Im looking for someone who can get my Drupal website started for me.
The plan is to make a informative travel website. At first I wanted to make a full community portal where people could make personal travel journals and share stories of where they have been. I was advised that this would cost over $3,000 to make so I decided to change the project a bit.
As it stands now, this is my plan of the website:
It will be a website about all things Thailand. It will be for people traveling to Thailand to come and look and read about each and every place in the country. This should be pretty easy to set up this part of the website. I want to have people be able to browse the website by area (north thailand, south thailand, etc) or by activity (beaches, mountains, jungle, city, historic location, etc) and also browse via actual location names. They can click on an area, then choose a provence, then a city and read all about that location.
It should be very easy to navigate from one location to another.
Each location will have TONS of information on it that I will enter. I will have detailed information for each area, from top level locations such as North info, southern info, information on each provence, and highly detailed information on each city.
When I add a city to the website, I imagine that I can assign classifiers to it. So if I add a city I might choose "city" "Mountains" "Jungle" "beaches" etc to it so that when someone clicks on "beaches" they will get a listing with all of the places that have that classifer. This might be accomplished using some kind of tagging system that only the admin can use. I also imagine that each location will have little icons representing these classifiers on their main information page. So when someone is looking at a specific location they can see right away little icons representing the various features.
Each area will also have a photo gallery that I assign to it. For each place I might upload 10 photos and they will display some in the description and there will be a link where people can see other photos of this location.
I will also have a small map with a star showing where this location actually is within Thailand.
Each location will have specific information that should be neatly organized and displayed the same across all sections of the website.
For a given location I might have:
--History
--General Info
--Accomidation
--Resturants
--Bars
--Getting Around
etc etc
This information should be entered seperately by me when I am adding a location so the website can organize it all neatly.
The other major feature of the website is a business dirrectory. This is a huge portion of the website and should be nicely intergrated to look like a mojor portion of the website, and not a seperate thing.
I will add businesses into proper categories like "bar" "resturant" "hotel" etc and also choose which city that they are located in.
So If I am looking at the Bangkok page, I can click and see all businesses that are located in this city. On the main info page under each section I also want to be able to see businesses that match up. So under "bars" on the main city page I will have entered some general information about bars in this location. Then I should be able to choose how many businesses have a small box under this section. I imagine a small pic and a breif description with a link to a business profile that I will edit and people can read about this business. So under the resturante section you will read out general info and then you will get a teaser of 3-5 resturants that you can click and read more about.
I want to be able to choose which ones and how many are displayed under these sections. Businesses who pay more to me will be listed here so I need full control.
Also, from the main page someone might click on "Bars" then they will click on a location such as "Bangkok" and be taken to a page with info and listings of businesses that meet that criteria.
I will be the only one adding and editing businesses so they dont need to access the info at all. When adding a business to the directory I want to choose their location (city) that they will show up in on the directory, add a description of the business, and upload a few photos. I also need space to enter advertising info about each of these businesses. Like, I might charge a business $20 for 1 year of listing in my directory, so I want to choose the date that I added them, choose how long they have paid for, and also want a text box where I can write down how much I charged them and any other info we discussed. I want to enter an email address that I use to contact this advertiser and all of these email addresses should be entered into a private newsletter system where I can email all of my advertisers are once. When a business pays for 12 months of advertising I want the website to notifiy me in the admin section which advertisers need to renew their subscription. I should see a list of who need to pay up again and I can decide If I want to remove their listing. I should be able to remove a business without actually deleting their info, incase I want to add them back in again after they pay.
Those are the two main ideas for the website. Extensive info on each area that is easily browsed by various things, and a business directory.
I also have some other things I want implemented:
-Event system
I want a calender in a sidebar that people can click on and see what is going on and when it is happening. What I imagine is someone might click on a month and see all the events that I have loaded. They can also narrow it down and see only events that are happeneing in the "North THailad" or even in a specif city like "Bangkok" An event might be related to a specific business and link up with them. For example, a bar in Bangkok might be having a party. I would add that event and match it up with that business so people can see that the event is at BObs bar or whatever. When viewing a business in the directory people can also see if there are any events comming up for this business.
-Newsletter System
In addition to a private newsletter system just for business in the directory, I want website viewers to easily enter their email address and sign up for travel tips and such that I can email out
-Polls
I want to have surveys for my website viewers. Im sure this is just a simple plugin.
The website will also feature stories and articles that I will write every few days. These should be displayed on the main page and radomly rotated for viewers to read. News may have a specific location like "Bangkok" so when on the Bangkok page you can see some related news. The main page will rotate news from all locations and also stories that I submit.
Comments
Yes, but do you want a successful website
You could build a website to do a lot of that stuff, but I can tell you it probably won't look very good or function very well for your budget. In other words, it would never get off the ground. $3000 is very low.
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Thank you for your
Thank you for your comment.
Is this really hard to achive? Setting up the main portion with just information on various towns and areas shouldnt be that hard. The business directory seems to require a bit of work to get the features I want.
I do beleive that this can be done in this budget. Maybe not by USA developers but I think It can be done.
You need quality AND functionality
There is funtionality and then there is usability and polished appearance. Two separate animals. You can have a site with a lot of functionality but if it's hard to use or not very eye-appealing, you've got serious obstacles to success.
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I realize this. What would
I realize this.
What would you think a project like this might cost?
You are looking at a 3-month
You are looking at a 3-month project with some subcontracting. I'd say you are in the neighborhood of $20k. And that is probably a low estimate.
Local News Platform Built on Drupal
http://sanangelolive.com/
I dont think this is a 20k
I dont think this is a 20k website project.
More like a $50K project...without Drupal
$20K probably isn't too far off. Maybe you could cut corners and get it down. I think you underestimate the work that is involved. Too build a nice, custom site, there are a lot of little details that need to be tended to. Each of those little details can take quite a bit of time. It's the difference between constructing a modular home and a nice mansion with custom craftwork and special touches.
--
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Im not looking to make a top
Im not looking to make a top of the line professional website that will blow the world away.
Im looking for a simple funcitoning website for now that might be upgraded.
For now I only need two things
-Business directory
-Thailand Information
That isnt that hard to make. Ive already recieved some PM's with bids in my price range.
Someday I hope to take it to the next level but for now I can only afford to get it running and functioning.
Hello, where are you now of
Hello, where are you now of your project? Can we see what has been achieved within your budget?
LOL I know it's been a year....
But seriously where did this project go? I'm constantly making sites for less than 3k, and always have to explain to my clients why what's "simple" to them is actually hundreds of hours of work. Nobody ever decides what they want is worth paying good money for, so I'm sure the budget didn't change. I'd like to see what, if anything came out of this - and what the budget ended up being.
Let's Get In Touch
Hi,
We are Drupal experts.
1. http://evakoss.com/website-design-portfolio.php
2. http://drupal.org/user/157478
Please let us know a bit more about the project.
You can get in touch with us direct.
IM – joe@evakoss.com
Yahoo – cmsevakoss@yahoo.com
MSN – joeevakoss@hotmail.com
Thanks
Joe P
joe@evakoss.com
www.evakoss.com
Project is complete and was
Project is complete and was MUCH less then 50k, much less then 20k, much less then 10k even. People love to give ridiculously high prices because once and a while someone is stupid enough to pay that much.
Can we see?
Can we see the finished project or at least how it is coming along? I am very curious about how it has been implemented.