What language to go with?

[evilc]

Hi,

I am starting an online venture for which I need some programming done.

The site is based on www.coolsavings.com model of allowing the user to access free coupons. It will be divided into 3 parts.

The USER section (actual site where users browse/print coupons)
The ADMIN section (Where I can basically admin the site)
The ADVERTISER section (Where advertisers can see stats and add coupons etc)

The primary goals are SPEED and ease of use.

The specs of the program are as follows:

USER site features…..

1. Registration (no password – use email address as username – if email not found in system offer free registration) ( Registration can be completed in parts – initially as little info required as possible to increase registrations and then try and get more info from users)
2. Use cookies to remember user
3. Search capabilities by location, keyword and type
4. Browse coupon listings
5. Print coupons
6. Personalize automatically/manually?? User’s fav coupons
7. Offer of snail mailed coupons for users with no printing facility
8. Set up email alerts for specific coupons (coupons printable in email itself)
9. Online coupon codes redeemable in online stores
10. Tell a friend capability for coupons incorporating loyalty program points
11. Loyalty Programs – For every coupon printed users accumulate points redeemable for free stuff (chance of ppl wastefully printing/snail mailing coupons just for free stuff – SOLUTION: serialized coupons to see if how many are being actually redeemed –this may be an additional administration/programming burden)

USER site ADMIN features

1. Ability to get demographic info of users
2. ADE categories (ADE – Add/Delete/Edit)
3. ADE coupons
4. ADE users
5. Mass email users personalized emails (maybe integrate some other existing script)
6. Reports of coupons printed, Snail Mail requests
7. Individual company reports
8. Individual category reports
9. Loyalty Program fraud investigation

ADVERTISER site features

1. Create coupons
2. Reports (see above admin report features – use those)
3. Coupon tracking system (A tool for them to see effectiveness of coupons etc)
4. ADE coupons w/o moderation from our part

Please could you tell me what would be the best way to program such a system? Which programming language, architecture, database etc...

It will have to be a highly scalable system since we are looking at very high growth and figures of 5 million page views/month in a years time with 100.000 + registered users.

Thanks,
Clive Fernandes

[sarahk]

Unless you are absolutely filthy rich (in which case I'll do the job) I'd forget about the language and look for a pre-existing package.

This may be free but it may cost you. However the license fees are unlikey to cost you as much as I would to start from scratch!

You need to look at all the packages and find one which is as close as possible to what you want. One might fit one side of your requirements and another may meet the rest, cool - we can put them together.

Then, look at the language they are written in and find a reliable host who offers that in your price range.

If you get that together then you've also picked your language. Now to find the people to do it - you might want to learn it, ok, easy, just find a website (like this) which has tutorials, support etc. Again, don't be afraid to pay, you get what you pay for sometimes.

hope this helps

[stolzyboy]

this wouldn't be that complicated of a site to get running nicely in a week or two, assuming you are familiar with most programming languages. since you are at phpbuilder.com i assume you know some php or are looking at using php to do this. first of all picking a very reliable host for this sort of site is a must, so check into that, choose a couple for each nix and win hosting, as if you decide for some ungoddly reason to go with asp, you will need a win host, as for my personal preference, here goes the argument thread once again, i like the lamp config (linux, apache, mysql, php) and it is far more popular amongst host, than a linux, apache, postgresql, php config, which would be my second choice, but as i said, it is harder to find a reliable host with that setup, i wouldn't go with windows/asp for the simple fact that you will most likely only get mssql server as a database and those packages get costly and they aren't quite as reliable as a nix server

anyway this is just my 2 cents