Hi,
  In my efforts to avoid posting in the wrong forum I failed and still posted in the wrong place.  Guess there should be a message to scroll down a bit.  I often do that on my pages afraid people just won’t notice the content below.
As an introduction, out of necessity the free version must be used.  The crowd to be served is either persons living in poverty, those who serve others and have precious little funding for anything.  They could probably pool together funds to use Expression Engine or pMachine Pro if I could create a site that would sell the benefits of such services… in other words show some of what is possible using pMachine free and then say we can add more with EE, or pMachine Pro.  This is the case whether I am talking about my high school alumni web site, a support community for the needy and those dealing with mental illness or those who would look to places such as this to collaborate and enhance their ability to serve their clients or future clients.  So, before I start printing out a reem of paper for the manual, maybe I can get some pointers to get me started… and find a friendlier community then what I found on another CMS with a blog orientation.  A person couldn’t explain things well and thus when I asked for clarification he gets all frustrated with me.  But that is another system so I’ll be good and not mention it.
I setup an install of pMachine Free that came with Fantastico but haven’t done much with it yet as I need to find out a few things first.
1) It appears that we can have pictures (jpg) associated with a profile but I haven’t figured out how to do that. An alumni based site with some of these features would be great to have this picture feature. Can one have a couple pics that are associated with a user?
2) Can content from outside the installation or site be included in one’s pMachine Installation? For example rss newsfeeds, other sites, content from elsewhere. There is a writers community that I want to connect with a site I am developing.
3) Can one create blocks where the content gets pulled in from an outside source. One example again is the rss newsfeeds. I don’t want my users to have to leave my site to view a rss story. That seems to be a limitation of a similar site that is focused on writing/blogs.
4) Can I post content that a friend can jump to readily without having to login or be told that the site access is denied? This again would be for publications of writing that I’d want to post on my site. I have a poetry magazine that I publish with html and php but I wanted to do more and this blog seems more than a blog tool, pMachine that is. So creating a community site is what I’d like. And in fact I want to collaborate and work with a CMS site that does some of this… perhaps even incorporating content from that site on my site. This would be more of a CMS type solution but I’m not sure if the features are or are not offered with this powerful blog tool.
5) As an example to further clarify one issue or feature I mentioned in #4 suppose I want to give someone a link to a publication of mine or a user wants to give someone a link to a publication, be it a poem or an ongoing blog, can that be done, which essentially would require access from an anonymous visitor, since if they didn’t login they are anonymous from the system’s point of view. So, some of the site would be protected and only viewable by registered persons other parts would be accessible to anyone. One would cut and paste a link to their publication and put it in an email. This can only be done as I was just saying if anonymous access can be allowed.
So, needs/desires 1) blocks that can pull in content from elsewhere, 2) newsfeeds, 3) forums, 4) chat, 5) notifications to one’s regular pop3 email address that they check with any email client.  Is this doable with pMachine?  If not maybe EE or pMachine Pro can be purchased if the price is something possible for us.
Thanks,
Bruce

1. Someone posted one method for having member avatars in this thread.

2. Yes.  See this entry in the Knowledge-Blog about including pM content on “non-weblog” type pages.  It works in the reverse as far as including other content on weblog pages goes.  You can also use standard PHP “include"s to pull in other pages.

pMachine Pro will allow you to display other RSS Feeds with the XML Parser.

3. I’m not sure how this is different from question #2.

4. Again, I’m not positive what you’re asking here.  You can certainly post content that doesn’t require a membership/login in order to view.  That’s how it works by default with pMachine Free/Pro.  If you want to restrict the content to certain members then you have to intentionally do that (using the member only code, for example).

5. So, some of the site would be protected and only viewable by registered persons other parts would be accessible to anyone. One would cut and paste a link to their publication and put it in an email. This can only be done as I was just saying if anonymous access can be allowed.

Certainly.  As indicated above, content will be accessible to anyone without logging in/membership by default.  If you want to make certain portions or areas of your site more restricted then you can do that.

It seems like what I will need is pMachine Pro.  The free version only allows one blog and I’d have to install numerous free installations from my control panel every time I want a web log.  Looking at a comparison of features also suggests that the pro version has more different features that I need, and based on what you wrote above.
Bruce