Hee- I'm mediacow. I also work as tech support for ExpressionEngine- so the fanfic site is a bit of a playground for testing out the CMS.
EE, at least the full version, is pro software- which I preferred in this particular case (I started using pMachine- the precursor to EE- before I started working for the company. So I didn't choose it for a fanfic site BECAUSE I worked for them. There was some open source silliness at the time I made my choice, which led me to prefer commercial software. There are pros/cons to it either way you go.)
The version running Media-cow is customized, but not a ton. And it's easy to customize. But there's a licensing restriction that EE can't be used as a 'hosted blogging solution- a la LJ'. I think that limitation knocks EE out of the running. It would be fine for a fanfic site- but given you might want to expand on that, I'd be hesitant. Also- it doesn't have a fanfic module. I started writing one- it's easy to do- but the pro nature of the version most folks would want to use resulted in the module not being a high priority for me. It's backburnered at the moment.
Er- short way of saying, I think EE is great software, but probably not for this project. I'd be looking at Drupal, Typo3 (which is complex as all hell) and Joomla!/Mambo. Hm- maybe even wordpress- which has a multi-user fork- but it's really more blog tool than cms. Pros and cons to any of those- if it were me, I'd go EE, but depending on what you want to do, there could be a license issue. I think no matter what you do, you'll need a couple of pros well versed in the system and preferably willing to build some custom mods.
An alternative is build one from the ground up- using a framework such as Ruby on Rails (for Ruby) or CodeIgniter (php) it wouldn't take a crushingly long time and could be built to do exactly what you want. I'm biased again- Codeigniter is an open source project let by the EE/EllisLab folks, so I'd lean toward that.
But yep- picking the right approach/software is going to be a critical step.
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EE, at least the full version, is pro software- which I preferred in this particular case (I started using pMachine- the precursor to EE- before I started working for the company. So I didn't choose it for a fanfic site BECAUSE I worked for them. There was some open source silliness at the time I made my choice, which led me to prefer commercial software. There are pros/cons to it either way you go.)
The version running Media-cow is customized, but not a ton. And it's easy to customize. But there's a licensing restriction that EE can't be used as a 'hosted blogging solution- a la LJ'. I think that limitation knocks EE out of the running. It would be fine for a fanfic site- but given you might want to expand on that, I'd be hesitant. Also- it doesn't have a fanfic module. I started writing one- it's easy to do- but the pro nature of the version most folks would want to use resulted in the module not being a high priority for me. It's backburnered at the moment.
Er- short way of saying, I think EE is great software, but probably not for this project. I'd be looking at Drupal, Typo3 (which is complex as all hell) and Joomla!/Mambo. Hm- maybe even wordpress- which has a multi-user fork- but it's really more blog tool than cms. Pros and cons to any of those- if it were me, I'd go EE, but depending on what you want to do, there could be a license issue. I think no matter what you do, you'll need a couple of pros well versed in the system and preferably willing to build some custom mods.
An alternative is build one from the ground up- using a framework such as Ruby on Rails (for Ruby) or CodeIgniter (php) it wouldn't take a crushingly long time and could be built to do exactly what you want. I'm biased again- Codeigniter is an open source project let by the EE/EllisLab folks, so I'd lean toward that.
But yep- picking the right approach/software is going to be a critical step.