Before you start

I am going to create a site for my grad program and want to know if drupal would be a good solution. I have experience working with php, but it's been a couple years and I don't have tremendous amounts of time to manage the site.

In general the my fellow students want something simple, There are 18 people in my year of the program and that will be the user to start with. Eventually, hopefully we will get the two others years (40 or so people) involved as well in a mentoring program.

Hi Everyone
I am new to Drupal so before I start I would really appreciate being pointed in the right direction. I believe the MTV.co.uk website created using Drupal. Well whether it was or not, does anyone know which modules I would need to make a similar site.
I thought it would be a great way to learn about Drupal and help me develop my own online mag
Thanks
Rob

I would like to know if making a download site is possible using Drupul

I would like users to have their own profiles, Be able to download files split into Categorizes, Be able to upload files.
A forum connected to the download part of site,Profiles with downloads, Etc

Would learning any programming be necessary and would I need to learn PHP

First of all, my apologies if the information I seek could be easily found elsewhere. I have spent some time poking around here but I'm completely out of my element. For some reason, they want me to make this decision.

We want to create a site and let users comment on posts. We want each registered user to have their own profile page, similar to a Myspace page but simpler.

The comments section would work something like a forum page, with things such as number of posts being displayed when they leave a new one.

In modules, I have "Menu" enabled. Its description in Modules says, "allows administers to customize the site navigation menu". Is this just referring to the actual main navigation menu, or includes Primary and Secondary menu too?

While I frequently customize the Primary and Secondary menu, I never have the need to touch the "Navigation menu". Want to know what drupal interprets "Navigation menu" as.

Don't want to be enabling a module that i won't be using. so what happens if I disable "menu" from modules? I ask just incase disabling it from modules breaks the site.

I have been asked to build a portal/member site for an organization and am looking at Drupal for this project. I know that at least several of the requested functions are built into Drupal but will post the full request list so that you know where I am coming from. Please let me know based on the list of features they have asked for, if Drupal is a good choice for this, what additional modules I may need and, most importantly, if any of these features are impossible with Drupal.

Here are the requests they have made.