New Website Project: Where to start?

[mikelangelo11]

Hello
A friend recruited me to help her start a new project, and I agreed even though I knew I'd be learning a whole slough of new skills from scratch. I'm pretty good at figuring stuff out and making connections, and I will research the hell out of anything given half a chance. It's how I tackled learning graphics programs and any other skills I felt like I needed.

The project is a website for membership driven reviews of Art Galleries based around our city. We've encountered countless artists who wanted to display their art and have no idea what they get into, or what's available to them. My web skills are competent with HTML, and I can wrap my head around CSS and basic basic Java, but it falls off after that. We've got the domain and basic hosting already, but now it's down to me to get things started. I'm hoping to get it live in 1-2 months.

My question is, while I can build the pages for the site, what kind of tools do I need to build a site where users can register for membership and post comments with a 5 Star rating? Leaving a potential for paid subscriber membership in the future. If anyone knows an opensource template for such I can pick it apart and figure it out I think, but I'm aware that at this point, I don't even know what I'm supposed to know.

Any direction from you experienced Web Devs would be appreciated. I'm not afraid of putting in the grunt work, but I want to make sure my effort is efficiently applied.

Thanks for everything,

 

[leroy30]

If you have any other programming experience try php or asp.net

otherwise try searching for open source equivalents that you can tweak. Otherwise you're in for a lot of work!

 

[Web1]

Yes as Leroy says if you are building such a site yourself thats a big project! You need something off the shelf.

Go to Icy Pheonix, get the latest package. Its a fully featured CMS site based on PHPBB, so you get forum, and pages management, then make sure you implement the Gallery it has based on smartor's image gallery. very good.

You can adapt this so that users can run their own online gallery, and it has commenting and rating built in. I set up a site for online gaming screenshots, where users posted their own and other users could comment and rate. Sorry its not online any longer or I would give you link.

There is good online support for Icy Pheonix through his forums. It has absolutely everything you need and is perfect for what you are trying to do. Just be aware that for some mods you might want to make, you are gonna have to delve into the PHP, but I think you should be able to find a ready to go template, and control things enough from the online admin only. I got radical with my site and it took months to tweak, but you won't need to.

http://www.icyphoenix.com/

http://www.icyphoenix.com/dload.php


Coppermine is the obvious one, but I have not used it so can't say for sure how it would suit. Icy Pheonix is awesome though.

Best of luck.