Hi guys, I'm looking for the best possible script where trading card collector's can create an account and upload their trading cards, a very community driven site. The site will be focused on trading cards only, so I'm guessing that I should be looking for a gallery script or showcase script of some sort. I would like to also add forums eventually but if I cannot find anything integrated than I can just tack that on later. Essentially, a member creates an account, uploads their cards and can manage their own gallery where other collector's can check out each other's cards. I would like it to have some type of private message system or trading system if possible One's I like are sketchcollectors.com and comc.com Any help in the right direction would be appreciated! Thanks!
Well... I gather that there will be a lot of different TCGs on the site, but wouldn't it be better to try to get a sort of database available? I mean, instead of users uploading pictures of all their own cards, if the card is already uploaded, then just make it possible to tag it (it will save a LOT of space in the long run). Of course, if you're doing a buy/sell-thing, then you'd want pictures of the actual cards, but if this is a kind of collection-site, just displaying which cards one has, and such, then perhaps gathing a proper collection from which users can chose is a better option? I'm thinking that at least some TCG-providers will be willing to provide a database of all the cards available.
Well you could make an image board, users can upload images of their cards/collections and users can make comments. Wordpress along with buddypress would probably be a nice option as well. You could let users sign up and they could create their own posts with their collections which could be held for moderation if you wanted to. You could allow comments on posts if you wanted to and there are plenty of decent forum scripts for wp/buddypress. Since it's just pictures that users are uploading I would not be too worried, storage is pretty cheap when it comes to web hosting, it is the bandwidth that will cost you. popsicle brings up a good point though, it would be really nice to create a nice database with the card details and images, something your users could do for you if you built the site the right way.
It's correct that storage is pretty cheap, but if you have say a thousand users, who all have 500+ cards they want to digitize (which is a rather modest estimate if you want to do the whole collection) - and they're doing this separately, instead of sheets, then you've all of a sudden got a bit of space to be taken up - say with decent quality compression, you get away with 200k-500k pr. picture. that's 500.000 pictures, for a total of 250GB. And that's just the beginning. And also a bit of a best-case scenario. If you do limit the size of the pictures and such. I would say that even though it is maybe a stretch (depends on popularity and such), a decent selection of popular TCGs already built (or built by the community) would probably save quite a lot of space and bandwidth, not to mention making it easier to create collections with tags as "have" "want" "for trade" and such, since one could just go through the already existing sets and chose from them - besides, people wouldn't have to add pictures of everything themselves, which can often be a hindrance unless you're really dedicated.
Why not help him find a solution to what he wants to do instead of criticizing his idea with problems that are irrelevant. I'm sure if he had 1000 users that uploaded their collection he could find a way to cover the $24 per month (May even be cheaper) that a dedicated server with 250GB storage would cost.
I'd like a dedicated server with 250 GB storage (and hopefully decent bandwidth allocation and memory as well) for $24. Please point in the general direction. However, I'm just pointing out pitfalls, and perhaps a valuable addition to his idea - if people have to do all the work, this will end up as a community-site, with perhaps a few hundred users. If he creates something viable, like an online database of all things TCG, he could actually have a business. That, of course, depends a bit on what he's planning to do with it.
As I have relocated to sweden I bought my own servers and do co-location but I used wholesale internet for several years before and I had 99.9% uptime with only one issue that wasn't planned maintenance in 4 years. https://www.wholesaleinternet.net/dedicated/
Thank you both for your input, I should of clarified more clearly as to what I'm trying to achieve. These are not going to be standard trading cards that everyone will have, so creating my own database is impossible. This site will be used for users to upload their own 1 of 1 sketch cards, meaning there is only 1 made for that entire set so this will need to be a very community driven website where users can create an account, upload their own cards and essentially have their own collection gallery where other collector's can check out each others cards and possibly message them to trade or buy from one another, so a comments section on each upload would be needed as well. I'm not worried about storage, each photo will be capped at a certain size, I am currently with dreamhost under the "unlimited" bandwidth plan but obviously unlimited doesn't exist, if I have to upgrade down the road than I have no issue paying to get a higher dedicated server for this site @MarkusTenghamn I will take a look into Buddypress, thanks