I just want a simple layout and functions but not sure if it can be done

[wpatters1229]

I looked at phpnuke and it was too much "stuff". I want user login and registration but then have a home page that shows search, listing of categories and then a listing of articles under each category. Those would both be in a drop down object. Below all that would be an areas for links...just plain html and I will then have a link to a calendar application that we already have (brownbear) or use one that I saw in the module manager.
The hard part is we want to have an online page where registered users can upload pdf articles and word docs to the mysql database and then have them show up under the categories and document lists. i know that this backend would have to present a list of categories to associate with the uploaded documents. Like also to make the author provide a title, author, description and keywords before it could be submitted. Kind of like Docushare but far smaller and easy to install. I'm a webmaster but not had a lot of exposure to PHP or Mysql. This site is hosted by a site that supports phpnuke.