Early design questions - VBAdvanced, VBPortal?
 

I am in the early design stages of a new site I plan to build based on VB3.
Below are some of the items that will comprise this site:

- Front page news pulled from forum category (ie: totalbf2.com, evilavatar.com)
- Reviews (using a review script that integrates with VB)
- Forum
- Custom pages (advertising rates, etc)
- Custom PALs (banner ads, etc)

I would like to know how totalbf2.com/evilavatar.com, for example, are pulling news posts from their forum and displaying it on their from page. It appears they are using a customized version of vbexternal. Does anyone know if this is the case?

As far as adding custom pages that I can edit/update via vb style interface will I need either VBPortal or VBAdvanced for this?

Could someone explain to me (apologies for my ignorance here!), in layman's terms, what these products offer in terms of functionality? Also, what differences there may be between the two? Is 'subdreamer' a similar product? Thanks very much.