[Typo3-dev] Rating+Message Board+Digital Asset Managment

[Eric Blom]

Hello,
I'm new to Typo3 and am very eager to learn more as well as contribute 
what I can. I am hopping that someone here can point me in the right 
direction.

Having no experience with Typo3 I'm struggling a bit to architect my 
site and understand if I need to make my own extension or not. As a 
first step toward creating the site I want I would like to add rating 
and message board functions to individual documents that are stored 
using the digital Asset Management Extension. So, my first basic 
question is can I some how combine the features of these three 
extensions or do I need to create a new extension.

If I do need to create a new extension can I create a dependancy on the 
others or do I need to duplicate their functionality?

I've started by looking at the dam_downloads extension, but, I feel 
that I'm missing a some basic knowledge about how extensions work and I 
haven't found the explanations I need in the documentation yet. Does 
anyone have any suggestions on how to come up  to speed? I've watched 
some of the videos and read documentation, but, now I'm wondering 
things like, "dam_downloads is close to what I want how I can use it as 
a base, or, should I start form scratch?"
	
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated even if it is just point 
me at the right section of the massive Typo3 documentation collection.

Thanks,
Eric