Educational website + its forum - repost

Project consists on a website where people can learn through articles and videos. At the same time, it needs to have a forum where users can comment their thoughts. More specifically, what I want is: Website: I want a clean website, not overloaded with lots of pictures and so on (however, I will have to include lots of things, so a clear/good design is needed): For instance, good websites: [login to view URL] , [login to view URL] , [login to view URL] , [login to view URL] (i like this one) Websites that are overloaded in my opinion: [login to view URL] this one is OK at the beginning but then there's so much information, altogether and mixed that it's difficult to understand it all I prefer to put all of the things I want in menu's and submenu's. Ok, sow hat will the website have? It will have articles and videos. Again, everybody has to be able to tweet, facebook, like... All of this. For instance, check this website where articles and videos are nicely presented: [login to view URL] and also [login to view URL] Articles may have videos embedded. Videos still don't know if they will be in youtube or somewhere else. Users with points system. I will give points to users manually. With these points, they have to be able to access (or to not access) articles/videos, as well as some parts of the forum. Users may be able to see what articles and video they have watched/read, favourite them if they like it or not. Give a rate to it basically. At the front page, users will see the most populars threads (of the forum) of the day/week, the latest news and some announcements/blogs highlights/something else. Forum: A clean forum. I don't want something totally overloaded with pictures, no spaces and so on. I prefer something clean, pleasing. Some forum I do NOT like: [login to view URL] in this case, there are no spaces, no categories, it's difficult to read because titles are very close one to each other... And example of what I do like (vBulletin basically): [login to view URL] or [login to view URL] (here I think they post too much information but how it looks it's fine). Also, in the forum, I want the possibility to give reputation to people. People can give (or take off) reputation for one user after reading somebody's comment. At the same time, I want fix avatars and categories depending on their reputation. I want them to be able to send private messages between users but I need the right to control this (to check them out). Also, every post or thread can be liked to facebook, tweeted or stated that it was helpful (or not) (for instance, with a number and a thumb up or down). Needless to say, as anyone who wants a website, I would like to have SEO taken into consideration, tools for it, etc. If it goes as I want, I'm looking for a long term relationship with the website developers so we can go on improving it. Ask anything else you want to know. I tried to be clear but I'm sure lots of things still have to be designed. I'm looking forward to work with you, Samuel