New web commnity, where do I start?

PHP
1

I really hope this is the right place to post, I thought General might work too but I wasn’t sure if this was too specific to fit there.

Basically, I want to start a local music community website. My town has a permanent population of 80,000 with 3 Universities. We are pretty liberal and the arts are a huge part of our culture. Music in particular. Personally, I play guitar and have been in 4 local bands.

We used to have a website that allowed people to register as general members, and then register their band and venue. There was a forum and a classifieds section. There was an upcoming shows section and it also had news about local shows and local music-related happenings. It was a phenomenal place to network and keep up with local music/venues/releases/etc.

This website was very outdated, looked like it was from '99 (table-based layouts, flat, uninspired design, etc.). About a year ago, the site shut down inexplicably. No one knows what happened to it. There were quite a few users, I have no idea how many. If I had to ballpark, it was in the tens of thousands. People in towns as far as about a 100 mile radius from us also used it.

I want to tap into this market. Not only to recreate this site I used for years to network but also to be able to sell ad space on it. Even if I can’t sell much, I can use it to advertise my web abilities and particularly my new venture of band myspace development.

Now, to my skills. I am primarily a designer with good HTML and CSS knowledge. However, I know very little PHP. Not enough to get started. I’ve gotten by using Wordpress and I know how it works pretty well. I’ve always heard the “jump off the deep end” approach is the way to go with PHP, and I have the infamous PHP and MySQL web dev book, but I haven’t started it yet.

And my question: Am I biting off more than I can chew? And where do I start? I think this is too big for Wordpress, right? Or is it? I want people to be able create different kinds of accounts: individual, band, venue, booking agent, etc. and basically do all of the things the old site could do.

Thanks much and again, I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. Move if need be or close and let me know where to recreate. Thank you! :slight_smile:

2

I’m in the same boat at the moment, looking for a VPS for the first time.

Streaming video/music yourself is a big thing in terms of bandwidth and disk space, and I wouldn’t go there for a long while.

3

you’ll at least need a VPS, but depending on the actual setup might require more than one, e.g. to “outsource” certain functions like the search index, or static files (images).

Any good provider can add more resources to your VPS and even help you transfer to a dedicated server if you need one.

Drupal allows the setup of different user roles, though, as of Drupal 6, you can’t make these as distinguished as you want them (with content profile you can get around this). Drupal 7 can do this more easily, but that is still in alpha and might take another couple of months until a stable release, and personally, I wouldn’t start developing with Drupal until we hit a beta.

4

Hi Bobby and welcome to Sitepoint.

you’re right, this is too much for Wordpress, however, there are a couple of different approaches you can take:

  1. Use something like ning.com - not much effort needed to set this up, provides some flexibility, but ties you down to it - not recommended.

  2. Use an existing social networking type of script, like phpFox - costs money as I don’t know of a decent open source/free alternative. provides everything you need out of the box.

  3. Use an opensource&free CMS and see how far it can be customised to fit your needs. Drupal comes to mind here, incredibly complex and flexible, and you should get around with html/css and a little php.

  4. Use a php framework like cakePHP, now we’re starting to touch php application design (this forum, in case it gets later moved to another). a framework provides you with some common stuff, so that you don’t have to replicate basic things.

  5. Build it from the ground up - not sure whether this is a good recommendation with the frameworks around, even for the more experienced coders.

Personally, I’m building a very similar site at the moment with Drupal.

However, a few words of caution:

About a year ago, the site shut down inexplicably. No one knows what happened to it.

If it looked as old as you say it was, it might have been hit by some security wholes, something you may/may not encounter at some point as well if you don’t keep the code up-to-date.

It could also be that server costs were just running too high and the sources of revenue died down - we hit an economic bottom last year. What you need is a proper and diverse monetisation plan, not just “be able to sell ad space on it”. and just being able to showcase your skills isn’t enough here.

Time for content moderation, it could be that those who operated simply didn’t have the time or interest any more to moderate abusive content.

5

http://www.pligg.com/

if you’re comfortable re-jigging open source apps, you might be able to re-purpose one of these to your needs

6

Good point, which actually brings up another question: what kind of server requests do ou think I’m going to do with the load I’ve described? Obviously the cheapy 3.95/month plans aren’t going to fit the bill. Any hosting recommendations? If I go with something relatively inexpensive now, can I upgrade later? How many dbs should I need?

EDIT: Much of my experience is design work that has been outsourced to me. Next is Wordpress development, so I’m familiar with frameworks. I’ve always been interested in Drupal. Do you think it could handle this load? Does it have built in features that would allow users to register and specify what kind of user they are?

7

Dang I been researching a few VPS’s but I’m not sure where to start. I’m thinking maybe build the site with the ability to stream uploaded music and possibly video, but keep that feature turned off for launch, and just have people link to their myspaces and youtube videos. Get a decent VPS server to handle this load, and if I can acquire a significant amount of users and therefore a significant amount of revenue to warrant an upgrade, upgrade my VPS and turn on the streaming multimedia function. Does that sound reasonable? Do you guys recommend any specific VPS providers for this kind of thing? I’ve never worked with one before.