Restaurant Review Site Help...

No matter what you set your budget to, it will explode. Trust me

I think letting the coder go with his/her preffered language is best. Find someone reliable and make sure you click. ive found its important to have people around you that can help you when you get stuck, people that arnt just there for the money.

Iv used 3 different coders for my site and 2 consultants. Ive ended up with Indian coders i can trust, they might not be the best, but eventually they get the job done and at a good price. Trust and response are must haves when using outside sources to get things done.

1 - look around. elance, rentacoder, here at the warrior forum, the yellow pages, google.. whatever, it doesnt matter how you find a good programmer just so long as you do. I found mine on elance.

2 - PHP or ... here is a good article: PHP vs. Java – Which One Is the Better Web Language? | OnePixelAhead

The only reason i went for PHP is because the first coder recommended doing so because of my specifications on the admin panel.

The best advice i can give you is to be as specific as possible, the more you drill down and specify the better the coder will understand what you want and he/she can prepare for it.

Dont make the mistake i made and get a programmer to also design your site. Get a designer to design it and a programmer to make it all work. I used 99designs. Then found my coders on elance and my consultants are good friends of mine.

Goodluck.

-Andrei.

Java is slow!

..but it's not that black and white.

Anyway, what kind of budget are you looking at? With full featured websites like this you're going to have to put up at least $1000-3000, and that's if you find small team of *reliable* filipino/indian developers. I've also seen projects of this scale crash lots of times and been hired on a few occasions to pick up the pieces just because the initial budget was so stubbornly low it only attracted amateur developers looking for a break.

This is the only time you have to really sit back and make a choice. Once you hire somebody and start handing over money it's too late to say.."actually, this is garbage, can I have my money back?".

I would go with joomla or wordpress !

@ Andrei, thanks for the suggestions especially the separation of programmer and site design tasks. I was thinking hiring one guy to do everything for cost savings but that might not be a good idea. I have some idea of the specifics but have to drill down to what I can offer that is better or different from other review sites. To start I am thinking of targeting the mobile crowd.

@ Damien, I want to get this done right the first time. Yes, it would suck if someone would look at the code later on and say that it is garbage. I am willing to spend $1-3K to get it done right.

I don't know programming so it makes it hard to determine if I have a good coder.
Maybe I will pay a warrior to look at a sample code.

Will also look at warriors for hire, I've seen helpful posts here from warriors with years of programming experience. Maybe I will approach them.

If you guys know fellow warriors you trust with lots of experience please let me know.

How much time do you guys think it will take to code this?