Static Page Categories for CMS-like project… or something like that

Warning: long lead-in to question, as I like to be precise. Sorry if it comes off as verbose.

I’ve been using WordPress for my own blogging needs for awhile now, and just love it. Vastly superior. I’ve been looking for a CMS for doing what I thought would be a “non-blog” project… but after trying about 10 systems that were all much more painful to use than WP, I thought… what the heck. I’m going to try it in WordPress.

Basically, I’m trying to enable an online writing community that would work, in defined groups, on various writing projects. Each group should have the ability to add-to and modify the work of their group and to read the material of the other groups, but not to edit the material of the other groups.

Now… I’ve got this pretty close to what I want already, using the “Limit Categories” and “Role Manager” plugins. With those two plugins, I can create categories, assign them to a role, and allow users a role to create and edit posts only in that category. Which is great for the “blog style” creation of content. By using the “Static Page” plugin, I’ll also keep the different groups posts from getting mixed together on the front page; you’ll need to click on the category name for a particular group in the sidebar to see what they’re working on, which is exactly what I want.

So… I’m 50% of the way there. Why? Because while I think the blog/post-style format is great for the composition and editing and commenting of the writing material that the groups will be working on… it won’t be ideal for the *presentation* of the finished, written pieces once the groups have agreed that a work is done. For that, I’d need static pages that are createable/editable and categorized in some manner only by members (or a super-member/editor) of that group.

Ideally, in my head (and I’m not a coder, just a user of WordPress, so forgive the “high level” imagineering here, please) what I see is each group having an initial static “home page” that they can edit at will, and the ability to create, edit and delete as many sub and sub-sub pages beneath that as they’d like to house the final contents of their blog/post created material. Members of all groups would be able to see/read the pages of other groups, but not edit them. Perhaps each group would only have one “super-member” who could create new pages… but that’s not really a deal breaker.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.