Help with Project similar to Just Eat

Hi everyone Ill cut right to the chase we (our group at the law school) want to make a website for our law school project prize (law) and I want to use the just eat template : Order Takeaway and Fast Food Online - Just-Eat.co.uk

I'm speaking on behalf of the team and everything I'm asking below is a combination of our knowledge on wordpress and the obstacles before us so lets begin.

Issue1:

So basically first page has the search button function: from what I know of wordpress I can simply have the home page set to wordpress post or page with the search box on it I just don't know how to put the search box on the actual post or page itself unless if there's a short code for that I'm still searching.


Issue 2:
As I'm a law boy basically here's how it will work imagine the topics are IP, Property law and Sale and supply of goods just as an illustration. now those would be the categories that I want to come up on the left just like the same way you type in a postcode on the just eat site and different world cuisines come up on the left.

So I imagine to tackle issue 2 that it will have something to do with setting the categories and attaching the posts on the topics to those categories and in order to make this all possible I will have to have a 3 column template am I right?

Issue 3: The list that comes up in the middle
Ok so now I've done the categories on the left so the list that comes up in the middle should be names of tutors and students that teach or are being taught that topic and on the right of each name I'd like to either have a contact student or book appointment with lecturer respectively.

Now what I would like your advise on

1.Is if our train of thought above is correct ,

2.If there are any plugins / templates (preferably a fresh minimalist clean type p.s if it can have pictures included for teachers and students that would be such a huge bonus to help us win)

3.If there is a shortcode plugin for search that would be of use to change the placement of the standard search that comes with wordpress because we tried a demo site posted 6 posts and pages with a few random words and typed them into the search and it kept saying no results found so we will need to change the placement of the search box first and we have found some plugins that apparently include all posts and pages so as for finding the search queries we've got that covered it seems its just changing the location of the search box now that's the issue it seems.

4. How we can add the book appointment or contact student function at the end of each name


Now I cant exactly say what the full project is because anyone else from the other teams could discover our plan here and steal it so I could only give the info above but pretty much everything above is what we are obstacles we are trying to surpass.

So all advise and criticisms are welcome thank you very much guys.