i'm building a site that will involve multiple users being able to login, upload information, and communicate with each other. in a more specific way, i want people to be able to create a product, add information about the product and a picture, and review other products. additionally i would like a community message board area. think ravelry or threadloop dot app.

i have been doing a ton of research and i think i have a general idea of which base theme to start with, but i was wondering if anyone could let me know which platforms you think are good for this type of thing.

i don't want to use buddypress because even trying to download their base platform is a nightmare of broken links, and errors on install (even the github release won't install correctly). i don't want to start out with an inferior product. so not including buddypress, what would be a good foundation theme for this type of project?

thank you in advance.