I'm going to be launching a website soon that I've been wanting to do for a while. It's a political website that will have editorials on the latest issues that are both domestic (US) and international. I'd also like to possibly have a forum where users can discuss and debate things. Should I have a website (maybe a CMS?) that contains the editorials and what not and then have a forum that is separate or should I use vBulletin (I have an owned license) to power everything and just do template modifications? Thanks. :)

Radon3k, this is just my opinion... don't use a CMS for your site.

I hate sites like that... design your site, or get somebody to design it for you...

Yea nuke sites are starting to get on my nerves. I won't take a site seriously if it's a nuke site. Keep vBulletin seperate just for your users and *not* to power your site. With nuke site's there's also a question of security as you don't know what code is in it unless you double check all of it and you need to stay on top of all the updates to keep it safe.

As websterworld said, don't use a CMS. Do a design, but make it easy to navigate.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I'll look into hiring a web designer (I can code the backend, but I'm not good with actual web design) though most of them want you to sell your soul and I don't need anything that special.