http://www.fusionphp.net/
there are three scripts on this site - all free
one is a very handy news script u can use to post a thumbnail - title , thumbnail text and a description
www.exbyte.net is an example of where its in use - the center column is the news script - u can also have comments to each post
the shout box and ratings scripts also work well with this and all in all u could get urself a decent site running simply from these scripts