Database Driven Website

[ojb]

Hi all this site looks pretty decent, i was wondering whether you could help me,

I have been running an online community for many years now using IPB, so obviously by now I have learned about MySQL and PHP, that is NOT to say I can code PHP or could create my very own SQL commands and execute them, basically I am saying I have used them I suppose.

Anyway thats digressing, my point is that my community has been steadily getting bigger and bigger for many a year now. Every so often I upgrade my site to provide a new feature for my members which keeps them coming back... i.e. I installed OSCommerce to provide the users of my music based community a chance to sell their own CDs to other members etc... I also installed Jamroom which allows users to upload their own tracks to allow streaming and downloading by other users etc..

I have ALWAYS wanted something bigger and better though. I want to provide the members with a site which is driven by a large database consisting of artists, production studios, sound engineers, record labels and promoters all around the UK. I want basically to allow people who sign up (and maybe pay a small lifetime membership fee) to be able to search for people local to them and send them messages via the site (keeping the emails hidden) etc, and to be able to search by person type (i.e. promoter, artist etc), location etc etc.

Is there currently any (preferably) open source software that provides this type of capabilities, or is it more a case of having to develop the site from scratch?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,
OJB

[bathurst_guy]

you can have a look at www.opensourcems.com and see if anything fits this discription

but, I prefer to make stuff myself. then I know how it works and I know its set up the way I want it