Hi,

Sorry for the extreme newb question, was hoping for some insight. I'm
trying to find the right package from which to build a psychology web
community. There are so many bad ones out there, I'm hoping to put
something together that will have some staying power. I've played
around with phpBB, but don't have a feel for whether or not it is my
best option. I have some quasi technical skills but no coding or
development experience, so I won't be able to do much custom work
myself.


I'd like to accomplish the following:
1) have a top frame with one or several customizable news feeds, such
as google news filtered by key works, or other rss feeds. (would like
to include things like a 'discuss' link that would like to an
appropriate forum topic.

2) a frame with blog

3) Forums - ideally I would like the option of whether or not the users
will require registration. Preferably no registration for starters.
I'd really like this to be slick - there are very few psychology
related forums with consistent, quality visitors.

4) Customizable skins - something that doesn't look like it's an out of
the box package

That's about it. Anyone have any thoughts on the best way to get this
going? Limited budget, but could invest some money if i found exactly
what I was looking for. Would also be interested in hearing estimates
from developers if you think you could bang something like this out
fairly easilly,

Thanks!

I would stay away from phpBB. It has a very poor track record when it
comes to security.

One package I've heard good comments about is Beehive. There's is also
Mercury board and Agora.