Our research group has some hand-built pages that suck. They're awful. They actively get in the way of recruiting. It's time to do something about it. We all seem to agree that we want a database-based solution, but we're afraid that if we hire "just anyone" to do it, we'll get back a steaming pile of dung.

Of course, as researchers, our main output is research papers plus the occasional software release. That means a key feature of any site would be an easy way to say "here's the PDF of a paper and enough information to populate a BibTeX entry". Just like that, the link should magically show up on the home page of the appropriate research group(s) and in-line on the personal web pages of the authors, all nicely cross-linked and indexed. We'd probably also want some variant of a Wiki or a Slashdot-esque announcement system to be able to say what's up as well.

So, what's the right way to build this web site? It's unclear what I'm supposed to Google for to find tools like this. I know another research group here on campus hired an undergrad who built them most of what I said, but that student is gone, and it's unclear how that code will age over time. Thoughts?