Richard,
First of all, welcome to DNN. It can be quite the fire hose of information when you first get in. Assuming you've already checked out the Forge here on this site and Snowcovered.com for commercial modules, complete with reviews. If not, then you can certainly find solutions for what you need between the two. A few comments on your points from someone who was standing where you are about six years ago:

Forums - there is a free core forum that is part of the core (it's the one we're using for this thread in fact). Shortly this will be replaced with Active Forum which was part of the IP DNN acquired when the y bought Active Modules. They also have a decent social networking solution (PMs, Friends, USer Groups, etc that might be interesting for your site longer term. That will also eventually be part of the CE release (thinking 6.2).

Storefronts are tougher. There is a core store offered. A lot of people like SmithCart and others like Catalook. I've used both....catalook is VERY flexible but so complex only one or two people in your org will ever maintain/customize it. SmithCart is easier to setup. There are other options as well.

Blogs, again a core module that is decent. Some people like DNNBlog, SunBlogNuke and Ventrian News Articles. I've been a huge fan of Ventrian for a long time and you can make it look/work like a blog or like articles or like a catalog.

Not sure what you meant by resources/articles.

PM there is a decent basic ticketing system in the forge for free. It includes source so you can twist it from there. ALso, OnyakTech is a good little company. I've used their modules, mostly their Axon Email Campaign module a lot and have had good support.

Not such a fan of their live chat support. I ended up using BoldChat then finally settled on Velaro (we used it to provide live chat services across 300 portals).

---

Steven Webster
Manager, Community Platform
F5 Networks, DevCentral

I guess the easiest way to describe resources/articles is to say it is simply a blog that people can comment on, except it is separate from a blog. Resources could apply to a certain product where someone has done something with it and wants to provide how he did it as a kind of how to. The only difference between it and a blog is that it will have a file upload field so that they can provide source code or images for whatever they have done.

Has anyone had any experience with DNNGo, some of their controls look nice, I've found through experience though that demos and screen shots are totally different than what you receive.