what tools to use to develop a blog and a forum?

[zxcvb]

I am a newbie and using iweb for a while but now I am thinking to develop a more sophisticated blog and forum something like macrumors.com or www.jon4lakers.com. so what tools should I use/learn to get this done. mac and pc software are both fine.

thank you. :)

[miles01110]

WordPress (http://wordpress.org/), TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/TextWrangler/), and maybe phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/).

[lucidmedia]

well, if you are looking for one "engine" that can do blogs and forums and integrate them, take a look at the open source CMS Drupal.

http://drupal.org/

[needlnerdz]

From my own experience and noo paid influence, I would have to suggest the cheapest dreamhost.com hosting package they have [maybe just buy one years worth to test it out for cheap] - the main reason is that moving from iWeb to something like the setup desired will be a bit of a leap... Dreamhost offers something called 'one click installs' on their behind the scenes control panel. Part of that one-click install offers is both WordPress + phpBB [as mentioned above + i would throw my vote towards]. They are almost too easy to install.. however I would google and research as much as you can on how to make them hacker/exploitation safe - since out of the box all of the directories, files, ect. are named the exact same as elsewhere on the web - making them a target for the mischievous.