Let’s see:
* A blog that has articles available for both public and premium members.
Easy enough- either they need to be members to see certain content, or they need to be in a certain member group. There are a couple of basic ways to conditionally show content- they boil down to access restrictions on a template and conditional variables within a given template. I use both, depending on what I’m doing.
* Integration with subscription software like aMember.
I haven’t done it, but I know others use aMember with EE, so yes, it’s doable.
* Integration with mailing list software like aWeber.
I don’t know aWeber, but it’s likely doable. I know someone has integrated Constant contact, so folks can subscribe to that during the standard EE registration. So I don’t think this will be difficult, and depending on what you’re doing, there may already be a path laid out.
* Ideally the main page of the site will list the first paragraph of the latest articles (much the same way that most blogs do) including both the public and premium articles.
In general, no problem here- though I usually have a specific custom field for my ‘teaser’ paragraph. Show that on the main page. And a little ‘subscription only’ marker to premium content. Can show the teaser to either all members or just those with access. I generally show it to ‘all’, but the full text will only be available to subscribers- non-members get a ‘restricted- sign up’ message instead of the main text when they click the link.
* When the user clicks on the “read more…” link, if the article is premium and the user is not a member he will be taken to a page to subscribe.
Easy to do- a could of different ways to approach it (change the link depending on if they’re subscriber OR take them to the same page but switch out the content conditionally- I usually go with the second method).
* I’d like to be able to share categories between public and premium articles. The article alone should determine membership status.
No problem- generally you’ll need a way to specify ‘premium’ articles. One easy way is by use of a custom status- but otherwise, the premium articles are going into the same weblog, so have the same categories, etc. Lot of ways to do it- but again, that’s generally what I do. And any way you do it, there’s no inherent problem with sharing categories.
* If the article is a public article, the user will be taken to that page regardless of membership status.
No problem.
* There will be forums available for premium members to use.
Again- no problem. This forum runs on EE’s forum software- and there are restricted forums. You can restrict based on member group- and set it so ‘non-allowed’ can’t post- or can’t see.
* The forums should be integrated enough so that the main site theme should apply.
There’s no inherent bar to this- but the forum templates will take you longer to customize than the standard templates will. And it isn’t something you can just automatically share. It will take customization of the forum css to get it happily matching the rest of the site. Expect to spend some time on this part of it.
* At a later date, if I decide to, I might like to add public areas to the forums.
No problem there.
To sum- EE seems a pretty perfect fit. The two things that will take some time are: 1. integrating the subscription payments so that membership is flipped on/off according to payment. That can be done via aMember (others have)- the simple commerce module is also worth a look. But I suspect I’d go with aMember. 2. Getting the forum style matching the rest of the site- it’s just a little harder to tweak the style there, but it’s doable.
But overall? EE sounds like a good fit for what you need. Take a look at the trial options- the hosted trial gives you access to the EE Forum module, so it might be a good call. And it will give you a chance to get a feel for the software before committing.