Hi there,

I'm a newbie here - I stumbled onto this through vbulletin.com - I have a vbulletin forum set up for a hobby site of mine.

Anyway - I have a somewhat intensive database driven and email contact project I'm working on. I have NO IDEA where to go about finding someone who can handle the work and excel for me. It can best be described as a priceline.com format for a different industry that would include automatic contact to users via email and a shopping cart. It also includes specific user pages with star ratings and testimonials.

What type of database system should I look at and where should I start my search for a programmer? I have the look and the layout of the home page done as well as many of the other pages, but it's the back end of the system that I need completed.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you may have!

Before deciding which type of database you need, you need to figure out how much data you'll be dealing with. How many entries a day? What type of information? And so on... A small database can be handled by Excel, larger databases would require Access, even larger ones would probably need SQL or something similar. Once you've decided on the type of database you'll need, you can post your specs in the appropriate forum.

Thanks! I'm thinking larger and longer term - so it sounds like SQL would be the way to go. I'd rather have the capacity now than scramble later.

I'll post over there.

Thanks!

Greg

Hi there,

I'm a newbie on this forum but have another so I do understand and hope I'm within the rules of this forum to post this here.

I'm working on a fairly large project. I have an html template built for a new business venture, and I need a programmer to do the back end. It will be fairly data intensive, with hopefully thousands of users falling into two categories - a consumer who pays a fee and a salesperson who joins for free.

the project will involve collecting several data points on the consumer, forwarding those to the salesperson automatically via email, then the salesperson would log in and reply with specific information for the consumer. It would also involve separate pages for each sales person with star ratings and testimonials from each consumer, as the consumer would automatically get an email asking them to rate the person they worked with.

It's similar to a priceline meets ebay meets Amazon concept. Essentially a blind dutch auction or reverse bidding process.

Here's an example for use in the investment management industry:

• Investor wants a wealth manager
  Investor logs into site, puts in their portfolio size and other requirements
  Investor pays a fee to go through the system
  Registered investment advisor (sorted by STATE that they can do business in legally) get's automatic email requesting they log in to quote the management fee and other specifics
  Investor Recieves email every time an advisor posts a quote to log in - at which point the investor can see all quotes for investment management and sort them by price and other criteria
  Investor can click a link to each advisors page where the advisor has a star ranking, testimonials and other pertinent information
  Investor selects the advisor, contacts them and meets them
  Investor get's an email one month later asking them to log in, rate the advisor by star categories, and place a testimonial or notes where appropriate

So I need to find out how to go about getting a good programmer who can handle a task like this.

I hope I'm posting this in the correct forum, forgive my nievity regarding the programming world please.

Any advice or information would be much appreciated in my search.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

the Marketplace or Job Opportunities forums would be your best bet

which one would you like me to move this thread to?

Probably job opportunities - thanks so much for your help! Sorry for putting it in the wrong spot - I just don't know enough about database programming to understand really.

THANKS!

If you want to have frequent hands-on meetings, stating your locality might help. If not; GURU.com is one large resource for hooking up with remote developers, although I've considered them more a resource for small one-time tasks where failure won't be too damaging.

RE: Platform; SQL has a freebie version if you stay under 4GB (as I recall, I don't use that version although a buddy does in his Hotel software). 4GB is a lot of data if you're design isn't wasteful and when you reach that mark it's a straight conversion to the licensed version. It does lack some of the management capability but it'll smoke Access or Excel.

SQL has basically free developer versions for getting it programmed - as they all do.