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View Full Version : Building a site - what's my plan?



JayTee
02 Jan 2010, 10:56 PM
I would be very thankful if someone would take the time to read this and respond.

So I'm either going to hire a development company or a freelancer. I'm not a programmer at all but I've been reading up. Can what I describe be built with a CMS so that I can update it or is it to complex and custom for that? What would be the best software/languages to implement this?

This will be a pay subscription site for a niche industry with 200-400 members.

Public Section:

Anyone visiting the site would have the ability to perform a search. The actual results of the search would not be viewable to the searcher. The searcher would enter their location and the search request would be passed along to the member geographically closest to the searcher along with the searcher's contact information.

There would be a form for potential subscribers to submit an application.

There would be a section for members to sell up to a set number of individual items to the public with pictures. The submission would be done through a form on the member site.

There would be a FAQ section.

Member Section:

There would be a subscription system where members can pay their fee on the site.

Members would have the ability to upload their inventory. This would be done by sending a spreadsheet copy and also the ability to manually enter items. Each item would have the following: part #, manufacturer, condition, quantity, list price, sale price, an auto-quote price, description, and and possibly more. Members would also have the ability to add pictures to their inventory items.

There would be drop down menus to select some of these. Member databases would range in size from 5,000-100,000+ items with the median probably around 30,000.

The members would be able to perform a search of all other member inventories. They would then see whic members had the items.

When a member has an item that is being searched for, the member receives a quote request. If the item being searched for has an auto-quote price, the quote is sent automatically and the member is notified of this.

Members can send private messages to one another.

Members can also send a general text search request without searching the inventories.

All searches are displayed in a chronological list for all members to view. I picture something like the threads on twitter.com. Each of these searches will have a reply link to send a private message to the searcher.

There would be a search function to search previous requests with options to limit the date range, and search just the messages of a specific member(s).