Creating a review website

[chrisv24]

Hi, hope someone can help.

I am at university, and looking to set up a website where students can review all the local bars and activities in the area, much like the amazon.co.uk system.

The issue I have is that I have a basic knowledge of computers and can use those free website builder programmes, but honestly have no idea how to create a review website (I have a mac if thats of importance). Although, as a business student, I know exactly what needs to go onto the website, how to promote it etc, I just need some help setting it up.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

 

[WebsiteDesigner]

You sound like you have absolutely no idea about the subject. This is something advanced and will probably cost a lot of money for a website developer/company to do it for you.

I would be happy to help.

 

[akirk]

the right direction is probably to find another student who can code in (for example) php / javascript / ajax / etc.

do it together

unless you are willing to spend 10s of 1,000s with a pro company...

if you intend to do it properly it will not be a cheap job.

regards

Alasdair

 

[Astaroth]

If you "know business" then you know that you buy in expertise that your organisation lacks or you spend on training to remove the gap. Which one you go for depends on your timescales, criticality of success and long term need.

Given you will only need to build the engine once it doesn't seem a good investment to spend the months required to learn a programming language, SQL, infrastructure etc etc. Of cause if your concerned your idea won't work you could do an amateur version first and know that it will not be scalable without a complete rebuild that would most likely be more costly than building from scratch.

 

[maxh]

Hi, hope someone can help.

I am at university, and looking to set up a website where students can review all the local bars and activities in the area, much like the amazon.co.uk system.

The issue I have is that I have a basic knowledge of computers and can use those free website builder programmes, but honestly have no idea how to create a review website (I have a mac if thats of importance). Although, as a business student, I know exactly what needs to go onto the website, how to promote it etc, I just need some help setting it up.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

LOLs aside the amazon system is very complex and runs on an algorithm to recommend products similar to ones you've viewed and purchased based on multiple criteria.

You could very easily set up a user-generated content site about local bars and the like. But your real problem is why would people look at your site and not google, or bview, or any of the plethora of websites that review bars!

 

[Zeal]

Chris,

You won't get too far without a ton of money. However - Look at WordPress.. or even Joomla.

Both WordPress + Joomla have plugins / addons which will do what you want them to do...

It's not going to be anything like Amazon, but it will give you an indication of how things work.

 

[seiretto]

Oh wow, what a lot of old doom gloomers...

Go for it Chris, like Alasdair said get together with an IT student that knows PHP.

There are still massive opportunities for niche websites.

GOOD LUCK with it, I wish you all the best of success

 

[johnrobertusa]

Hi
Now lot of review websites are there.You know some them get familiar in soon such as yelp,ripoff reports etc..If u like to start review website you can analyze all of these websites.Definitely you can get some ideas about it.

 

[ewebz]

Agree with the post regarding Joomla or Wordpress, with such a vast amount of open source extensions available, setting up a niche review site would be relatively easy if you could find someone at uni who knows how to use either of them.

Maybe post something on a uni notice board, it will be worth it if there is someone willing to help you out.

If not then there are plenty of web design companies around who will offer lower priced solutions if they are using Joomla or wordpress. You will just have to shop around.

Good luck with your site, im sure if you can advertise it around your uni, it will get more than enough usage.

 

[daveTwizzlebird]

the right direction is probably to find another student who can code in (for example) php / javascript / ajax / etc.

do it together

unless you are willing to spend 10s of 1,000s with a pro company...

if you intend to do it properly it will not be a cheap job.

regards

Alasdair

Seriously!

What part of the brief necessitates a ten grand budget?

like a few of the other shere I agree this project looks like a perfect job for wordpress but a custom build wouldnt come to that in my books.

 

[Tork UK]

What uni are you at Chris?

 

[TailorMade]

Chris,

I agree with the more positive responses you have had..

1 - Go for it.
2 - It won't cost £10k
3 - Look at Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal for the sort of extensions and plugins which will facilitate what you need to get done
4 - Team up with someone more technically minded who can handle basic customisation and tweaks to Joomla

Or - if you want to go it alone and have some funds I can probably get you something together for 1/10th or less of what others have mentioned you need, especially if you are wiling to do some of the legwork.

Good luck with it!

 

[CDAPartnership]

Why not try GoMy.co.uk you can review all local businesses and interact with other users of the site at the same time.

 

[akirk]

Seriously!

What part of the brief necessitates a ten grand budget?

like a few of the other shere I agree this project looks like a perfect job for wordpress but a custom build wouldnt come to that in my books.

in response to the above - and the suggestions ref. wordpress / joomla / etc.

I realise that a lot of people on here like these software packages, but... they were designed for other purposes - if you want a system which is designed as suggested by the original poster, and want it to be scalable, then it will need to be bespoke coded - no alternative. There is a big difference between using (very good) free software and using something designed to do the specific job.

If you don't, then quite simply you will spend the next xx years falling over code which has been 'tweaked' 'modified' 'pushed' to do what it was never designed to do - yes, you can use these systems for this purpose, but for a scalable solution then, no - it needs to be written for the purpose for which it will be used...

ultimately this is about looking for a website where it scales sufficiently large to be able to be financially worth doing...

if it is going to be small and not often used, then yes, loads of software you can use, but what is the point? hobby? or serious business?

if it is going to scale up and be serious then it will fall to pieces being run on a standard blogging or CMS platform.

you don't think that Amazon / ebay / twitter / facebook / etc. are written on wordpress or joomla do you? come down a level to other national / international sites, they will have spent less, but will still have custom systems.

if a project is worth doing, then it is worth doing properly - the original poster is at the right point in his life - uni. where he can find someone with php / etc. skills who can join in - it would not be difficult to write - teh majority of the time will be in content anyway...

so, yes, the equivalent if coded by a professional company would indeed be 10s of £1,000s which is why I suggested an alternative approach

Alasdair

 

[Seamless-Outsourcing]

Plenty of wordpress templates would allow you to do this. There are even 'wordpress review' templates available if you do a google search My advise would be to use a template and see what kind of response you get, once you get the income coming in (I guess you are going to charge advertisers eventually?) pay someone to professionally design one for you You will then be minimising the amount and time you need to put in to get this idea off the ground.

 

[TailorMade]

Alisdair,

Your perspective is valid for someone with capital to get off the ground - or indeed access to someone with PHP skills. But if the OP does not have someone in his circle that he trusts, he may be fearful that the programmer will take the idea, do the code and run with the project, cutting him out - obviously that's a cyncial view, but Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is a case in point - he paid out $65m to the other student he allegedly stole the idea from when he was at Uni.

Anyway, I disagree that Joomla does not offer a viable starting point to the OP. Its scalable, customisable, well supported and has commercially supported plugins which meet the purpose based on the very brief, brief that was originally posted i.e "like Amazon"

I am of the opinion that with finite resources, limited technical knowledge and no trustworthy programmer in his social circle the OP could run with his idea in Joomla and if it flies he could then build a bespoke application if that is deemed necessary and the project proves its commercial viability. It would not be too costly or difficult to get the data out of a joomla database and into a bespoke one, so it would not mean starting from scratch.

In the meantime something like this http://www.reviewsforjoomla.com/ would probably fit the bill nicely and OP could be up and running by Monday morning if they put in some serious hours over the weekend (I would recommend taking a bit more time than that though!)

Even if the OP wants something done professionally and on a bespoke basis. I don't think a project like this should cost £10k plus. My company would do it for less and so would thousands of others on Elance, oDesk, Freelancer etc - but - I wouldn't necessarily recommend that route to someone with limited technical knowledge as its easy to get hoodwinked and difficult to accurately define project requirements without technical expertise.

Anyway, op - your idea could work and if you don't want to share, find it hard to trust another student or just want to do your thing alone without blowing all your beer money then look into Joomla.

 

[akirk]

Tailormade,

I see where you are coming from, but...
Joomla is not the easiest system to use - the OP says they don't have technical experience, I would suggest that that way lies issues...
as I said above - for a small, non scalable system then free software can be a way forward, but if he wants to do it properly nothing will beat having the system written to work the way he wants...
there are also numerous technical issues with platforms like Joomla / Wordpress from bugs to security holes... why spend the time coding around them - writing his own system would work much better...

which is why I suggested finding someone with the skills...

I believe that there are three options:
- do it himself - hold all IP, but he has already said that he can't as he doesn't have the skills.
- contract a company to do it - they will undoubtedly end up holding much of the IP unless he has a very good contract - legal costs.
- find a friend to help him - a simple legal contract would be all that is needed and no other cost.

we write quite a lot of these logic / process based systems - two we are working on at the moment: one has 138 hours on the books - at the start of the process, the other has over 260 hours, again with lots more to do... and the system he is talking about could easily match these in complexity... can you really produce these kind of systems for 1/10th of the price as you suggest - i.e. £1,000 - if so, you seem prepared to work for less than £4 p/h - would you mind if I outsourced all our work to you

the other thing to consider - if the OP puts a website together on standard free software there is nothing to stop anyone doing the same, build his own with proprietary algorithms etc. and he has far more IP to protect him and future business growth... yes, there is always the possibility of someone stealing the ideas, but that applies in any business, should we therefore say that no-one can ever go ito business with others?

for the situation he is in, I believe that finding a like minded sole with the technical skills would be the ideal situation

this is not an argument, or trying to sell my services etc. (far from it - I would think it unlikely that he could afford to pay someone to do the bespoke work he needs, and I have recommended an alternative), I just think that he doesn't want to start down a route now which could cause issues in the future.

right tools for the job...

Alasdair

 

[TailorMade]

Tailormade,

I see where you are coming from, but...
Joomla is not the easiest system to use - the OP says they don't have technical experience, I would suggest that that way lies issues...
as I said above - for a small, non scalable system then free software can be a way forward, but if he wants to do it properly nothing will beat having the system written to work the way he wants...
there are also numerous technical issues with platforms like Joomla / Wordpress from bugs to security holes... why spend the time coding around them - writing his own system would work much better...

which is why I suggested finding someone with the skills...

I believe that there are three options:
- do it himself - hold all IP, but he has already said that he can't as he doesn't have the skills.
- contract a company to do it - they will undoubtedly end up holding much of the IP unless he has a very good contract - legal costs.
- find a friend to help him - a simple legal contract would be all that is needed and no other cost.

we write quite a lot of these logic / process based systems - two we are working on at the moment: one has 138 hours on the books - at the start of the process, the other has over 260 hours, again with lots more to do... and the system he is talking about could easily match these in complexity... can you really produce these kind of systems for 1/10th of the price as you suggest - i.e. £1,000 - if so, you seem prepared to work for less than £4 p/h - would you mind if I outsourced all our work to you

the other thing to consider - if the OP puts a website together on standard free software there is nothing to stop anyone doing the same, build his own with proprietary algorithms etc. and he has far more IP to protect him and future business growth... yes, there is always the possibility of someone stealing the ideas, but that applies in any business, should we therefore say that no-one can ever go ito business with others?

for the situation he is in, I believe that finding a like minded sole with the technical skills would be the ideal situation

this is not an argument, or trying to sell my services etc. (far from it - I would think it unlikely that he could afford to pay someone to do the bespoke work he needs, and I have recommended an alternative), I just think that he doesn't want to start down a route now which could cause issues in the future.

right tools for the job...

Alasdair

No argument here, just healthy debate. I think we target different scales of the SME market. I tend to work with cash-strapped, micro start-ups that don't have the money needed for the right tools for the job, I then propose viable alternatives instead of telling them not to bother at all.

Your points are all pretty valid. Interested in the tongue in cheek offer of outsourcing. Maybe we should discuss. Probably can't do £4 per hour for a PHP programmer. But £7-£15 gives me a nice margin on 50+ hour projects! ;¬)

 

[daveTwizzlebird]

so just to clarify the "right tools for the job" of creating a website for a university student on which his fellow students can review local bars is a bespoke cms with a commercial value of tens of thousands of pounds!

 

[akirk]

No argument here, just healthy debate. I think we target different scales of the SME market. I tend to work with cash-strapped, micro start-ups that don't have the money needed for the right tools for the job, I then propose viable alternatives instead of telling them not to bother at all.

Your points are all pretty valid. Interested in the tongue in cheek offer of outsourcing. Maybe we should discuss. Probably can't do £4 per hour for a PHP programmer. But £7-£15 gives me a nice margin on 50+ hour projects! ;¬)

to be fair I didn't tell him not to bother - in fact I suggested a free option which will put him in the best place for future growth of the business...

and I am not sure that we do target different people - looking at our analysis of client spend, we have a number of clients who have spent less than £100 with us, and still got what they wanted - considerably more who have spent sub £1,000, but then we also have lots of clients who have spent a lot more, we charge an hourly rate, so all are treated the same, just depends how much functionality / work they want.

I totally understand that there are different business models, and each company will choose their own - but not sure that this is what this thread is about

I think that probably this part of the debate is going nowhere

I will leave my view as:

- free software can do a job, but will have issues and will not be the ideal platform long term.
- a professional company could build what you want, but it is likely to cost you a lot of money for a bespoke system.
- the best option is to find someone with the technical skills who can work with you - no cost & best for long term scalability and growth.

regards

Alasdair

 

[MikeJ]

Given that the OP hasn't been here since an hour after he originally posted, I think the debate is probably a waste of time. However, a simple bulleting board with a thread for each bar would probably be sufficient for his requirements.

 

[akirk]

so just to clarify the "right tools for the job" of creating a website for a university student on which his fellow students can review local bars is a bespoke cms with a commercial value of tens of thousands of pounds!

no - if all he wants is a simple system to talk about local bars with his mates, of course not.

but he said that he wanted to replicate amazon functionality - they are def. not built on a blogging or free cms platform

Alasdair

 

[TailorMade]

@Alisdair - I wasn't accusing you of saying he shouldn't bother.
@Mikej - He is probably hungover, in bed or eating cold beans out of a can! But I think users expect more than a bulletin board these days.

Anyway, am done with this one - I still think Joomla or Wordpress will do the trick for him and let him hit the ground running.. I think a bespoke solution has its benefits - but not this time round. Getting a student to help - yes, good idea - but as I said - may not be an option.

Good Luck whatever you do Chris!

 

[penfoldmedia]

There are plenty of free and paid cms's that will do exactly what. Once your site takes off you could always pay for a custom one if needed. Just google "cms for review site"

 

[rshosting]

Found a good script that can be used to review products :

http://www.freereviewscript.com/

You can check their demo at http://demo.freereviewscript.com/

The script is absouletely free and offers good features as mentioned on their website.

 

[dagaul101]

You would need some HTML skills, there are plenty of HTML tutorials around, have a look at a competing site, view their source code, and once you get to grips with the basics of HTML you can start from there

 

[antropy]

a custom build wouldnt come to that in my books.

Depends if you go with a freelancer or a London web agency who would charge £10k and then some!

 

[xinghu]

Getting a highly customised platform as the OP mentioned in his thread would indeed be costly and not something I would recommend given the apparent lack of knowledge and research into this as well as the fact that there are so many review sites out there these days. That's not to say he doesn't have a cats in hell chance. Anything is possible these days. I would what other people have mentioned previously though. Do some html tutorials. This is a good one http://www.w3schools.com/ once you are happy, download Joomla. There are plenty of addons. Even with no or little experience with Joomla, you should quickly learn things.

Whilst the option of finding another student who knows the coding is a decent idea, if I was going to do it personally, I would try to do it myself just because I like to learn new things and not depend on others too much.