With the job market in shambles, I decided to take matters into my own hands and started my own website.  (baseballunderground.org) With a wife, daughter, three cats and a dog, I am short on cash (I wasn't planning on being unemployed) but was able to find someone to build the site and currently have 16 people writing for me.  The site is now up and running.  However, all of us see the need to convert some (not all) of the pages into blogs in order for the site to grow.  However, all the feedback we have gotten is that the website looks great and is easy to maneuver through.  We don't want to compromise the integrity of the site.  I am the money behind this operation and don't have a lot of disposable income at my disposal.  I know there is a WordPress program out there that, for $400, will do the job.  But is there a less expensive program that will do the same thing? 

This is what we are looking for the program to achieve:

easy to use (most of our writers are baseball guys, not the sharpest computer people)
multiple users
users to be able to upload their own articles (even if they are not writing a "blog")
some of the pages to be blog pages while others are stagnant
a "Sign-in" page where visitors have to register with the site in order to comment
the ability to create a database of visitors
the ability for visitors to rate and comment on our affiliates
the affiliates to automaticly move up and down our affiliate list based on their rating

Thank you very much for your help and I look forward to your comments.