Review Website/Business Start Up

Percy1983

I will say I haven't seen the site in question, I recommend wordpress for ease of use but will say drupal certainly is a good platform.

I am happy for you to try drupal/wordpress/joomla on my server if you want, I say this to save you signing up to hosting to give it a try. Let me know if interested.

leopardprint

Thanks for all your replies...given me a lot to think about!

CKhalvashi - I'm not sure if Moonfruit would offer me the level of customisation I would need for my business. I will look into it further though, thanks.

Percy1983 - Eventually I would like to be able to learn some web design skills as I am an absolute novice, so kind of you to let me try the platforms using your server...however I really wouldn't know where to start!

paddyrg - Thanks for taking a look at the site for me. Option one seems preferable to me. I will continue to search around and hopefully find a few that use a Drupal.

Didn't realise how complex building the website will be. I think I need to spend time looking at other sites. Is there anyway I can search Drupal et al to see if I can find similar sites? Rather than search sites then find out they are custom made.

Thanks again for all your help and apologies if anything I have said anything wrong or confusing, it is a lot to take in :rotfl:

paddyrg

http://drupal.org/case-studies might be a starter?

Websites with static content are easy, ones with databases searchable and updateable online by the public are a bigger deal. Then when you add membership and keeping details secure, you're taking on a chunk of work to keep legally compliant and secure from SQL Injection, brute forcing, XSS, and loads more nonsense. The beauty of these frameworks is that they handle the heavy lifting of this for you!

I suggest Drupal as it allows for custom databases as a part of a fairly standard installation. It would still take some concerted effort to get everything working, but it's 00's or 000's, not 0,000's! You can taste *simplified* Drupal using Drupalgardens http://www.drupalgardens.com/ (get a free account, have a play around), which should give you a taste. A full installation can add all the modules from drupal.org, search around that site and you'll find all the different modules and sites made from those modules - you may find one of those similar?

Percy1983

Well I can give examples of what is possible with wordpress, I will say web design really isn't a scary as you would think a complete novice can have a site up easy enough, as I found I had a basic site up it was literally then figuring how to do the better features which again is usually just getting the right plugin/module and setting parameters.

paddyrg

Percy1983 wrote: »

Well I can give examples of what is possible with wordpress...

I agree Wordpress is super - I use it for my own small company site :-) It's just in the site leopardprint identified as being closest to their dream functionality would not really suit it in my opinion - wordpress comes from blog roots with add-ons, drupal adds a bit more structural framework which would help

Savvy_Sue

Other people are getting very excited about the nuts and bolts of this website. I'm going to ask the awkward question: how are you going to persuade advertisers to pay you? Have you started thinking about your USP and how you will get your site 'out there'?

Because you need to get that clear at an early stage: even if it's only £00s you spend getting the site up and running rather than £000s, you talk about business loans. Well, wherever you borrow money from you're going to have to pay it back, so you need to be very sure you're making money so that you can do that.

paddyrg

Sue is absolutely right on the ball here, I'd missed the part about you not actually having any cash to speak of, and any launch is going to take real money. Even if you sell advertising from day one, you still need to advertise and promote your own side to get a critical mass of users for your advertisers to advertise to!

zippyladoodles

I'd definitely recommend Wordpress, I've seen a lot of websites built on this platform and it's stable with a good support system and also a lot of info online if you get stuck

leopardprint

Thanks for all your comments, they all help. Percy1983 & zippyladoodles - I don't know enough about Wordpress or Drupal to make comment on which would be more suitable, however I think paddyrg is on the ball with it needing to be heavily structured. I have just made contact with a web designer to bounce ideas off them, so all points are well received and I can raise what you have both suggested.

Savvy_Sue thanks for raising the financing issues. I am currently in the process of looking at various loans. I am also fortunate enough to be in a position where I will be able to borrow money from family to get up and running.

I am currently conducting research and putting together a business plan so I am considering all these factors very throughly. The marketing is going to be essential in attracting users and then advertisers. I feel there the business has good potential, the only similar website I can find is specific to the American market and has been successful, although has taken around 13 years to build up!

Lighthouse_in_the_dark

Firstly be careful about any web designer or coder you use make sure they sign a non disclosure.

Secondly a spammer friend has been telling me theres a gaping big zero day in drupal at the moment, I havn't been told what it is, but having been shown some of the databases he's accessed I'm sure hes telling the truth!

Thirdly, if your gonna set up a web based business it is highly advised to haved a basic understanding of php javascript and css Msql aswell. Think of it as this, if you were running a machine knowing which part is broken will help you solve the problem faster / get the right person in for the job.

PHP and MySQL Web Development (developer's libary) by Luke welling and Laura thomson is a great book I taught myself most of what i know about php in under 10 days.

It will also teach you about secure coding!

As for the media buying sector this will vary alot with which niche your in. Again if you dont know what your doing you can burn through a lot of money!

I dont know which niche your going to target so I cant really give you any advice im afriad.