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Looking for advice (suggestions) with potential website design

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by SamPlease, May 22, 2015.

  1. #1
    Hello everyone,

    I have been brainstorming a website that I would like to continue with but lack the technical expertise, so I am hoping one of you more inclined folk can possibly point me in the right direction.

    Ultimately, I am looking to create a website that searches and returns preexisting "deals" on the web relative to a customers interests/search conditions, just like how google indexes and returns websites. My understanding is that I need to have my actual website, and then a database that my website can search and reference for returning search results.

    Simply, where should I start for setting this up? Or are there reputable website development companies that any of you would recommend? When I searched I saw plenty of offers to develop a basic website for a couple hundred dollars, so it seems like the database/search integration thing is where I am stuck.

    What should I do? Where should I start?

    Thank you so much for your help.
     
    SamPlease, May 22, 2015 IP
  2. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #2
    How are you planning on finding these deals?
    Are you gonna crawl thousands of websites?
    Are you gonna join affiliate programs?
    How are you gonna know what's relevant to any given user?
    How are you gonna make sure, if you're gonna crawl for deals, that there is an actual deal present, and that it's consistent with what your site's profile?
    How are you gonna determine if the deal (if found) applies to the given user? (Area, demographic or other discerning factors)

    This isn't just about "setting up a webpage" - what will take expertise and skill is the work "behind the scenes" - the crawlers, the automation, the responsiveness of the webpage (most users won't appreciate having to wait for minutes to get their content).

    I just reread your post, and I might have misunderstood something - you're thinking of creating a _search engine_ to find said deals? Ie, a user searches on your searchengine and gets returned deals pertaining to his/her search? If that's correct, are you planning on just offering "search on my site to get deals", or are you gonna try to make a general searchengine that is perhaps gonna show deals if any are found?
     
    PoPSiCLe, May 22, 2015 IP
  3. SamPlease

    SamPlease Peon

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    #3
    Hi! I appreciate your response!

    Everything you said is on point but I was more so just looking for how to get started. As far as getting started, I was going to skim various websites myself or hire the task out to record stuff manually. Ideally, I would LOVE for that process to be automated, but like you said, I figured that dirty work would be further down the road. Right now I was just hoping to get an idea for framework.

    I would make sure returned search results were relevant by having users enter in qualifiers to narrow down the system, ie: time, price, duration, region, etc.

    Pertaining to your "search engine" question, I really do not know. I was hoping you could tell me what would be realistic to look into. I want a user to be come to my site, enter criteria specific to them, and be returned results that are relevant accordingly. I was thinking those results would have to come from my own database of some sort that I manage/add to. I suppose the search could pull data from other websites themselves for results, but I do not think that would work as easily?

    Thanks for your response.
     
    SamPlease, May 22, 2015 IP
  4. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #4
    Okay. If "all" you want to do is have a decent design for the site, and the ability for users to search your database for content matching the given criteria, that's not very hard to do. That's a simple form with criteria (selects or check boxes or freeform) which searches the database.
    The work will have to be put into designing the database and the user interface, and marketing the site as soon as it's up and running.
    As for framework, I would suggest getting this coded from scratch. Of course, you could utilise php frameworks if you want to, but you'll still need to be able to code to change stuff, and using a framework just means you'll have to find someone else who knows that framework when the first developer quits. Go with pure php/html/css and a database.
     
    PoPSiCLe, May 22, 2015 IP
  5. ketting00

    ketting00 Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Sound like wordpress can handle this, provided you must have to heavily customize your theme.
     
    ketting00, May 22, 2015 IP
  6. SamPlease

    SamPlease Peon

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    #6
    I thought wordpress was more blog oriented. Could I actually interface a database and website there and customize it?

    Popsicle - When you say "Go with pure php/html/css and a database". Do you have any company/freelance suggestions? Or even tutorial/books that might benefit me?
     
    SamPlease, May 22, 2015 IP
  7. ketting00

    ketting00 Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Are you sure? Wordpress by far has superior database structure. It evolves over years. Few people can beat them.

    Hmm? What is your business plan.
     
    ketting00, May 22, 2015 IP
  8. Jake The Competition Man

    Jake The Competition Man Active Member

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    #8
    Wordpress is very powerful when dealing with databases. It's very flexible as well, so a lot can be done with it and customization is easy.

    the problem with a pure php site is you need a very good developer to make it and maintain it. Means investing a lot of money.
     
  9. SamPlease

    SamPlease Peon

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    #9
    I thought wordpress entailed a insertnamehere.wordpress domain. Or are you suggesting getting my own domain just linked to wordpress hosted content?

    I will certainly look at it to give it a try. I am not opposed to the idea of contracting a developer, but I will play around with wordpress as just a test run since you both suggest it.

    Thank you again for your responses. I am really out of my element here and I really appreciate it.
     
    SamPlease, May 23, 2015 IP
  10. Jake The Competition Man

    Jake The Competition Man Active Member

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    #10
    yeah, I mean getting your own domain, of course. Good luck with your project!
     
  11. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #11
    No. Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org are two different things. .com is the online hosting of blogs. Wordpress.org is the downloadable source for Wordpress, which you can install on your own server.
    However, recommending Wordpress for such a project is... I dunno. Not the best fit. Wordpress does NOT have "excellent database handling" - it's actually kind of crappy. Wordpress works wonders if you're making a company website, a blog, or some other form of regular content. Making a deals website, with potentially lots of people searching, updating, adding and changing content at any time, might not be the best solution.

    As for the "make your own" - this project isn't really that hard, and it doesn't have to be handed over to some webdesign-company. What you need is a decent PHP-coder, with database-knowledge. Or two persons, one for the code, one for the database. It doesn't have to involve a lot of money, but a few hundred dollars, up to maybe a couple grand, including server and testing cost should be anticipated, if you need to hire someone.

    The basics for this site is simple:
    A search-page (frontpage, landing page) where people can search for deals. This has to have a type of form designed to match the content in the database.
    You'll need an admin-page to add more content/deals, with a login. If you want to have more contributors, you could make the "add deals" page open, and have moderators check each deal before approving them for inclusion.
    You'll need a database that's designed to accomodate a lot of different deals, maybe having separate tables for tags for each deal (which people can search for) - to increase speed, you'll need proper indexing (start with next to nothing, then when testing, you check what content in the database people search for the most, and add indexes to improve speed for those).

    It's not a very complicated project, but adding stuff like Wordpress or other CMSes to it might actually not be that cost-effective, since what you need it for will need specific setup / design anyway, and it might actually lead to more problems, both security-wise and for maintaining the site over time. Granted, using Wordpress you could probably get away with throwing plugins at it, and not have to do much actual coding, but that won't make the site good, or quick to use.
     
    PoPSiCLe, May 23, 2015 IP
  12. ketting00

    ketting00 Well-Known Member

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    #12
    What he has described Google is already doing and already launched to the market. That's why I asked what is his business plan.

    I don't agree that wordpress does not suit this. I used to create a full featured commercial site. We try several methods, all failed.

    Then I use wordpress as database for experiment. It grows well. We only use wordpress database structure. We don't use wordpress as a site. It's just an SQL database. It can do query in any languages, including Node.js, Java.

    You don't have flexible database and you'll come up with something like 50 tables. Terrible!

    And if you you experience with wordpress database you'll be surprised of it scale-up-ability. And by riding on people back, it forces you to think creative.

    My suggest is begin with small project and scale up on the fly.

    Save your money, you don't know the outcome yet. Unless you think you are ready to take on Google.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2015
    ketting00, May 24, 2015 IP
  13. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #13
    Uhm. You don't have much experience in database design, I take it? 50 tables? That is NOTHING. If you need to join all those tables to get the data you want, then your design is flawed.
    I fail to see why wordpress' database is in any way better, or designed for the purpose. It's a generic blog-platform/CMS database, with a lot of bloat which you probably won't need for the given structure.
    As for doing queries in any language, of course it can - as long as the language you're using has an sql-engine (all languages have that), of course you can access your database. That's not an argument.
    As for "flexible database" - that might be better of handed to a nosql-database. A relational database isn't really meant to be flexible - it's meant to register given data in a predictable pattern.

    As for Google - yes, you can search for this via Google - however, as far as I know, Google hasn't released a proper deals only search? Or have they? Not in my country, at least.
     
    PoPSiCLe, May 25, 2015 IP
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  14. ketting00

    ketting00 Well-Known Member

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    #14
    Uh,
    I don't want to argue about this. You think that is good for the OP. Fine.
    What you say is theoretically yes? I agree.

    We have to see if the OP can bring this idea up and running base off your suggestion.
    My inner sense tell me that no, he can't. Not for now or not for 3 years from now.

    Have a nice day.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2015
    ketting00, May 25, 2015 IP
  15. makkpress

    makkpress Peon

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    #15
    Hi friends i am website designer and developer and i think i can give best suggestion for best website design and development. +919910825077
     
    makkpress, Jul 7, 2015 IP