Is there a neat way to do contextual logging in a concurrent system?

Content Management System for my personal website?

• I am looking for a Community-style Content Management System to use as the platform for my personal web page. And a good hosting service. I used to have a regular hand-coded html web page I updated irregularly for a few years. However, I could not give the link out to many people because there were pages in there that I did not want teachers, family or potential employers to see. I ended up taking it down. After a while, I started a livejournal. That seemed to work for a while, and it was a fun experience but eventually I ran into the same problem - nearly all of my entries were locked to friends-only, and there was nothing left for my adoring public to see. What I am looking for is a software platform that will give allow me the flexibility I need to have the home page I've always wanted. The CMS I am looking for needs individual user accounts and a variety of security levels or user groups to sort them all out. Some of my entries and content will be open to the public for the entire world to see. For everything else - sections devoted to my personal life, my lovelife, my secret life as an undercover CIA operative posing as a pagan cult leader - only users in a certain usergroup or of a certain security level will have access to those sections. So, a user logging in as a colleague could see my resume, but NOT my balloon fetish page. There should be some sort of blogging tool in it, maybe an announcement or news section I could plop down in the middle of the front page where I could updates and what not. One important feature is the support and hosting of ancillary pages. I want to integrate my old, original website into my new one, but I want the links and pages open only to those whose user accounts have clearance. Sure, I could just hide the links and leave the pages themselves public, but there's still the off chance of the link being stumbled over or shared, or cached by google or the wayback machine. The front page should render a different, unique template for each unique class of user. The software would serve up the links and pages only to logged-in users who have the appropriate flags. So, the web page full of pictures and amusing captions of my binge drinking days is only available to college buddies, and my recreational drug usage pages are only available to former Saturday night live cast members and wall street traders. It should have some kind of forum system, so my friends can start threads and post to each other. A files section allowing privileged users access to special folders and giving them the power to upload files if they choose. And a photo gallery would be great too. The forums, gallery and files sections should work the same way, with some forums open to the public and then some private sections. Then all the other bells and whistles that make up a community site would be nice additions - polls, calendars, site statistics, etc. I want all that, AND a Pony! I think PHBbb can do most of those things, and maybe be modded to do the rest. Can anyone who has more experience with community sites give me a little information into that? Finally, I need a place to host this whole rigmarole. Can anyone recommend a good hosting company?

• Answer:

  I'd second Drupal, but that may be because I'm cheap and I enjoy playing with Free / open source software. Drupal is flexible and quite themeable. It has modules for all your needs and the security is granular and would seem to fit your needs. I'm not completly sure how you'd integrate existing pages, but I'd bet, with the communities help, you can find a way. Check out a gallery of Drupal site http://drupal.org/handbook/drupal/gallery and some case studies http://drupal.org/cases. I'll also second http://dreamhost.com. I've hosted there for 5 years or so. They have an amazing price / benefit ratio. They have a pretty good uptime and the control panel isn't bad. If I wasn't going to go with Dreamhost I'd probably go with http://site5.com.