Nomadamo

No Worries Ashfame, and thanks Billerickson for your feedback!

I had come across SVN somewhere before. It might definitely be a good idea to check it out. I am also looking into ELGG, which seems to provide support for SVN. Some kind of automatic versioning would indeed be necessary for it to be succesful.

For testing purposes I was thinking it might be an easy workaround to grant specific users access to an online duplicate version of the entire website (but then with without the user data, so just the core structure). One or more people can work on a specific feature thats needs improvement. When finished the news can be spread to the main website for people to have a look and vote on the enhanced functionality, stability and or visibility. If a good majority is in favor of the changes, the administrator can implement the change to the real site. (ideally an update could be done automatically as well if thre is enough community consensus)

The main trouble as far as I see it has to to with the user data. How hard is it is to create a duplicate version of the website without any of the user data and posts. (This is necessary to prevent people from editing the content and violating privacy issues). I am not sure how wordpress manages and stores such user data. and whether it can be easily transferred from one wordpress setup to another.

Does anyone have relevant experiences or suggestions?