Software for a Particular Web Site Purpose?

[ChimpSimple]

Hello all,

BlueHost provides a lot of options for web design and CMS software through, for example, Fantastico (e.g. CMS includes Drupal, Geeklog, Joomla, Mambo Open Source, PHP-Nuke, phpWCMS, phpWebSite, Post-Nuke, Siteframe, Xoops).

I'm pretty much an amateur, but I can pick up various programming languages and software tools quickly. I'm interested in experienced users' views on which of the above -- or other -- tools would be most suitable for the following type of web site:

I want users to be able to enter information about objects, for example cars, from drop-down lists (e.g. Blue Ford Mustang), enter additional free-form information (e.g. comments, geolocation data, VIN) in an easy-to-use form. I would like to save that information in a MySQL database, and display it in various ways on the web site -- so users could filter and sort the information by car type/model, location, etc. I would like to have the option of displaying only some fields of the users' data (e.g. not display VIN at all), or display information partially masked (e.g. VIN with only the first three digits showing, the rest blanked or Xs).

Not sure whether I'm going to require people to register to enter or view data. Would like to have the option of adding fields or manipulating the data in other ways. I'd like the web site to have a simple but attractive look to it, and to be scalable if I start getting a high volume of usage.

So, any thoughts on which tool I should start out with? I'd like to avoid coding from scratch; I can modify templates or customize HTML and PHP (just don't want to have to build things from the ground up/from scratch).

Thanks in advance for your input.

--ChimpSimple

[bobdog]

Try using Drupal with the taxonomy mod. It would make it possible for users to search for a Ford Mustang in Chicago.

[felgall]

First thing to consider would be that if you plan on making your own modifications to the script (as you will almost certainly need to do to get what you want) then you will probably need a test environment to try things out on your own computer first before uploading them to your hosting. XAMPP and WAMP5 are two integrated apache/php/mysql/myphpadmin packages that can be downloaded from the appropriate sites and installed onto Windows to achieve this. LAMPP and MAMP are Linux and Mac equivalents.

You should also look at obtaining whatever scripts you propose to use/modify from their original site rather than getting the version available through Fantastico (which is often out of date).

[ChimpSimple]

Thanks very much for the suggestions, folks. I'm leaning towards starting out with Joomla! rather than Drupal, for learning curve reasons. I expect to learn both tools eventually, but for just-starting-out stuff I figured I'd just choose Joomla!.