I have a cient that would like a Social Networking site that is similar to http://www.dodgeball.com, but bigger. Here is what they asked me to do.
1. They want a social community, but the user will be able to define a community they would like to join i.e. Automobile Community, Singles Community, Weekend Warrior Community, etc. They are looking to have between 20-30 different communities a person my join.
2. Allow the user to customize their own personal page. They will be able to add photos, videos, links, contact list of other community members, bio, favorite places, etc. Each page will have certain functions depending on the type of community they join.
3. Instead of the started SMS that dodgeball.com uses, they want a mobile application created that users can download to their phones that will act as a communication gateway to all their contacts that the user defined on the personal web page (from the website).
Here is some additional information:
They would like the site to be very interactive, possibly using AJAX. They would also like an option for their users to activate a helper (similar to Microsofts PaperClip).
This is just the tip of the ice berg. My questions are:
1. Should I be hiring sub-contractors for this type of project. My skills are limited to PHP, XHTML, CSS.
1) Yes, you need alot of technical skills beyond the standard PHP/XHTML/CSS stuff to even hope to pull off something like this correctly.
2) Yes, probably bigger.
3) Depends on how many bodies you can throw at it. If I had to guess, I would say at least six months to a year with an adequate and skilled team.
4) Yes, with enough resources ($$) and time.
Biggest trick is the mobile phone app. There are too many platforms to support to make that truly realistic. Especially when you get into what cell phone providers will allow users to install. I would really try and refactor that into a mobile web application or just use SMS.
They have 900K to budget for this type of project. If I were to agree to take on this project and limit myself to the Project Manager/Producer, where would I begin searching for a skilled enough team to tackle on such a complex and time consuming project.
I've seen sites such as freelancer.com and guru.com, but I'm not sure how much I sould trust sub-contracting people from those sites.
This is definitely not something you could use some online meat-market to subcontract. I would start looking for superstar mobile development houses as that is the tricky part.
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