a few more tiny answers and settings..
so far XOOPS is a definite winner in my experience..

but now comes the time to populate the community with modules, and i ran into a slight problem.

i need:

*Forum - the whole deal:
-user profiles
-ratings
-attachments
-etc.

*Downloads section
-Uploadable by all
-Sorted/Approved by admins
-rated by all

*Picture Galleries
-Layout/sorting by admins
-upload by all.

*Article Database
-Articles submitable by all
-Approved/sorted by administrators/mods

*Full featured blog
-for all users

*Events Calendar

so far the only thing i found was the gallery (xcGallery)
and even that was on another website actually using it..
i browsed here. xoops.org and i find the downloas section to be very skim on content.. i found some foreign sites but not in languages that i can understand.

so my plight to fellow xoopers is,
can you recommend any particular module packs for the purposes i specified above, or a centralized web location where modules are available, reviewed, and have some kind of a preview so i dont have to install each one to see if it does what i need.

thanks for your time

there's a core forum module called newbb. but i suggest that you use the newbb pro instead. the developer of newbb pro is now part of the XOOPS core team.

for events calendar, i'd like to recommend piCal (which i use, and you can get from [urlhttp://www.peak.ne.jp/xoops/modules/mydownloads/]here[/url]) or try agendaX

For articles, i am trying out WF-Section now. but there are alternatives out there. (there's even one already included in the core package, the "sections" module.)

for centralized download location, tryhttp://dev.xoops.org orhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/xoops/

for blogging, try this one (i haven't tried it but you can search to find more alternatives.)