Re: Matchmaking site

On 9 Aug 2002 at 0:59, Oficina Digital wrote: > Hello, I am new to the list and don't know how kind you are helping > complete beginners in PHP. I intend to set a personals matchmaking site > for people interested in entheogens (http://singlemates.yage.net) I > don't know where to begin, I have some PHP cookbooks handy and am > looking to do it the easy way but have no idea how much work and > knowledge is needed. What I want is for people to log in (using > sessions?), post and modify profile with uploading photos and search for > personals based on location, desired place to live, age, kind of > relationship, etc. I intend to do it it by steps adding features as my > php knowledge increase but would appretiate very much some tips and > hints on where to begin and how to design this project. Some tips on > where and what I shall learn for this project would be of great help. Well I think you've made a good first step by asking others. Iike the idea of a "core". If you cannot create an application that can grow then imho you did not do it right. So the idea that you can start with a limited set of features and grow your application is, imho, a good idea that is possible. Think. Sketch. Write .... don't code anything. Map it out in your mind, your imagination and on paper. It just so happens that I'm working on a singles type site; it is going to be one of those hot or not type sites. I've got the same idea you have. I'll start with something that people will find useful and then I'll grow it. If you were to do it in Perl I could get you started rather quickly as I have an architecture for Perl apps but I don't, not yet, for PHP apps. Mind you, I develop in a virtual environment and so I cannot use a lot of established archtitectures which requires more than one usually gets on a virtual server. Anyhow, think of the core of who your audience is and what they will do. Audience People will register login logout change preferences set preferences upload image(s) People have name age preferences etc. ... build up a data model here. Just think of them and what they will do and what you will need to know about them for them to do those things. I'm just thinking of the top of my head here. BY ALL MEANS do not re-write something someone else already wrote. Look into using modules from Pear and look for modules you can find here: http://pear.php.net/ Oh heck, I was looking in my bookmarks to recommend some links and I found this: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/clancy/phplib.html I need to read that myself. The are saying the right thing here. Lots of classes at this site: http://www.phpclasses.org/mirrors.html?page=%2Findex.html At least read, just read so later, in a few years perhaps, you will have only yourself to blame when you go back to code that was written on the wind: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php Whatever you do, don't just start coding. I'm working on someone else's PHP application right now. Files everywhere, tricks used to source differen files, I think the original programmer (seems that at least 2 had a hand in it) just gave up. I've refused to work on some old stuff I wrote. Better to re-write it I said. Not so much a rewrite as a reorganize. If you spend time thinking how to organize your code in the beginning you will find that growing your app will be a pleasure rather than a nightmare. Peter http://www.coremodules.com/ Web Development and Support at Affordable Prices 901-757-8322 peter@schoenster.com