vB or IPB for development of websites
 

Hello everybody!

I am the owner of a couple of huge forums running on free software. Due to some good funds I received recently, I would like to move both forums to commercial software and develop a website to go along with the community. As many, I am undecided between IPB and vB. Both forums are about collectibles. In addition to the forum, I would like to have a frontend developed for both websites. The main purpose of the frontend will be to show articles from my users and to handle a database of collectibles - something like movie or book archives, where you can enter movies, assign them to categories, and so on. I imagine something like cheapassgamer.com, but applied to very different markets. I have these questions that could help me decide - I know you will necessarily be biased towards vB, and I accept that, and that is why I am posting in both vB and IPB forums the same thread! I have great respect for both platforms, and this is why I am undecided!

1. I will be hiring developers to do so, but can vB CMS be used to develop a frontend as the one I need? How difficult would it be?
2. How user friendly is the vB Blog feature compared to the IPB one? Anybody has used them for a decent amount of time to tell me the main differences?
3. In brief, is there some unique feature to vB I should be aware of not included in IPB?

Jane