Thread

I have been given quite a short timescale on this but ideally this is what I want

Home page with blog (probably OK?)

Sections with content authored by admin(and maybe user submitted and/or pulled from rss feeds)

Forum with user having the same login etc as commenting on the blog

Maybe user homepage/profile

Space to put afilliate banners/links etc “section X sponsored by Freds garden tools” or whatever.

I don’t have the time or inclination for searching round forums for plugins or hacking css/javascript/php etc so EE was recommended by a colleague.

Question - Can EE solve my wish list out of the box with minimum of hassle?

Thanks

All of the features are doable in EE. Remember that EE is just the engine for the site. You would need to build the HTML/CSS/JS and then integrate ExpressionEngine into the templates. You can download the Core version for free so I’d recommend doing that first and making your mind up that way.

EE should be able to handle it no problem.  Almost all of it fast.  The only catch is- there is a learning curve.  So if you had already built an EE site?  You could whip this out in no time.  First time playing with it?  You’ll need to get the basics under your belt.  As Shape Shed notes- best way to get a feel is to Try it out.  I’d probably go with the hosted demo, as that will allow you to check out the forum as well.  (And I’d probably install Core on my server- because I like seeing how things install.)

Only bit I see taking time for someone well versed in EE is style modification of the forums and/or user templates.  Depending on what you need to do there- that can take more time than setting up the rest of the site.  Just depends on how much customization will be needed.