Help and Pointers With Creating A Custom Membership Site

[Sean1504]

Hello All,

I am looking to create a website that has a few general news and information pages, a forum and a list of petitions. I would like to have it set up where by people who have signed up as members can create their own petition that once approved by admin other users can click an "I support this petition" button and it will add their details to that petition. I would like the petition creator and admin to have some sort of control over the petition e.g. removing duplicate entries or being able to message people that have added their names for instance. Maybe the petition's would have to be treated as a separate script or entity?

Could any of you give me some pointers as to guides or free scripts that could help me achieve this? I can write html but currently don't know any perl, php etc. and wouldn't know what would be the best way of implementing this sort of system, however I am quick to pick things up and good at teaching myself so if anyone can give me a few pointers as to where to start out I would be most grateful.

Thanks,

Sean

P.S. I'm using a mac if that makes any difference to information you may suggest.

[Fang]

Find a host who will/can install a forum and content management system for you.
To do this yourself, with your current knowledge, is virtually impossible even with free scripts.

[Sean1504]

Thanks, I shall try and source a host that can set things up for me. If I wanted to go about gaining the knowledge required do you have any suggestions where to start?

[Fang]

HTML (http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/)
CSS (http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/)
JavaScript (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262.htm)
PHP (http://nl2.php.net/)
MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/)
Apache (http://www.apache.org/)
CMS (http://www.opensourcecms.com/)

[Sean1504]

Thanks.