help with building my website...PLEASE!

[tlcreations]

Hey everyone. I am new here.
I hoping someone can give me advice on a website I am getting ready to try and build. Mind you, surfing, emailing, and downloading are the extent of my computer knowledge.

I would like to start a website where people do the following:

Pay the site $x.xx and then they are free to post a picture on my site.(This is a one time cost for that one picture, any other picture they post would require them to pay again)
Also, they can post a little comment and a small profile page.
Others can come on the site and leave comments of the pictures (they do not need a membership to do this)
Others can come on the site and vote on the pictures ( no membership)
The only ones that will fill out any kind of a profile, will be the ones submitting pictures.
This is in no way a dating site.

I know I need a merchant account for them to pay me. But that's it.
It seems like everytime I google how to build a web site, there are pages upon pages of stuff I barley understand. I've also recieved quotes for someone to build my website. The problem with this is that they are toooo costly for a website that I'm not even sure will catch on.

O.K.
so I have my domain name, now how do I build a website that will do what I want it to do?

Does anyone have any answers for me? ANY advice is better than no advice.

Thanks so much in advance!

[torilink]

how does the site benefit the person paying - what exactly are they paying for?

[Iksander]

You aren't going to get very far with that.

Not because your idea or intention won't make it, but because there doesn't feel like enough oomph behind your thoughts. Spend some time developing the idea more, approach the idea of a website like a business plan; make your intentions very clear and very well defined.

Even if ideas and intentions morph or evolve later down the road - you do need to have something in the immediate moment to guide you.

A website should start out because you have a brilliant idea, or, you feel passionate about a certain kind of idea - less because of the money. Once you have the passion or idea down pat - then you can probably start thinking about how to generate income from that idea through the web. Charge users? Or put up ads? Subscriptions?

Beyond all of that - I would begin reading up on PHP and shared webhosting to get you started.

[1000feet]

I can tell you that the parts you described should take a week (full-time) at most for someone who knows what they're doing, not including design. The questions is, do you want to put in the effort to learn everything yourself and piece it together over time, or do you believe in it enough to invest in someone who can do it quickly?

In the later case you'll need to think about it some more and decide exactly how it will work, so you can minimize the work it takes to get it running. You can find people to do it on rentacoder, elance, guru.com, programmermeetdesigner, and other smaller sites. One danger with this is that there's a wide gap between making a site that does what you want and making a good site, and if you don't know the technical stuff it's hard to tell if there's security risks or if the site will break down completely later on.

If you want to do it yourself the first thing is to learn HTML. You'll want to start by putting together basic pages using HTML files (if you hire a designer later on make sure they give you HTML files to avoid extra work). There's plenty of tutorials for this, and it's also easy to learn how to upload them to your host and view them online.

The next step is to learn server-side scripting. Once you understand how to create pages by hand, this will let you have the server generate the pages; for example, you can create a template for a page and then have a script place the right image in it and display comments below. You'll probably want PHP and MySQL tutorials for this, although Ruby on Rails would be another good option that many hosts support. Once again, the work doesn't end when the site appears to do what you want. Try to do unusual things with it (like posting a 100-page comment) even if you don't think anyone else will try and see if the work, and also search for information on web application security (especially SQL injection and cross-site scripting).

For payments, there's several services that can do most of the work for you. Once you sign up their documentation should explain how to write the code in common languages and how to configure them to test transactions without really spending anything. A few examples are paypal merchant services (several levels of integration), authorize.net, 2checkout, and google checkout. Some of them require a merchant account, but with some of the paypal services you can just take payments online and send them to your bank.

[tlcreations]

sorry if I didn't give detail. There is a reason behind it. Seeing how I am stupid to building websites. If I post exactly what the site is, then someone who knows how to build websites could have this up and going in no time. Then I'm stuck like with my inventions. I have the thought, I plan it out, do the research, build the prototype, write my patent, and that's where it ends. Because lots of people have the same ideas, but it's who has the cash to make it to market first.

[tlcreations]

I am very much so excited about the website and the idea. I can't go into detail though. I've thought about and planned what the site will consist of for about a year now. It's just that it's all designed on paper and new ideas over this year are still in my head. I've talked to some very trusted friends and professional contacts about the site and they all loved it. So now it's time to put it together.
So to the comment: It will never work

I never accept comments like that. Although your comment I'm sure was in all good intentions, I feel that comments like that hold people back from doing really wonderful things. I'm not one of those people. When I'm told I can't, I do anyway to prove it to myself.

[torilink]

Originally Posted by tlcreations

sorry if I didn't give detail. There is a reason behind it. Seeing how I am stupid to building websites. If I post exactly what the site is, then someone who knows how to build websites could have this up and going in no time. Then I'm stuck like with my inventions. I have the thought, I plan it out, do the research, build the prototype, write my patent, and that's where it ends. Because lots of people have the same ideas, but it's who has the cash to make it to market first.

I understand, it is just a bit difficult to really point you in the right direction without knowing what benifit the site users receive.

If the benefits to the users are minimal, they probably won't pay for anything - so you need to really consider that when spending to build the site.

but it was difficult to know from your description.

Another option at first is to pay for a cool site template and then just plug in the info with frontpage or another site builder. You can find some good ones for $50.

[1000feet]

Someone who has the skills to do that probably has enough ideas to keep them busy for years, and most likely wouldn't buy in to your idea enough to really put in the effort. If the only way to get on top is to be the first one though, you may be right.

[tobyhede]

A site like the one you've described will require programming and a database, not to mention HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

If you are going to learn, start with HTML and CSS, then move to JavaScript.
There are any number of resources for learning these technologies - W3Schools is a good start.

Learning "real" programming is a hard task ... it's one of those things that people seem to either grok or not. I would suggest Ruby on Rails for server-side code and MySQL for the database. Get a good book and start going through the lessons is about all I can suggest here.

There may, however, be open-source tools that do most of what you want. Try Joomla or Drupal. Many hosts have such packages as options. Hostgator, for example, lets you install Joomla .. you can try it and see. It may be cheaper to get someone to customise some modules for your specific requirements.

If all this is too daunting, you can pay someone to develop the site for you. As 1000feet suggested, it is about a week of work (40-odd hours, probably less) and if you get a free or cheap design, it shouldn't be more than a couple of thousand dollars to build.

[Brutha]

Considering that hotornot.com has recently made their site free if would doubt that requiring users to pay is the way to go.
It is 100 times easier to get users for a free service then for a paid service.
Unless there aren't many people out their who could profit from your site (and those people that profit profit enough to pay), free works better.

[1000feet]

Considering what Microsoft has done, it's clear that the best way to do this is to buy everyone who competes with you and charge a lot. Then again, doing something just because one person or many people are doing it isn't always the best way. You have to decide for yourself if the decreased revenue per user is worth a large number of users (and maybe do some experiments). Advertising is great for news and articles because it's very easy to transmit those; sites with lots of media might find that it's not as profitable.

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by tlcreations

Hey everyone. I am new here.
I hoping someone can give me advice on a website I am getting ready to try and build. Mind you, surfing, emailing, and downloading are the extent of my computer knowledge.

I would like to start a website where people do the following:

Pay the site $x.xx and then they are free to post a picture on my site.(This is a one time cost for that one picture, any other picture they post would require them to pay again)
Also, they can post a little comment and a small profile page.
Others can come on the site and leave comments of the pictures (they do not need a membership to do this)
Others can come on the site and vote on the pictures ( no membership)
The only ones that will fill out any kind of a profile, will be the ones submitting pictures.
This is in no way a dating site.

I know I need a merchant account for them to pay me. But that's it.
It seems like everytime I google how to build a web site, there are pages upon pages of stuff I barley understand. I've also recieved quotes for someone to build my website. The problem with this is that they are toooo costly for a website that I'm not even sure will catch on.

O.K.
so I have my domain name, now how do I build a website that will do what I want it to do?

Does anyone have any answers for me? ANY advice is better than no advice.

Thanks so much in advance!

I created that site 2 years ago, and shut it down a few months ago. Building a technically superior alternative to MySpace or Facebook is (relatively) easy, but the bottom line is that nobody wants or needs another MySpace clone.

My simple advice to you: BUSINESS PLAN backed by a UNIQUE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

P.S. Charging user fees is not a UCA.

[aussieNickuss]

My honest opinion is that if you are serious about developing a site that will generate (hopefully significant) income, then you should be serious about having your site professionally developed. If you are creating a payed service for people, then you need a site that is both reliable and very secure, and that can only be created by somebody who has years of experience in advanced web development.

I know you have a concern about costs and funds, but if your plan is viable, then you should be able to have access to either investments or funding/financing.

Please take this as constructive criticism, coming from past experiences and witnesses. If you are only proficient with the daily operating of a PC and haven't yet grasped the concept of HTML, then trying to do this project by yourself will only lead to failure. On the otherhand, if you have lots of time and patience on your side, then there is no reason why you can't attempt your project. But if you want something that can generate income (I mean serious income as opposed to Google adwords on a blog), a reliable and secure service for customers, in a reasonable timeframe, then I think you should seriously consider getting your site professionally developed.