I'm trying to create a site similar to:
www.buffysearch.com
....
where visitors can rate a site and it will post the top-rated sites. I somehow stumbled onto PostNuke and after navigating the site, am still confused as to what it is. Will it help me with the review/top rated thing? Is it easy to figure out?

Postnuke and phpnuke are both slashdot style news/discussion portals.

I've got phpnuke in production on a couple of sites - it works, but you need to do some work (in my opinion) trimming out a lot of them *ahem* "less useful" functions, and fixing some of the known securty holes (which might already be fixed in the main tree).

Postnuke is a similar project (which forked from phpnuke some time ago). Haven't used it myself, but I know people who swear about it.

In my opinion, if you can code, and have a discrete set of requirements, you can probably do better. However, if you're time limited, then fixing something that exists might be a better option for you.

in a word...crap

Well, I just found something else:
Gossamer Threads - Links v2.0 at
http://gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links/index.htm

But I don't know, it seems really hard and I'm not sure if it will fit my needs.

Hi Kit,

Links v2.0 from GT will do what you want. It's not very difficult to install but the templates can be a bit daunting at first. Once you get the hang of them, they're actually pretty easy to work with and they can be very powerful.

The plug-in system that GT uses is pretty nifty for adding on special features. You can take a look at the Links 2 forum over at GT and get a good idea of how it works and what plug-ins are available.

I dont use Links on a production site myself but I use a few of their other products and I have no complaints.

Regards,
Charlie

I recommend using only what you really need. If you're an avid webhead, and are always fiddling with your site, then I would highly recommend learning php, it's actually fairly easy.

PostNuke and the other "CMS" (I think portal is more accurate a description) are great programs coded by some good people (although phpNuke's FB is a bit of an ass), but you're getting exactly what a million other people have. Then again, that's just me, I even wrote my own custom forums so I could have only what I wanted... and of course the user management and login system fits seemlessly into the rest of your site.

I have heard that PHPNuke is the best, but in my opinion, I don't think you can go wrong with learning php/mysql yourself and doing it on your own. It is time consuming, but quite rewarding when finished!

If you create your own content managment for your needs it always works better and is easier to add on as you know all the code and design of it.

Well, I just got GT to work...as for building or designing my own, I really wish I could do that, but I'm just not that skilled at all. I don't really know much of CGI/perl or any of the other higher advanced programming skills. I just started working with PHP (very basic) a month or so ago.