Actually there is an alternative for vba links which i believe is better then vba links :) AndrewD's Links and Download Manager ;)

A lot of people would like an Articles/Review system.

but there is one!

There is a Gallery posted here Photoplog Lite which is free and for a freebie its damn good, there looks like a Pro version coming along to but thats unlikely to be free, but it does look like the prices will be pretty fair..

I know vbportal is paid but, aside from the cart and gallery it has everything in your list and lots more Dean_C, and again the price isnt a harsh like some other mods, you can also just not use any of the elements of it you dont need.

Im all for free and open source, but a donations button does not allways work either.
At the end of the day providing mods such as these is not just down to "here you go" as most required a reasonable amount of support dedication as well when your looking at mods of this size.

I personally have nothing against paid modifications.
In fact, the advanced software that costs money is usually done by a team of professional coders, whereas large free hacks are most often done either by novice user (or a team of novice users) and are full of bugs, which makes it much less nicer to use...

I dunno about that, I can count a dozen paid modifications that are done by a bunch of college kids. Some of them with huge followings.

I can only think of a two vbulletin mods done by an actual company.

That's where the community comes in. I think you'll find more people support each other on this site than the hack authors do :)

A free one, for 3.5 ? Please do point me at it then, thanks.

oof- was that a snub?

Paul, Im pretty sure cinqs is on its way.

Not at all, you're a great coder and it's nice you share some of your free work here :) I'd just like to encourage more people to start sharing their work instead of charging for it!