[thelist] online collaboration system

[Mike]

Hello,

My client would like to set up a website to facilitate the collaboration 
of ideas from various participants online. They would like to create a 
policy platform for a political party and there is a group of people who 
would sign in and share and record their ideas in order to work out a 
party platform together. My client would like to call the website a 
"think tank". It would be to pool together the ideas of the members and 
to hopefully come to consensus on various issues. Most likely, only text 
data would need to be shared (as opposed to any images) - although the 
ability to upload an image might perhaps be useful.

What would be the most appropriate tool to create such a system?


My initial thought was to set up a wiki. It seemed to be the perfect 
application for a wiki. I will also considered a discussion forum in 
addition to the wiki and between the two systems this would be a 
complete solution to their needs.

I will also set up an online poll system.

With these three components I think I will have every aspect of their 
needs covered. Would anyone have any other suggestions? Am I overlooking 
any other solutions? I am preferring php-based solutions.

In addition, I need to keep the site protected from public access. Many 
online forum systems such as phpBB operate with user ids and passwords 
that I could use to keep the forums private to those users only. 
However, my web host has a feature where I could passord protect any 
directory on the site. Should I use this and password protect the top 
level directory or is this not a secure practice? I will need to secure 
all three components of the site from public access: the wiki, the forum 
and the online polls. Any suggestions how I might secure these three 
components or if it should be secured individually or the website as a 
whole?

Thanks for any suggestions,



-- 
Mike