i got a website in mind that i will try to build but coming unstuck at the point where i need to have a accout system that people can log into there own accounts and display info about them selves (not so much)

then a a discussions board type thing. such as a forum

anyone no the best way to tackle my dilemna?

thanks

Have a look at http://www.joomla.org/

there are quite a few forum providers out there; try phpBB, fairly easy to set up & use, and IIRC it’s free if you don’t mind adverts.

As for the first part, first question is “why” or perhaps “what do you need that for?”, i.e. what are you aiming to achieve?

a new business idea, its basically a glorified blog!!

but in a different way. hard to explain without giving all away. sorry

a website design close to facebook and this stw is what im after acheiving

hmmm.

A forum is easy, as stated above; “close to facebook” – i.e. changing every few days for change’s sake? 😉

pass. sorry

na, chaning or giving the option to have a profile and info displayed.

not as in all the app shiiiiit and farmville crap!

you’ve got a business idea but no clue about the technology

I’m out

i got a website in mind that i will try to get someone else to build

Sounds like what you need is a forum (phpBB), a blog (WordPress), a content management system (Joomla / Drupal), a budget for a developer, and a spellchecker.

We get one a week phone up asking us to build them ‘facebook’ for about £2k…

🙄

Are you trying to build another facebook? Did you watch ‘The Social Network’ at the weekend? They have a bit of a head start so personally, I wouldn’t bother….

Having said that it sounds like you need some software that’s going to build the site for you (or pay an actual web developer!). Ian Munro’s got it, something like Joomla, .NetNuke, WordPress (.org not .com)

Web Content Management Systems

WordPress then download buddypress should have everything you need out of the box.

http://wordpress.org
http://buddypress.org/

But most of the big content management systems should have the ability to do this (or at least integrate stuff into it).

anyone no the best way to tackle my dilemna?

Pay someone to do it for you?

could do, but its nothing like facebook. just the profile concept. spellchecker is needed yes or like once again we can just type german i suppose 😉

spell check that 😉

the problem with paying someone else to do it is my ideas are all my head and to explain to someone how and what i want it like i think is going to be very hard??

the problem with paying someone else to do it is my ideas are all my head and to explain to someone how and what i want it like i think is going to be very hard??

To be honest if you’ve never done web dev work your end product will not be of any standard to put out there, what PHP, javascript and up to date CSS knowledge have you got? if you’ve got none the chances of you building a dynamic, modern website are 0.

Also unless you’ve done web design work it will look sh*t.

good luck!

If it is worth doing (and you might not be the best judge of that – you’re emotionally tied to the idea) then it will be worth investing in and drawing, literally on paper a storyboard of what you plan and taking it to an investor (a bank?) to discuss.

Even if you don’t need the cash, go there anyway and see if they are interested – it will give you an indication of whether you have something worth pursuing.

Then, when you have money, come find one of us that can turn a storyboard into something more interesting…

Rachel

sounds good.

well i started already of drawning it out. money is not an option. but i see there is a huge gap in the internet for this type of idea.

i have done alot of research into it and just found nothing that even comes close.

what kind of figures am i looking at for a website to be built?

the worst case type thing? £1,000? plus the domain purchase?

domain purchase is nowt – maybe a tenner a month at most

but i doubt you’ll get much for £1k.

I used to work for a commercial software house, doing car dealer management systems – ok it’s a bigger deal than what you’re after – but 10 years ago the going rate was £450 + VAT per DAY of development time. NB that’s the company’s price; they didn’t pay us developers anywhere near that 😉

Obviously there’ll be a lot of smaller businesses out there that won’t charge anywhere near that much – maybe not even a quarter of that – but you might be better trying to find something off the shelf, if possible, that you can customise yourself with a small amount of training

GaryLake – Member
We get one a week phone up asking us to build them ‘facebook’ for about £2k…

POSTED 7 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

With you there. And e-comms for £299…

john_drummer – Member
domain purchase is nowt – maybe a tenner a month at most

That’s hosting surely. Domain purchase is yearly/multiples of, not monthly.

no, domain name purchase – check out http://www.123-reg.co.uk (there are others);

purchase of a .co.uk domain will cost you from £2.99 per month – make it annual and it’s still only £36
Hosting will be on top of that – their “premium” is £15 a month but that’s their top hosting price; but again it’s not hugely expensive compared to the actual development costs.

On the other hand, the development costs should be a one-off, unless you buy into a maintenance agreement

Er, no.

£2.99 a -year- for a .co.uk domain registration, not month.

you’re right; it must be a special offer, I’m paying £2.99 a month for my band’s domain. I’ll wager it isn’t 2.99 a year when I come to renew it 🙁

Everyone? 123-reg, for a start.

you’re either paying for hosting, or being ripped off.

Back to the OP, why isn’t money an option?? Is there no way to make money from your idea?

If it is a truly “new” idea, then getting something built is not going to be cheap. Plus, whatever you begin with will need significant re-engineering as it grows over time. You WILL need money….

Rachel

Also, starting coding a major project without designing it first is an inherently bad idea. “It’s all in my head” is admirable, but you’ll get halfway through and realise you should’ve done it differently.

if you go to a good software house it will be 10’s rather than 1’s of thousands of pounds…

A point to take into consideration. Facebook, twitter, napster, myspace were all started by very, very talented techies, people who understood the technology inside out, indeed they were pushing the boundaries of the technology. If you don’t understand how it will work behind the screen so to speak you’re wasting your time IMO.

Designing, user testing, function specifying, so much more than getting some code written.

troll

If you don’t understand how it will work behind the screen so to speak you’re wasting your time IMO.

Pretty sure the business minds behind lastminute.com knew nowt about web programming.

To be honest, the good business idea is the hard bit – the rest is getting investment, and getting good technical people to put it into action – it’s rare these people come up with the idea. The first build is the easy bit too – what do you do when it scales from tens of hits to thousands in a week? That’s where a good design and good infrastructure will save you in the long run.

Pretty sure the business minds behind lastminute.com knew nowt about web programming.

thats an e commerce site, the OP is talking about a social media type site, totally different business model, and I stand by my original point, good, new social media sites push the boundaries of the tech, so you need a very good techie with an idea

Cougar – the price I pay is for the domain name, £36 a year, which is what it was when I purchased a year’s worth; I’m paying for hosting on top of that, again at the price that it was at the time

The price NOW is £2.99 per year, but I bet this is a special time-limited offer that will expire at some time or other

Renew it now then John – the remaining contract will be added to it anyway so you won’t lose out.

That’s not a bad idea, cheers MF

Nice tags

Shall we find one for car mechanics and tag it “when knuckledraggers attack”? 😉

As someone who has worked in software development for years, my advice would be to write each detail down in a spec and go over it time and time again to get all the detail described. This will take time but will save you a fortune if your employing someone to develop the site. Remember rework costs you money so try and get it right first time.

Have a look at Elance to recruit a web developer. This website hooks you up with people around the world and often hourly rates are loads cheaper than UK developers. I have used it a lot and found it really helpful to find freelance staff. There are also loads of people that can use web templates to develop a website for you cheaper than one created from scratch.

Unless your web developer is really skilled employ a graphic designer to design the look and style of the site so that it really jumps out.

Good Luck

don’t design the GUI like Facebook, has to be one of the worst, user-unfriendly sites in the world, god knows how it got so popular. I’d love to get my hands on that site for a full refresh

I was going to post this earlier, but the site’s been down.

http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html