Advice on setting up a site with front end registration

Question

I have been tasked with creating a site for a large audience, and many of the audience will require some sort of sign up. They may require certain account controls (visual things, like theme colours for colour blind people) but largely it will just be a way to monitor the use of the contact features (so users can monitor their previous interactions like a ticket system)

My question really is simply, where do I start? Is Wordpress the right tool for this job? If not, what is? If so, what methods should I be looking into to start the research going?

Sorry for the broadness of the question, but I feel a little lost at the moment.

Answer 1

It's few months already and you probably have this solved by now but I'll try to do a little necromancing resume here anyway. We don't like unanswered questions right? ;)

There's a recent topic dealing with the front-end login & registration: Front-end Register Form

You can change what WordPress displays to the users based on their capabilites by using the current_user_can() function.

There's also a topic about loading alternate CSS:
How can I version the main CSS file?
Be sure to check related questions too.

By using body_class() or post_class() you can change the CSS class of html body (or post) depending on the logged user.

If those changes you want to achieve are intended to be more user based then role based then you can work with update_user_meta() and save some options in there.

None of the above is hard to achieve. All mentioned functions are well documented.

EDIT: Oh and the ticket system - You could use custom post types with front-end posting as a good starting point.