Ok, I'll tell you exactly what I want, it seems you guys know your way around. So, like I said, the site will have 2 sections, the CMS and the forum. The CMS will have articles, guides etc written mainly by the staff and the forums...well..the forums. The only thing I need is that the site itself CMS +Forum to have an unified user logging experience. What that means is that an user who made an account on the forums can post comments on the CMS, with the same username...and evidently, viceversa. Shortly, I just need that the registered users to be able to post in both places..that's it
Well, sometimes you don't know exactly what you need until you do it......at least in my case!
You may be surprised....certain existing add-ons may be able to do what you want!
This sounds crazy, but you have to know a little more - like "how large are these guides" and, pretty importantly, do the guides allow you to have multiple pages (most don't, but many don't need them!)....
In reality, all that most pages, articles and wiki/blog entries are....are a forum post, with fancier formatting. If you think of it that way, you could come up with all kinds of ideas......for instance....
1. Bobsters Showcase add-on
Forget about the name of it. This is really a wiki/article section of exactly the type you are talking about that allows the creation of tabbed content by certain people, but all can comment on them.
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/nflj-showcase.1208/
It does not have to be as graphics-heavy as his example and I'm sure you can do some tweaks for even more functionality.
2. The Resource Manager about to be released. Think outside the box. This might fit - it allows the posting of an article/resources/etc - with or without downloads, and then allows a discussion about it. All within XF and the whole deal is "stock". Furthermore, they are very likely to be expanding it...as may others...in the near future.
3. Forum posts - yeah, that sounds strange until you realize that there are probably ways (bbcode add-ons and various permissions) to create forums and sub-forums where only a certain group (staff and admins) can post. Then, everyone else can "comment" in the follow up posts. With a little customizing, you might even be able to limit the size of the replies...so they are more like comments, and disallow images (that's stock) and other things.
The Xencarta wiki can create very detailed articles - but I don't think it has comments (which means other users cannot comment on the entry). Jaxel (the author) may be able to be convinced to add this if enough of us ask him and donate!
I'm just starting to learn the possibilities myself. Notice that, even in VBB, the "articles" or blog entries are really just forum posts formatted differently and at the start of an article......yet they can look pretty fancy. I pointed to this before - you could really do this (or most of this) in a forum post, wiki entry or maybe even Showcase (not sure about all BBcode add-ons in showcase)......
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1811071&highlight=dji phantom review
So that is just a forum post, really...as explained to me by some here.
This addon
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/library-by-waindigo.222/
Is a library - sounds like it also may do. It also has custom fields available and is from a long time developer and member.
It can link an article to a thread. Talk to the developers about what you need....
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/library-by-waindigo.27529/page-22
discusses linking......
Edit - this does exactly what you want....
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xi-blog.713/
New version almost ready....
I guess the last piece is the question of trust in the developer. XF devs are usually small businesses and I would suggest you ask them in a thread or in a PM "hey, what happens if you stop developing, go out of business, get sick, etc. - will you then, at least, allow others to modify and update the codebase so I won't be left out in the cold?".
