Joomla! Discussion Forums

I have been using Nucleus for the last couple of years. Great PHP/MySQL CMS!

But I want to build a social network website with the following requirements:

- users can sign up and create their own personal homepage with basic blogging
- registered users can search and contact other users within the system
- registered users can start groups and invite other users to sign up for them
- an event calendar with RSVP
- "tuned in to all the new web 2.0 stuff..." (tagging etc.)

For the last three weeks I've tried Drupal, but Drupal turns out to be extremely user unfriendly to non-hardcore PHP-coders.

What about Joomla? Can it do what I need? Or is it not that different from Nucleus?

Thanks

Joomla would be great for your purpose!  I think it would be necessary to come with up with a precise specifications about your usergroup and how you want them to interact.  I don't believe Joomla has a very extensive system that may support interaction between users to be similar to friendster ...  But the content management is great!  It's extremely easy to install and manage.  I wouldh ighly recommend it over drupal or nucleus.

RC2 of Community Builder (which is said to be released this month) will feature a connections tab.  This may help.  Also the plugin architecture should allow extensibility in whatever direction you wish to take it.  This component combined with joomlaboard and mypmspro would make a nice social network site.