Looking for guidelines

@JonathanKJul 29.2016

Hello everyone this is my first post on this forum, and I am very excited!

I’ve got an idea that I want to put into practice.

My website/webshop has to be able to: 1) Sell/Display small video clips/pictures, 2) Articles, 3) Log-in system, 4) Payment methods.

So my question goes how would you recommend that I do this? Should I build it all from scratch or use some sort of templates? Maybe I should mention I know the basics of HTML/CSS but I assume that I need some sort of javascript/database system as well? I am interested in doing it myself but it would be a rather long process. Is it realistic or a too big mouthful for a first project? What is the smartest/easiest way to put my idea into practice? Looking for guidelines/suggestions!

Kind Regards

Jonathan

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Full-stack Developer

8 Comments(s) _↴

@jedaisoulJul 29.2016 — #Hi and welcome to the site.It sounds to me that the proposed web site is primarily a vehicle for eCommerce. In which case the most important question is not a technical one but rather: how are you going to attract customers to your particular piece of cyber space? I.e. What is going to differentiate your site from the (presumably) myriad similar sites already out there?

Secondly, what research have you done to assess the competition, its strengths and (hopefully) its weaknesses?

Thirdly, although I would point out the pitfalls of the "Leggo" approach of slapping together prefabricated blocks of code and hoping that it all works, in this case it maybe the most practical way ahead. If so, which of the many CMSs and/or frameworks should you choose? That I cannot help you with. I can only suggest that you pick a theme that most closely meets your requirements, and then alter it as little as possible. The more you alter it the harder it will become to sort out any bugs.

So, overall, you probably need a business plan setting out the raison d'etre, specific goals, and how you intend to achieve them...

Oh and to state the obvious, the site has to be a responsive design. If you do not know what that means, find out before you invest your time and effort building a site that only half of your potential customers can use!

@JonathanKauthorJul 29.2016 — #Hello jedaisoul thank you for your response!

For your first two points that's all separate concerns I'm already looking into getting clearance on. Maybe I didn't state my question clear enough but my main speculations right now go into the creation of the website. I'll try to narrow down my questions into more specifics:

- Which languages would be required to develop my website?

- What is a realistic time frame to learn the necessary?

- What are some must-knows I need to be aware of when I start my project so I don't suddenly realize I should've done it x or y way rather (Just like it has to be a responsive design as an example)

- If capable isn't it beneficial to make it from scratch? It's more time consuming but learning gradually might not be a bad idea?

Thanks for any input, really appreciate!

@NogDogJul 29.2016 — #A lot of the heavy lifting will go on on the server side, where there are many languages to choose from, and nearly as many database engines -- and there is no "best" choice other than the one you choose to use. (E.g., you might use the always popular pair of PHP and MySQL, or any other combination of those as well as Ruby (on Rails), Python (on Django), NodeJS, etc. with PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, etc.)

My main concern would be that you want users to pay for stuff, which means serious security considerations and user privacy issues; so you'll probably want to offload that part to some payment portal that (hopefully) knows how to deal with all of that. In that case, you'll just(?) need to know how to get your application to talk to their API.

You might want to poke around at opensourcecms.com and see if anything there could do what you need, or at least give you a good base on which to build.

@jedaisoulJul 29.2016 — #How long it takes to learn the necessary to build a web site depends very much on you and the tools you choose to use. Learning to write code (HTML, CSS, PHP etc.) could take many months to pick up a working knowledge, let alone master the languages. CMSs and their themes offer much more "instant" results, but there is a down-side. Machine-written code can be an order of magnitude more verbose, and hence more difficult to comprehend, should the day arise when you need to.

They can also be slow to download, and visually "samey", though that is dependent upon the aesthetic flair (or lack thereof) of the designer. So there are good reasons why entrepreneurs stick to what they are good at (running their businesses) and employ designers and developers to build web sites for them...

@JonathanKauthorJul 29.2016 — #I know it's a longer process.. I didn't mention it but I'm going to study computer science from September 1st so I do have a general interest in programming and the leaning phase. That's why I'm considering to do this from scratch and learn as much as i can on the way. I am green when it comes to programming but we all have to start somewhere and I learn best through projects because I find it more motivating.

@NogDogJul 29.2016 — #This is when you'll find out if you have one of the prerequisites for being a successful developer: the stubbornness to keep going while you make one mistake after another. ?

@JonathanKauthorJul 29.2016 — #Is there a reason to not always use rem instead of px as measurement? Wouldn't it make sense to make your site compatible to all browsers or are there any drawbacks of only using rem? I couldn't find a proper answer on google..

Thanks =)

@3wCornerAug 02.2016 — #You can use Wordpress, install Woocommerce themes and plugins.

Or you can use Magento, customize your website for the video and the payment option.