Different profiles for different types of members...

Hi,

before investing time in Drupal — and it looks very powerfull — I would like to know if it will match the requierments of my concept or if I will have to «squeeze» my project to fit into Drupal.

The project: I would like to build an internet community where members can have an adapted profile with specific options attached to each profile. In other words, will I be able to offer different profiles to different types of members? Say, a profile for music lovers with a mp3 player and a profile for skateboard lovers with a video player for them to show off. It should be possible to make that choice directly from the join form.

I've tried with Boonex Dolphin community site and the main problem is that new members cannot choose right from the join page the profile they want. They all log in and than, choose what they want. And many other ready to use community software share this «one size fits all» logic.

I went throught Drupal's forum to see if it is possible to have different profiles and a «split» join page (with many pages related upon previous choices) to ensure that new members can navigate all the way to a specific profile, and it seem's that this «different profile for different member types» is a question that attract the attention of many «Drupalist». But there seems to be no direct answer to that question (but I dont pretend to have read all the forum...). Same thing for the «split» join process. In Joomla! there seems to be a module that does exactley that. How about Drupal modules?

In other words, many CMS seem to fonction on the «one size fit's all» logic: the core was programmed in a way that all members are alike, except for permissions that you can grant or not. But what if i want the different profiles to appear right in the joining process? Can Drupal handle it?

Now, with the little knowlage I have of Drupal, I was wondering if there could be another way of doing things that would, maybe, match with the logic of Drupal.

Would it be possible to make a multisite installation so that each site («site.1», «site.2», etc.) can handle one specific profile. So to take my previous example: the music lover could join in «site.1» to have acces to a mp3 palyer and skateboarders would join in the «site.5» to get their specific profile, and so on. In a main index page, new members could choose the caterogie where they want to be and with a click of a button could be redirected to the join page of the corrolated site (site.1, etc.). Would this approach work with Drupal?

But, maybe the skatebord lover would like to make friend with a rock band that would be in «site.5». So would it be possible to have a multiplesite installation that would handle as many profile types and still be able to have database that «talk» to each other? In other words, a member of «site.3» could be friend with a member of «site.1» and be member of a group (OG) founded by a member of «site.5», and writing an email to a member of «site.2», etc.

So, to resume this (to long?) post: can Drupal handle different profiles for different member types directly from the join form? And if cant, is it possible to make a multiplesite installation where each install would handle a different profil, keeping in mind that each site should be able to talk to each other?

Thanks for your time.

LndRov.