Best Intergration for website

[godsdead]

hey there im totally new to SMF, iv been a mybboard user for a long while now, and didnt realise how large the SMF community, mods and themes there was, so for my latest project, im going to be wanting to create my own website with a couple of pages in php, and a main forum system that will be the heart of the website, and im going to need a flexable gallery to intergrate with both, so can some people help me get the best solutions for this? since i seem overwelmed by the amount of options there are out there, like Joomla + smf and everyhing, i think this kind of system would be too much, too heavy!

I mean on the main webpage i want to have polls and questionares...

So would it be best to create my own site first create all the pages, and then look at SMF, or start with SMF as the backbone, since im going to be needing users to be able to login from the "homepage" as it was, so they can access hidden areas from the homepage..