creating community website with wordpress?

[audioslave]

hi all,

i am trying to make a community website for a neighbourhood community and it’ll mostly have stuff like news, events, photo galleries and general static pages. also, i’m thinking of allowing membership. i want members of the community to be able to register with the website and visitors to be able to view the member list.

i read about buddypress plulgin but since almost all members of the community are already using facebook, i don’t think most of the features will be used much by the members. but functions like members to be able to comment on the news articles and stuff, that i want.

should i go with buddypress or is that excessive for my needs? if there are better optoins any direction for me to go will be much appreciated. 🙂

thanks 🙂