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Smarty/Zend experienced please view.

by warriorforum101
10 replies
Hi i have been trying to build a website for some time now. I have built a few static sites but im going for a user registration, user content attributing website so i figured i would just pay someone more experienced. Well 5k deposit eventually gone and another $2,500 gone to another guy. They basically took 6 months each and never accomplished anything. I realized i should have just outsourced, even though i would have made mistakes it would of at least been cheap enough to keep learning and improving.

Im back at it again with a trusted source (my friend owns a successful website and is giving me one of his developers in India)

The website i want to create is similar to a real estate for sale script and a dating website script.

I am looking for a website with search capabilities similar to these:

bizbuysell dotcom if you click on the "search businesses" button

loopnet dotcom click the "search" button


If you notice on the left hand side there is also search filters.
I also need member registrations
members should be able to post ads and contact one another


This developer says he thinks we should move forward with smarty/zend.
3-4 week time frame. Approx 100 hours.

Now considering i do not know much about programming, does this seem capable of doing what needs to be done? The reason i ask is because my last guy used joomla ( i didn't know anything about it at that time) and the extensions were just not capable of doing what needed, he constantly hacked them and it was crap.


I really appreciate the positive feedback, and if anything i said does not make too much sense forgive me im not a programmer, thank you
#experienced #smarty or zend #view
  • Profile picture of the author TigerNone
    I would say that sounds reasonable if this guy has a history of doing good work for your friend. Zend has a number of built in tools that will make things like search easier. Check out Zend_Search_Lucene. Also, things like membership are pretty boilerplate and he probably has built them before so he should be able to do it fairly easy next time.
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  • Profile picture of the author unnatural
    Zend and smarty are pretty standard for those types of sites - personally though I stay way from smarty simply because I prefer to use my own templating systems which are *much* quicker to implement then smarty. I feel it is pretty bloated.

    Zend is really nice for development but again it adds time to the schedule. If you want easy resource management, error reporting etc. though then zend is is a plus.

    Overall, I would say 100 hours is fairly reasonable given the limited description of the project.
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  • Profile picture of the author warriorforum101
    thank you very much everyone, very helpful. I am happy with where im going with this guy, hes cheap and he works on a site which grosses millions per year so i should be ok.
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    • Profile picture of the author jonhel
      Why don't you use an existing script in that sector? Why reinvent the wheel when there's no doubt something already out there.
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      Warrior For Hire - Freelance web developer/troubleshooter/fixer etc. - Affordable website help

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  • Profile picture of the author rallport
    On thing to note: Smarty compiles down to plain old PHP and has it's own templating language built in - which does add overhead to your application. I personally stay well away from Smarty and use CodeIgniter with APC where possible. Just my 2c
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    • Profile picture of the author warriorforum101
      jon this is a great idea but where? i checked out flippa and did not see anything along the lines of what i want to do?
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  • Profile picture of the author lovenot
    Well 5k deposit eventually gone and another $2,500 gone to another guy. They basically took 6 months each and never accomplished anything.
    Wow? That is really wasteful. Did you get your money back?

    I myself develop with Codeigniter it works well and is a light-framework Zendy is decent and would work well depending on the programmer. I personally do not think it matters much unless you have upwards of millions of visitors.

    And yes considering the specifications, it should take only 3-4 weeks. May I ask, how much are you paying to get it done?
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    Want to improve your website traffic? Interested in backlinks creation, article writing/submission, autoblogging and more? Check out Licorne Solutions Ultimate SEO and Internet Marketing Software Solutions now!
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    • Profile picture of the author rallport
      Originally Posted by lovenot View Post

      Wow? That is really wasteful. Did you get your money back?

      I myself develop with Codeigniter it works well and is a light-framework Zendy is decent and would work well depending on the programmer. I personally do not think it matters much unless you have upwards of millions of visitors.

      And yes considering the specifications, it should take only 3-4 weeks. May I ask, how much are you paying to get it done?

      Highfive for Codeigniter, that's my choice too!
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      • Profile picture of the author warriorforum101
        The first quote was 15k that's why I lost 5k custom platform. Next guy was 5k he started in joomla and it was crap. Do of forget I'm a big pain in the a** I want page friendly Uris, dynamic registration pages, dynamic filters, I'm very specific. It may seem like alot but it's not. Before I even had a website I made 5k just from some leads I got based off of my idea. Sounds weird but i took an unautomated approach at the business to test the model, it worked so I wanted to make it automated and scaleable which is what this would do.

        This new guy, we have not spoke about price yet until he gets final documentation he quoted 100 hours he's in India, what's it going to he 20-25 per hour probably, so a couple grand I will update when I find out.

        No I did not get my money back but it's fine, my offline business makes money and this online site can make me serious money, I'm not a developer so it's just a learning curve and part of business as a true entrepreneur (a middle man not possessing specific skills) and I have learned alot from getting screwed better to be safe now than if things go big and i lose it all later, thank you.
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        • Profile picture of the author stcupp
          wow dude you got ripped what your asking for would take me a week to code and you paid 7500! you need to do more research on web development
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