creating a drupal site for the first time...help

Hi,

I'm starting a new project and I'd like to use drupal, its a big project with lots of different parts and I'm not sure where to start. The project (Real Estate website) will feature the following:

Home
Interactive Map
List of Houses
Picture Gallery
Video Gallery
Contact Form
Members

The homepage, interactive map and list of houses I have down pretty much, I downloaded CCK and created a new content type, thats fine.

Where I'm having trouble at the moment is the Members Area, I'd like to have a Profile Area where a user can log in and have a link to 'My Profile' where they can change all the info about them on the site but also subscribe or unsubscribe to/from a Campaign Monitor newsletter (I've downloaded the CM Module already, I just don't know if its possible to sub/unsub to it via a profile edit page)

I've also downloaded the Advanced Profile Kit and its dependent modules (Panels 2, Views, CCK, bio (not supported with drupal 6 so I downloaded Content Profile) and Link) but I'm still having trouble understanding it all.

I've only recently started looking at drupal (last week) and there's alot to take in, it can be a little overwhelming, even though I'm well used to working with open source CMS, I still haven't had my 'eureka' moment with drupal.

Any help to understand the profile creation process or any advice you can give me would be really appreciated.

Regards,
Owen