Wriging

Hello 9rules:

Where to start? It's been a long time since I've taken a test, but I still remember the old advice about skipping over questions that stump you, and then taking another stab at them after you've answered all the easy questions. Well, I've been researching and developing (not sure that's the right word) my web project for about 2 months now, and I notice that I'm skipping more questions than I'm answering. Not because I don't know what I want, but because I don't know how to do it (yet). In other words, the learning curve is handing me my ass, and those hard questions I was going to go back to are becoming a blur. So, I need to go back to the beginning--having learned a few things--and start this project anew. The first thing I need to do different is start keeping a journal of my progress. In addition to keeping track of this or that, writing helps to clarify, organize and discipline my thinking. Then there's the other possible benefit of writing it all down--the prospect that if I share it with the right people, I might get the right advice.

With that said, I'd like to ask the permission of 9rules community to use 9rules Notes as my project journal. It might be a bit silly to ask permission, but I want to anyway. I believe in this project. I'm passionate about it. I own it. And I could really benefit from the wisdom lurking here.

To that end, I should probably tell you a little bit about my background, and the project.

I trace my online roots to Slate.com's message boards. I've been posting there regularly since 2000. That's unlikely to impress anyone, and I don't mean to imply it should. I only mention it because although I'm late in discovering my passion, I've been playing in the sandbox for...a while. Based on my experience there, I started blogging. I've had numerous blogs over the years, but I'll only mention WikiFray, since it is still active and somewhat representative of the project's roots.

The project, in the simplest of terms, is an online magazine. I hesitate to say there is anything unique about my vision. In fact, the more I research, the more I discover other websites are doing things similar to what I want to do, only in ways not limited by my technical shortcomings. Look no further than 9rules as an example of that. Nevertheless, I press on, because suspending the Voice of disbelief is one of the things I do well, and I have a penchant for this stuff--only now instead of talking about it, I'm doing it.

The basics: I need a blog powered magazine with group and individual blogs primarily managed by their groups or individual writers, and all that content aggregated to a portal (main) page. I need to seamlessly integrate the blog platform with a "threaded" (web 1.0, basic, old school message board) forum to serve as the comment/discussion area for readers/writers.

So far: After vacillating between Movable Type and WordPress for the blog platform, I finally settled on MT--seeing as there were lots of examples of MT doing the magazine thing--only to finally give in to my gut feeling and switch back to WP. In the midst of this, I found and installed my forum software, and that's where I'm at.

I need to learn WordPress and php. I need to make WP (multiple installations I think) work, look, feel like a magazine. I need comments from my WP blogs to go to their respective forums. I would like to display the forum boards on their respective blogs using something other than iframes. Etc. Etc. Etc... As you can see, I've got a long way to go and I've got my work cut out for me. However, working in a vacuum is hard.

But enough writing, it's time for me to get to know WordPress. Rather than picking a theme based solely on how it looks, I'd like to ask if anyone knows of a theme that is well suited for my project. I know that's rather vague, but to be honest I don't even know if all WP themes are created equal, so I'd like to make a wise choice. I'd appreciate any suggestions or direction, and if you need more information (I've tried to keep it short), please ask.