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Is this Easy to Build?

by sunnygc
12 replies
Coders - this is a question for you...

Not sure if this style of site should be custom built or if templates exist. I'm looking for the best solution at a reasonable price. We're happy to pay for the experienced coder who can provide the whole solution and solve our problem. Those who can solve it quickly deserve to get paid more in our book.

Main idea of new website:
  • Idea is very similar to a real estate website. Someone posts their home for sale after filling in a predefined set of fields about the property for sale. That then creates an individual page showcasing that house. Once sold (expired) that listing gets taken down.
  • Buyers or investors nominate their criteria for that house and once a day all those new homes meeting the buyers criteria get auto emailed in a nicely designed email template.
  • Buyers or investors need to sign in and nominate their preferred categories and can get redirected to a members section plus receive the daily email outlined in point 2.
Preferably this site would be based on a user friendly CMS so we can edit and create new content once completed.


What sort of foundation would be best? Drupal? Wordpress? Or would a custom solution be the way to go?


Thanks...
P.S. This isn't a real estate idea but that is the most effective way for me to describe our problem.

#build #custom cms #drupal #easy #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author prince55l
    Wordpress will be a good way to go with its good seo plugin
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  • Profile picture of the author sunnygc
    Hi Prince55l
    Yes I believe wordpress has the ability to do this and by SEO plugin do you mean optimizepress?

    What I'm very unsure of and need help with is the ability to find something that auto emails a subscriber list once a new page is posted. Are there plugins for this or would that have to be custom built?
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Fleming
    If it were my project then I'd start with WordPress as the base and then find a good theme and plugins that were as close to what I needed as possible. Then you would have to add some code yourself and make the plugins and theme work 100% as you want.

    That would be best and easiest route to go. Paying somebody to develop the whole thing from start to finish is not necessary and waste of time and money if you ask me.

    Hope that helps.

    Good luck with your project

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author octopus
      Hi!
      I'm happy to do my first post here and I hope I'll be able to help you a little bit.

      I'm not an IM (yet) but a professional web programmer since 10+ years. I worked on projects with 10+ programmers and on small projects on my own.

      So, it depends on the money you want to spend on this and maybe I'm used to "big" solutions, but for your case I would go with codeigniter (a PHP framework) and find a good PHP developper (at least 5 years of experience).

      The problem with WP and your solution is that I don't see the bonus of having a CMS here. When a lot of pages needs to be created on the same template AND criteries that needs business logic behind (searches, conditional emails)... I would go with a custom solution.

      I programmed a LOT of sites with a lot of different CMS (.net, php and JAVA) and when you don't use a CMS as a CMS but as a website that is close to a web application, the programmer will have to work against the CMS.

      Sure, you'll get a fast "first result" with WP but the more customization, search criterias and features you'll need the more it will cost you to change what you already have.

      And if you don't hire somebody that knows what he's doing, all you'll get is a WP patched with a lot of crappy code that will cost you a lot of money to modify and maintain afterward.

      And if you're going to hire a programmer that knows what he's doing anyway, let him free with codeigniter or some other framework that are not too intrusive.


      Edit : to answer your question in the title, it's not a big application from what I read in your post. If you have just 5-6 pages (on the same template, meaning that you can have 10000 pages that all have the same type of information) , conditional emails... It's small to me. If I was at work and would have to build this and if I had already the PSDs, probably between 4 to 8 weeks of work (your post was not really specific, I would need more info). So between 160h and 320h.
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      • Profile picture of the author webcosmo
        Originally Posted by octopus View Post

        Hi!
        I'm happy to do my first post here and I hope I'll be able to help you a little bit.

        I'm not an IM (yet) but a professional web programmer since 10+ years. I worked on projects with 10+ programmers and on small projects on my own.

        So, it depends on the money you want to spend on this and maybe I'm used to "big" solutions, but for your case I would go with codeigniter (a PHP framework) and find a good PHP developper (at least 5 years of experience).

        The problem with WP and your solution is that I don't see the bonus of having a CMS here. When a lot of pages needs to be created on the same template AND criteries that needs business logic behind (searches, conditional emails)... I would go with a custom solution.

        I programmed a LOT of sites with a lot of different CMS (.net, php and JAVA) and when you don't use a CMS as a CMS but as a website that is close to a web application, the programmer will have to work against the CMS.

        Sure, you'll get a fast "first result" with WP but the more customization, search criterias and features you'll need the more it will cost you to change what you already have.

        And if you don't hire somebody that knows what he's doing, all you'll get is a WP patched with a lot of crappy code that will cost you a lot of money to modify and maintain afterward.

        And if you're going to hire a programmer that knows what he's doing anyway, let him free with codeigniter or some other framework that are not too intrusive.


        Edit : to answer your question in the title, it's not a big application from what I read in your post. If you have just 5-6 pages (on the same template, meaning that you can have 10000 pages that all have the same type of information) , conditional emails... It's small to me. If I was at work and would have to build this and if I had already the PSDs, probably between 4 to 8 weeks of work (your post was not really specific, I would need more info). So between 160h and 320h.
        I have to agree with the above, it`s simpler to have a clean code made for a specific application - in this case your website, than having someone fight the CMS to make it work the way you need.
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  • Profile picture of the author sunnygc
    Hi Octopus & Steve
    Thanks for your update Steve on the wordpress side of things. Will keep that in mind.

    Octopus, this sounds like a really comprehensive suggestion you are giving so thanks for taking the time to write the post. I can understand your thoughts behind having a WP site with lots of crappy plugins, which I guess is how a lot of budget sites get developed and built over time.

    Rather we're after a well planned and thought out solution from the start. You seem quite content with codeigniter and a PHP framework and I'm wondering if that is better than a drupal solution as recommended by another friend. I'm not tech savvy enough to know the difference so I really appreciate your thoughts in helping me to find a solid, robust solution.

    200 hours @ $20 = $4,000 (stretching the friendship)
    200 hours @ $40 = $8,000 (this is really hurting, the pain is unbearable) haha.

    I have a complete spec for this job as my partner and I need to get this outsourced.
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    • Profile picture of the author sunnygc
      Just hunting around the web...when you mention codeignitor, do you mean expressengine? I see a lot of that posted around the web and when doing a search it seems quite a few developers specialise in that area.
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  • Profile picture of the author annaharris
    I think wordpress is the best.
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    • Profile picture of the author sunnygc
      Originally Posted by annaharris View Post

      I think wordpress is the best.
      Hi Anna

      Thanks for your feedback. My main goal is to ensure new postings can get auto populated in an email that gets sent out to the mailing list. Does WP have a script to do something like this or would this need to be custom built?
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      • Profile picture of the author octopus
        Codeigniter : CodeIgniter /*EllisLab

        For emailing people based on some criteria it shoudn't be hard to code in WP or any other method. Except if you think you'll need to send thousands and thousands of email at once but that's another story.

        Normally, something inputs your data into your database. Then, the "emailing part" will take that data from the database and send it. Email in php is trivial. The part you should investigate more is how your data is going to be used elsewhere in your site (searches with forms? ability from members to change information?) and how the data will get into your DB (from members, from you, from an external source)?

        Edit : And for drupal, it's the same as WP IMO. I don't think you need a CMS from what I understand of your project. It's like building a boat starting with a car.
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        • Profile picture of the author ClicProject
          I agree with Octupus, to be honest for someone that knows what they are doing this would be much quicker to code from scratch than trying to force it into wordpress.

          Using a framework such as codeignitor, or Yii (my new favorite framework) this is a relatively simple task.

          One thing I would lookout for is sending bulk emails - if you have shared hosting you will have problems sending 1000s of emails at once, plus you may have problems getting through spam filters.

          One possible solution is to use something like mailchimp or aweber to deal with the actual mailing, they both have great apis that you can hook up to to update your mailing lists and emails.
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          • Profile picture of the author sunnygc
            Originally Posted by ClicProject View Post

            I agree with Octupus, to be honest for someone that knows what they are doing this would be much quicker to code from scratch than trying to force it into wordpress.

            Using a framework such as codeignitor, or Yii (my new favorite framework) this is a relatively simple task.

            One thing I would lookout for is sending bulk emails - if you have shared hosting you will have problems sending 1000s of emails at once, plus you may have problems getting through spam filters.

            One possible solution is to use something like mailchimp or aweber to deal with the actual mailing, they both have great apis that you can hook up to to update your mailing lists and emails.
            Great point on the 'sending 1000s of emails' situation. This is something that had slipped my mind so thanks for bringing that up. I've got an aweber account so will ask them their thoughts.

            It appears coding it from scratch is the way to go instead of working within an existing CMS like Wordpress or the like.

            Is codeignitor different to ExpressionEngine?
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