Trying to figure out the best CMS for the job...large one. I usually use Modx CMS but this job looks like it's too big for the limits of MODx

Here's the basics available in most CMS: Polls/surveys, email forms, blog, newsletter, multilingual, members access, forums, etc

But I have a client that's also after:
1) Facebook style personal home pages (possible) but also including....
2) Ebay type auction system with buy now features
3) Integration of the above into wap mobile phone website that allows payments through phones (Paypal sounds good, not much of a problem there)
4) Internal messaging system
5) wiki for online document collaboration

Wondering if anyone has started on/knows about any of the above features already integrated into a solid CMS such as Joomla/Drupal/etc.

Have a nice day,
Derek

Drupal has a steep learning curve for some, but there are plugins available to do everything you talked about. All of the basic Blog/Poll/forums stuff is integrated right in. Using the OSCommerce plugins, and a few others, you could easily get the rest of the functionality you're talking about. Don't expect to get something like that going in just a couple of days though if you've never worked with Drupal before.

Yep the general consensus so far seems to be Drupal because of the solid architecture. I'm just not sure if it's worth going through the whole hassle of digging into Drupal and coding the features separate.... there's going to be lots of custom modules. Honestly this project sounds like one big headache...

My client knows this will be a very large job taking around 4-6 months for professional grade quality and testing... so would like to contribute and bring on an extra guy or two to help sort out the wrinkles on some features.

Do you know of any advantages/disadvantages of either Drupal/Joomla community? If you were to choose one which would it be, which is more stable? Heard Drupal is in transition and busy integrating everything into 6.0.... is support hard to come by?

Have a good one,
Derek

I worked solely with Drupal developing Drupal modules for about 8 months. Drupal is an awesome framework for producing a large community and content based site. Everything that you listed has a add on in Drupal, if I remember correctly, and you could modify them to suit your needs specifically.

You get multilingual support "out-of-the-box" with Drupal so i18n stuff really isn't a problem. The support on the Drupal forums is great as long as you're willing to contribute the stuff you learn. The "sages" there don't really like giving help to people who won't help others.

The only bad thing about Drupal is the huge learning curve. For all the stuff you want, plug custom theme development that will be multilingual, plan on at least 6 months and probably more. This will be a huge project not matter what CMS you decide to use. Using Drupal will certainly speed you up, but you should learn it for almost a month before you start to actually set things up so you don't have to backtrack after making a ton of progress in one direction.