I have a CS education but consider myself a self-taught programmer (whoever said CS <i>taught</i> you programming!). I have a (novel :) idea for a how-to guide for a niche area that I feel has been largely ignored. Mainly original content, with an ad-based business model.<p>What platform and technologies would you recommend to get a site up and running quickly? I need an easy way to write articles, have other editors write articles AND allow users to submit/contribute to articles + comment. Small item, but also need directory structure to be hiearchical so that it appears like http://domain.com/category/topic/<p>I am comfortable with PHP, AJAX, CSS, etc. but would much prefer a turnkey system so I can get to producing content quickly and less time on coding. Considered Wordpress but feel that may not provide the required feature set...of course I may be wrong. Need something similar to what drives ehow.com, mahalo.com How-to's etc.<p>All ideas welcome, thanks.
There are forum plugins for Wordpress. That might give you some of the features you are looking for. I have not used them myself, but I know they exist. If you know CSS and PHP, you should be able to mod something to get the feature set you need.
If you want something that goes up quick so you can generate content, Wordpress is the way to go.