Hiya all

I'm a web designer who has recently started using PHP for web development.
I'd like to advise a client who's interested in starting up an online auction website.

The considerations for the site are:

. Cost Effective
. state of the art interface
. Fully enhanceable for future development
. Easy to modify for a programmer such as: Amending & including different auction formats, adding additional functions & services, Be License free once the software is established, allow total freedom to designing the html output (front end).

I know there are ready made auction solutions out there, but I'm thinking that customisation is limited and difficult and future changes to the business would be difficult and expensive to implement.

I wanted to ask this question to an independant group of PHP programmers to get your opinions on this, and whether it may be better to use a different technology.

Any advice or referals will be greatly appreciated.

    sounds like you would like to develop from scratch your own code? or are you asking for our experience with any php-based open source auction pakages?

    if you are wondering why php would be good to develop from scrath here you go:

    Cost Effective

    php is free, so it will only cost time to implement. But as a developer time is money. If you are more comfortable developing in another language that might be quicker only because you know it better.

    state of the art interface

    you will be restricted by web-browsers for this. There are packages that help you write complient code. PHP comes integrated with the WebServices buzzword, ala XMLRPC and SOAP packages, so any code you deploy on a webserver can be hooked up to any other interface you write for any other platform, and long as it talks SOAP also. You could write a nice looking VB script to manage the auction for instance.

    Fully enhanceable for future development

    PHP will be long lived and allows object oriented code and php5 allows development using Interfaces (ala java) so you can use any oo techniques and stategies you have developed elsewhere for project management

    Easy to modify for a programmer such as:
    Amending & including different auction formats,
    allow total freedom to designing the html output (front end)

    php has access to many templating interfaces, as well as xslt tranformations. So you can either have a template engine write you html, or use your own xml transformations to generate your front end, seperating data from display.

    adding additional functions & services

    you can break up your php code into libraries, and oo inheritance should provide all you would need to expand your code.

    Be License free once the software is established

    php itself comes with no restrictions on licensing code written with it, unless you intend to distribute a modified version of php itself with your code

    hope this helps get you thinking

      Thanks for giving an indepth breakdown of my concerns.

      Sounds like PHP is the way to go.

      What would be a good source of finding local PHP programmers in the UK?
      Are there directories of available programmers?

      If the client was considering taking the PHP auction package route, any ideas on where to search for good ones?
      If there was a decent package which was flexible, I'm assuming it might be an option to modify the package to the requirements.

      Thanks for your input.

        For packages HotScripts.com is a good place to start to get a fair idea however not all the programs that are listed are supported anymore due to the length of them being listed.

        As for freelancing, not sure for UK directory but their are quite a few out there, i dont use any of them so I cannot tell you one that is any good. A google search should help.

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