Cost of a date-type website?

Hi, Chris. Welcome to the Warrior Forum.

I'm sorry to have to say that the answer to your question is similar to what the yacht salesman said: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."

Seriously, building something as complex as a dating site from scratch -- if done professionally and securely -- is going to run tens of thousands of dollars, minimum. Commercial dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com probably had development budgets in seven figures.

That said, you can build a semi-custom site by starting with an existing script and having it modified it as needed to fit your requirements. If you Google "dating website script" or similar phrases, you'll find a number of possible starting points ranging in price from free to hundreds of dollars. You can hire a competent developer to analyze your requirements, review the available scripts to determine the closest fit, and make the needed modifications. Depending on how much variance there is between what the script does out of the box and what you want it to do, that could run anywhere from several hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Also, it sounds from your comments as if you may be somewhat more concerned with a custom look than with custom functionality. If that's the case, then the modifications will be easier. Changing the visual aspects of a script-based site is almost always going to be simpler than changing the behavior.

I hope this helps. You can use the contact form on my website (see my sig) to get in touch if you want to discuss any further.

Steve