A friend of mine is building a non-commercial site around some specific user-submitted content. She is relatively geeky, and has 1337 design skills, but isn’t so comfortable with the server-side database stuff. Here is her quandary:
In my ideal world I’m looking for a scripting language/database technology that will allow me to manage a community-based website with user-generated content that I can moderate for (in)appropriateness. Also, in this world, the scripting language/database technology will be managed through some free, open-source software in order to allow
me to get the site up and running within the next few weeks, rather
than wait the six months it would take me to learn PHP or ASP.Here’s how it would work: I’d build the site template and manage the
look/feel and users can submit their content (photos/text) for
inclusion. Users should have to log in to post their content, but
anyone can view what’s live on the site. Additionally, all
user-submitted content is stored in a server-side database that I,
ideally, have very little to do with. This is best for everyone
involved, as I admittedly know very little about back-end web design
aside from a working knowledge of javascript. My parents are so
proud.
My first instinct was to suggest PHPNuke, but alpha content management nerds Roland and Boris discouraged me. Of course, they’ve been drinking the Drupal koolaid for a while, so that’s their suggestion. Boris also said that Gallery might do the trick. Does anybody have any other suggestions?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I have a non-suggestion… Don’t try mambo. It took me almost three weeks to figure out that I couldn’t figure it out. It’s supposedly some hot-poop in the open source world, but for the rest of us mortals, it’s an exercise in frustration.
Well even WordPress and Movable Type kind of fit that description, although they manage textual content better than visual content.
I was an idiot for not suggesting it earlier…have said friend contact me, and we’ll hook her up with a demo site.
Plone is pretty good. (http://www.plone.org/)
I don’t think you can get any easier than blogger.com. Google did a good job of both the advertising part as well the feature functionality. It’s also [relatively] easy to stream the content into your own design (as demonstrated on my site). I’m moving to WordPress soon, but only because I rather *like* the PHP wizardry WordPress uses. Blogger.com can be posted to with w.bloggar as well. That should be a boon to anyone actually interested in keeping their blog current.
Your friend should take a look at http://www.opensourcecms.com/.
From the site:
This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs.
(I’m not sure what those quotation marks are about though…)
Martin
On VanLUG recently there was a discussion titled “GPL Photo gallery and forums solution” that may be relevant .