I am interested in building a grade A tier 1 personals website. I
don't want to cut any corners though I'm not looking to burn through
cash wastefully. I received a fantastic answer in my previous question
(personals website # 3) and want to build on that answer here. In
question # 3 the researcher broke the question into several different
points, please refer to that question throughtout your your research.
Number 1 from the answer of my previous question. Initial idea
development.. I was told from the researcher that this "high level"
planning phase is extremely important and must be thought through
meticulously. He indicated that it would take about 60 hours of work
brainstorming and committing to paper a detailed plan as well as a
flowchart for the site. He indicated the the cost of those type of
individuals who would carry this out would be around $ 40 per hour.
Furthermore he brought up the potential of having "several sites in
one" that share the same basic site architecture but appeal to
different audiences (e.g. vegetarians, African Americans, senior
citizens, spiritual singles, etc). What would the advantages and
disadvantages of doing this? Are there others that currently do this
type of thing and could I have a couple of examples? I have talked to
a guy that handles other computer things for me and he indicated that
I wouldn't want someone that would be willing to do this for $ 40 an
hour. He feels like it will cost me more like $ 55 or $ 65 an hour.
What would the differences be? would they be significant? Should I
expect to pay more, like $ $ 75 or $ 100 an hour? How many hours would
it take to do this at the highest/best level? How much time will it
take from Day 1 to completion? Should I find some type of professor or
other highly esteemed individual that could look at the "finished"
product and give their input? Someone as talented in building this
type of site like Oren Etzioni would be to artificial intelligence?

Number 2. from the answer of my previous question. Site
Copy/Questionnaire and other writing. Read his answer to this point
and give me an in-depth response to every type of feature you can find
and what you believe the costs per hour and number of hours it would
take to do each of them..answer this in a fashion where I could pick
and choose in some type of ala carte fashion to determine which ones I
would like to add initially and over time.

Question number 3. Read the answer from my previous question expound
on what John had to say. Is this part of the project something that I
should take to some large company for their "expertise" or can I also
find the type of high level people I would need that works on their
own. How much per hour and how many hours to have an enviable result
from any personals website's point of view?

I am going to stop here and post the rest of the answers to question #
3 to another question. Remember I am not looking to waste cash,
however I want to have the top-notch site. I need some type of
justification for the number of hours you choose and how much of a
buffer you are adding to ensure success. I am spending quite a bit of
money on these questions and I expect to have very professional,
knowledgable and in-depth answers. If any part of this question seems
to be unanswerable then post your thoughts so that I can see how I can
receive what I need and you can feel confident that you can provide
the best answer in a way that I will feel satisfied.

Thank You,
Joel

---

Request for Question Clarification by webadept-ga on 25 Oct 2002 07:05 PDT

Wow.. I'm dead tired. So I'm posting this incomplete answer as a
clarification and putting it out for the rest of the researchers to
add to and answer the last two parts. Can't keep my eyes open anymore
:-) But I didn't want all this work to just fade away in some obscure
part of my hard drive. Please accept the next researcher as having
full credit if they complete the next two parts.

Thanks, 

webadept-ga



Q. Number 1 from the answer of my previous question. Initial idea
development.. I was told from the researcher that this "high level"
planning phase is extremely important and must be thought through
meticulously. He indicated that it would take about 60 hours of work
brainstorming and committing to paper a detailed plan as well as a
flowchart for the site. He indicated the the cost of those type of
individuals who would carry this out would be around $ 40 per hour.

You can't put enough value on planning. If you have a good plan and
really know what you want to do and who you are doing it for, the rest
is a cakewalk. The troubles start when this is not done to the best
exent it can be. This is the same with most endeavors, but with code
and design it really shows in the latter stages when it's not done
well.

Finding a person to do this for you could be a bit of a hunt, but
there are plenty of people out there who are capable. You know the
type of site you are going to design. Let's break that down first.

a) It's a Personals site. 
b) We want people to come to find other people and meet them. 
  q) Why? 
  	a) Romance
	b) Friendship
	c) Someone to hang out with
	d) Because they can't do it any where else for whatever reason. 

  q) What are they getting? 
        a) A place to find out about someone before making contact
	b) A place that they might see someone "around" and become interested
	c) A place where they could be "discovered" 

  q) What are we getting? 
        a) Profit from ads and affiliate programs
	b) Profit from user subscriptions


Your breakdown is probably better thought out but it will help me
answer things if I have some type of break down here to work from, so
I did the quick and dirty thing.

What we have here is several program-set areas already. 
a) Each user needs his/her own "home page" a place where they can
stick their "resume of love". This area has a list of basic questions
everyone answers (ie Hair, Height, Career, Pet's name, etc) and a
place where they can put in their own comments and desires.

b) each user can put in a picture

We need a search so that some of these areas can be looked up. 

That's a basic personal. There's about 5000 of those out there,
wallowing around in the ether. So we need a few more things.

Ideas - 
	Poetry Contests
	Writing Contests
	Photography Galleries
	A forum where people can discuss things like dating. 
	Worst Date ever contest
	Best Date ever contest
	Travel Write ups 

Most of those are from the users so they can be "discovered" People
like to be discovered on the Internet, they like to feel that they are
interesting enough to stand out and be noticed. We need to give them
the oppertunity.


Okay, now the person you are looking for should be able to write
something like that up and back it up with ideas and designs, and
"show" you how each one of those ideas are going to work, what they
are expected to bring in, and how that translates to successful
profits for you. This person may be a programmer and may not be. But
they know something about the personals business and the dating/single
lifestyle ON THE WEB. Real world stuff doesn't work here, the mind set
is different.

For web design purposes we hope the person is a programmer or designer
of some type to the extent that they at least know how pages fit
together and what the best navigation through the site will be, so she
can help the programmers out in getting the vision into code. Either
that or we need an intuitive programmer who can get that done from the
ideas and designs she is presenting.

We also need someone that is capable of getting the design to work
with the search engines and knows things like what PageRank is and how
that works, and things like not to put doorway pages on the site.

Every hour this person creates a good, searchable, attractive, design
will save at least 20 hours in programming and marketing latter on. Is
she worth $60 an hour?, you bet.


Q. Furthermore he brought up the potential of having "several sites in
one" that share the same basic site architecture but appeal to
different audiences (e.g. vegetarians, African Americans, senior
citizens, spiritual singles, etc). What would the advantages and
disadvantages of doing this?

I wouldn't have separate sites, I would put these in a single site
with these different areas available. Some people that "find each
other" don't hang out in the same areas. Roaming around is a big thing
here, so don't separate them. Keep them all together when ever
possible. The advantages are that they might find each other faster,
because of common likes and dislikes. But for your purposes do you
really want that? It's good for the user, but not so good for the
site. We want returning people. People that "almost" find someone.
After all, once they do, you lost two customers (at least for a
while).

Also splitting them up makes for smaller populations so ads and
affiliates are harder to push, and sell.

Spilting them up also creates several sites to maintain instead of one
with code updates and feature creation. In a year you will be pulling
your hair out trying to keep up with them.


Q. Are there others that currently do this type of thing and could I
have a couple of examples?

The "best" and often used for mimicking personals site on the web
right now is Lavalife

http://www.lavalife.com

They keep the users on the same site but have you choose your main
interest in being here.
Dating
Relationship
Intimate Encounters

and call these "Three Exciting Areas to Explore." But everything is
running off the same back engine.

One thing to notice about Lavalife is that they don't have a PageRank,
so all of their visits are coming from heavy marketing. This is a
design flaw and not something you want to mimic. The main reason is
that doorway page they are using, looks great, doesn't get time
traffic at all. Which probably explains the low amount of people they
have in there as well.


Then there's this one Friend Finder 

http://guest.friendfinder.com

Friendfinder has a single site and breaks off into other areas such as
:

http://amigos.com

http://guest.asiafriendfinder.com

http://www.filipinofriendfinder.com

http://guest.bigchurch.com

I noticed many of the pictures are the same on some of them which was
interesting, so they either use the same photo database for their
pages or users are going and creating several files on all the pages.
Either way, can't be helping the company to do that except in the
stats area of course.


Then there is Dream mates 
http://www.dreammates.com 

Which does basically the same thing as Lavalife. 
as does 
Platinum
http://www.platinumromance.com
(little annoying here :-) 


Q. I have talked to a guy that handles other computer things for me
and he indicated that I wouldn't want someone that would be willing to
do this for $ 40 an hour. He feels like it will cost me more like $ 55
or $ 65 an hour. What would the differences be?

That's not really something that can be answered. There's a saying
that you get what you pay for, but I'm hoping my answer so far has
given you an idea of how to decide if the person you are talking to is
a person that can do the job, no matter what they are being paid. That
they want more money is not always a sign that they are better able to
do the job. I wouldn't be against paying someone qualified to do this
$65.00 per hour, but their wage is not the deciding factor. Do they
know what they are doing? and can they do it? (Just as a side note, I
would charge $55 for this job, but that's just as a guideline)

Q. would they be significant? 

The significant factor you are looking for is someone that can answer
PageRank questions and tell you why the site is designed the way it
is. I would pull questions off the answers you've gotten from the
Researchers here and see what they say and how they match up. I have a
friend back east that was charging $30.00 an hour for web design and
not getting any calls. I told her to raise her rates and now she gets
calls. Her work hasn't changed in quality at all, she's just as good
as she was at $30.00.

For the initial phase you want breath of experience and someone who
knows the area you are designing for.


Q. Should I expect to pay more, like $ $ 75 or $ 100 an hour? 

That is a bit out of the range. 


Q. How many hours would it take to do this at the highest/best level?

Covered this I think. 


Q. How much time will it take from Day 1 to completion? 

Research and Marketing guidelines. 
3 concept designs. 
Few meetings for Goals and features. 5-7 meetings to brain storm
Get with the programmers and database guys. Go over what you are going
to do
Start the site, add refinements, changes, new ideas as things begin. 

60 hours sounds about right. 


Q. Should I find some type of professor or other highly esteemed
individual that could look at the "finished" product and give their
input?

This sounds like muddying the waters to me. The web is always changing
so what could they tell you that your main designer couldn't?


Q. Someone as talented in building this type of site like Oren Etzioni
would be to artificial intelligence?

I really like the visual this gives me. :-) This should be the someone
sitting in front of you.



--- Not Answered Yet. ---- 

Number 2. from the answer of my previous question. Site
Copy/Questionnaire and other writing. Read his answer to this point
and give me an in-depth response to every type of feature you can find
and what you believe the costs per hour and number of hours it would
take to do each of them..answer this in a fashion where I could pick
and choose in some type of ala carte fashion to determine which ones I
would like to add initially and over time.



Question number 3. Read the answer from my previous question expound
on what John had to say. Is this part of the project something that I
should take to some large company for their "expertise" or can I also
find the type of high level people I would need that works on their
own. How much per hour and how many hours to have an enviable result
from any personals website's point of view?

Looks like I lucked out and no one else jumped in here for you. So,
here's the rest of the answer.

Number 2. from the answer of my previous question. Site
Copy/Questionnaire and other writing. Read his answer to this point
and give me an in-depth response to every type of feature you can find
and what you believe the costs per hour and number of hours it would
take to do each of them..answer this in a fashion where I could pick
and choose in some type of ala carte fashion to determine which ones I
would like to add initially and over time.

Reference Paragraph

-----
The really good dating
sites have many other features besides the actual ads. There's the
front page/sales copy, dating advice columns, horoscopes, a help
section etc. Also, the really good dating sites have clever and
original questionnaires that really allow people to size each other
up. This can also take time to develop. Count on about 100 hours for
the writing and questionnaire development at $40 an hour.
 

-----

a) There's the front page/sales copy

Copy on the web is much different than copy any where else. Criteria
and availability for Search Engines needs to be blended with good and
interesting content. It's not an easy thing to do, and many writers
are not aware of the balance of how to do it properly. About a month
ago I wrote a paper on this which I've used on my website, but I can't
link to my own website for reference here. So, I'll paste most of that
article here, because it's a very important part of successful listing
for Internet business.

Begin article paste. 


Effective content for a website requires some planning. On a page you
want to help with your PageRank, at least 300-500 words should be in
text format. For new websites it would be good to make these numbers
between 700 and 900. Usage of HTML tags such as tags for titles and
subtitles. as well as word groupings need to be planned out, and
created, so the index result of the page is as good as it can be, and
the content is still clear and understandable, if not enjoyable to the
visiting human reader.

Choice in words is always important, but on a website interested in
PageRank the choice of words is vital, and only someone with a very
good idea of what it takes to optimize a page for search engines is
going to get you good results. This doesn't mean you can't do your own
copy for search engine optimization, what it means is that there is
another level the author needs to keep in mind when doing so.

A search engine optimized page of copy has several elements most copy
doesn't. Spelling is important, as well as grammar and punctuation,
these keep the reader under the impression that you understand the
language you are writing in, but the word choices are just as
important. For instance, my company is leaning more to the SEO areas
and away from just basic web site design. We feel the real business is
here. Now with Google's PageRank and other search engines moving
toward a more Relevant look at web pages for listing order, this
provides a niche which not only are we qualified to do, but allows for
growth and profit in the area as well. Optimization is satisfying work
as well. Graphic layouts and cool programs are nice but being able to
help a company create an Internet presence in an area that is easily
measured is much better. You can see PageRank. It's right there on the
Google bar, very little guessing involved.

Your website's listing on a search however is not solely based on
PageRank. Page Relevance is very important at the search engine level.
A page's Relevance to a query is controlled by its copy, the text on
the page, which can be indexed by the robots. This means the text is
text, not graphic pictures of text. Text content is the only element
of a page the robots can read. They can see there are images of
course, but if there is no textual aspect to the page at all, it's
very likely to not list the page at all on the engine. So any text,
optimized or not for the search engines, is better than no text at
all.

Your Page Relevance has to do with what your text says, the content of
the page. Relevance is easy to see. For instance and obvious scenario
is we wouldn't want a Disneyland site coming up is we are looking for
information on home pregnancy tests. Disneyland probably has a higher
PageRank, but its not relevant to the search. A more subtle example is
this search on Google. Arizona Home Loans. The website
www.sunnations.com comes up on top with a PageRank of 5, then we have
www.123-arizona-home-loans.com with a PageRank of 3. So far so good.
Then we have www.arizona-loan.com with a Page Rank of 5 ??? This is
where Page Relevance stepped in and said, Yes you have a 5 but the
other site is more relevant to this search. Even more visual is the
Spam pages Wells Fargo is using on this same search which have
PageRanks of 7 or higher, which list down even further.

Why 300 words? Google, as well as other search engines, want to give
the best results for a search as possible. This keeps users choosing
their search engine over other search engines. They know that someone
searching for these keywords in a query is probably looking for
information on the subject, not just a site trying to sell them
something. If a page has more than 300 words on it and a high
Relevancy, then it has a strong possibility of being a web page which
the questioner would be interested in, meaning the page has a high
information value to it, rather than a billboard on the information
highway.

There is much more to Page Relevance however than writing a bunch of
keywords and phrases into several paragraphs. Sentence length, and
word size have a great deal to do with a Relevance ranking for the
page. The use of HTML tags has much to do with it as well. Page Title,
and page size are important. In fact keywords are just a start, and
there is a limit to how many to use on the page. After 20 instances of
the same word or phrase and you start running the risk of the page
being thrown into the "spamming" category, where it won't be listed at
all.

The total physical size of the page, to show Relevance the best should
be comprised mostly of text. This means that if you download the page
at a size of 20k, images included, the text of the page should be
10-15k to really show good relevance. Remember that right or wrong,
Relevance deals with text, not pictures. Of course we have to stick
the code in that equation as well. The more text on the page the less
code it takes to create it, and thus the higher amount of real
information is probably on the page. A great deal of code, means that
the page has other things going on which is more than showing
information on the chosen subject. The amount of code on a page is
generally a problem for those using programs such as Front Page to
create their website, because these WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
get) type of Web page Editors tend to add a great deal of code to a
page which is not necessary. Some of them such as Macromedia's
Dreamweaver, have functions, which clean up the code. But even this
(very good) program has its limitations in this area if the author
doesn't have a high level of understanding HTML code.

Then there is word size and sentence size, which plays a factor, for
the engines and the readers. Using small words, of three characters or
less, in short sentences leave very little for the robots to chew on,
and too long of sentences with only large words leans towards the
spamming mark. Yes, there is a balance beam to walk, and since Google
and the other engines don't publish exactly the calculations they use
in judging page Relevance, we walk this beam in the dark most of the
time.

What we at {edited content} have found most effective is the use of a
good Grammar Checker, and writing to a reading level of High School,
with word size and sentence length. We are not suggesting that Google
uses such a tool to judge the content of a page, but doing this has
produced very good results, and supplies us a gauge in which to judge
the page content ourselves as well. The end results have shown that if
it's not exactly what is done, it's at least a parallel tool. The Page
Relevance on the query lists have shown us that there is something too
this level of writing, which we have been testing for several months
at the time of this writing. Kim Ryan's Lingua::EN::Fathom provides
readability and general measurements of English text, including the
Fog and Flesch Kincaid indices. So we use this Perl Mod to read the
content of a page and get the measurements, so far it's been a very
good tool for monitoring changes made by Google in this area.

The next step of course is to find out which Keywords to salt the
pages with. These might be easy for you to come up with, but are they
really being used by searchers on the web? That's the real question.
Let's take a Home Loan website. What are the real keywords to use. One
suggestion we got was that a Home Loan page should have a calculator
on it, and to use that as the keyword structures, and thus attracting
visitors to the website by offering a good tool for them to use. This
is a very good tactic by the way, and it made logical sense. Later
research found very few people search for "Mortgage Calculator" on
search engines. So really its not a good idea for the keyword aspect
of the page but still a good idea to have the feature, because it
might bring users back.

If your page has been up for a while you have an advantage over new
sites, because you can check your web server logs to find out what
people are looking for, if your ISP provides complete logs that is. If
you are new, then make sure your ISP provides complete logs for your
website. You are going to want them. In a complete log system, the
query words used on the search engine to find your page will show up
in the Referring section of the line. There are many programs which
read these logs and parse out the information for you. One of these is
awstats, an OpenSource project.


end article paste. 

As you can see, the copy for you website has a bit more too it than
most copy professions take into consideration. Your main designer
should be able to research enough to find the right key words for your
website and help the copy people. But the writing talent may be a bit
beyond that person and another person is probably necessary. This also
shows why the 100 hours were suggested for this area of the site
building from shiva777-ga.

b) horoscopes

There are services which will provide an on going horoscope in XML
download with can update your site dynamically. These services are
subscription and sometimes offer day, week and month readings per your
subscription request.

Setting up the feed and database to hold past ones 
	programming hours : 10 - 15 

Places that offer this service

Content Solutions at Astrology.com
http://solutions.astrology.com/scripts/runisa.dll?TS

Web Content Syndicatoins
http://www.fastwater.com/Library/General/v1-5_syndic-sellside.php3

Other web content providers
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Content_Management/Content_Providers/


c) a help section

This is going to be quite a bit of writing. Much of the Optimized type
copy isn't as important in this area. A good basic, clear format is
what is needed. Help sections are often open to those with out a
subscription to the main areas, as a method of letting users see what
is available and how well documented your site is. I noticed most of
the Personal websites I've looked at over the last few days don't take
advantage of this very powerful tool to get people to pull their
Credit Card out and check out the full service. Skipping this step
would be a mistake. Besides that you have the oppertunity for a large
section of text to be on your site, which can only help your PageRank.

	Hours Text Writer	:   50-200 (really depends on the number of
functions you have)
	Programmer Hours	:   10-20 (based on static, or dynamic seniros
respectively)

d) clever and original questionnaires

	Writer Hours : Could be as much as 75-100 hours but more likely down
around 40.

	Programmer Hours (Add, Edit functions) :  10 hours max 

	i) Need Search functions which
	   can find others using criteria 
	   from these questioners

               Programmer hours  :  20-35 depending on the level and
type of search designed.
	   

Other Functions you will probably want which aren't mentioned here

a) Personal Diaries

	This is a form type program, allows for entires to be made, perhaps
some little graphic "mood" icons to stick on there. Keeps the diaries
in record tables, and visitors can go back through and read these
public/private diaries. (probably members only)

	Programmer Hours : 20 max 
		Add Function to block certain users from reading the diaries
		Programmer Hours : 10 max
		

b) Forum Discussions

	A forum is a large program with lots of details involved I suggest
you use a OpenSource project and adapt it to your needs. This one is
very robust and adaptable to anyone with a reasonable skill level in
PHP. Using the MySQL database and is very fast. It looks really good
too.
	
	http://www.PHPbb.com

	Adapting Programmer hours : 10 - 50 depends on what, if any, features
you want to add or block.
	Make sure you check their site for the features you are looking for
before having the programmers take on the building of them. They may
already have them there and available for you.

	Building from scratch (not recommenced) : 300-500 hours. 

c) Chat Rooms
	There are several chat room programs out there, with lots of
features. Check out Fresh meat and search for Chat Room programs
	http://www.freshmeat.net

	Adapting Programmer hours : 10 - 50 depends on what, if any, features
you want to add or block.
	Building from scratch (not recommended) : 300-500 hours. 	
	

d) Blocking functions for those no longer wishing to be contacted by
certain members

The idea here is that if someone becomes rude or unwanted in the
members area, the member offended can block contact by this person at
the personal message and chat levels. I would suggest also the block
to the personal diaries described above. This keeps users feeling safe
and welcome in your community.

	Programmer hours	: 30 - 60. The code will need to take into account
the required lookup from the database to see who this user has blocked
and to compare this with the users_id of the person requesting access.
On smaller sites this is generally not much of a problem, but on heavy
traffic sites it can be an unnecessary load on the system. The coder
may need time to and trial to find the right method of doing this to
keep the system running as fast and as accurate as possible. One
method may be to have an XML look up instead of a database look up.
This has disadvantages as well, the XML page may get corrupted because
of some bug in other code, and become un-usable. Lots of things to
think about and try, that's why the hours are so spread out as they
are on this one. Personally I would go with a separate, three column
data file with a good index system for this, but I'm not working on
the final project and there may be other things to consider.




Question number 3. Read the answer from my previous question expound
on what John had to say. Is this part of the project something that I
should take to some large company for their "expertise" or can I also
find the type of high level people I would need that works on their
own. How much per hour and how many hours to have an enviable result
from any personals website's point of view?

Reference Paragraph

3) Graphic Design - You want this to be good quality and to look
really professional or no one is going to be breaking out their credit
cards. Many smaller companies skimp on this part and it costs them
big. For a major front page design/theme and perhaps another 20 pages
or so of layout I would guess 120 man hours of work at $45 an hour.
 
I would go with the freelance person or inside person. The advantage
is getting to know them and them getting to know you. He's right about
this. The look and feel of your site is very important.

That's the trouble with websites like this. There are a lot of areas
that if you don't do them all right, it won't matter how well the
others were done. I do know a freelance graphic artist who does
fantastic work for these types of websites. She would be perfect for
you, and this price range is in her area for something like this. You
can contact Tami at (858)492-9460. She's okay with you contacting her
for this type of work. A note here. My contract with Google says I
can't do any more for you than I've done here, and you may be tempted
to get a hold of me through her, or others. If you do, I can't work
directly for you. I really like having you here as a customer, and
this project sounds fun and exciting, but I really like working as a
Researcher, so I will always choose that over anything else. That may
sound a bit conceited, but needed to put that on the table.

There are several other graphic artists and site designers out there
that do good work as well.
Here another one I feel comfortable listing here.

UBU Enterprises
http://www.ubu-online.com/


Again if you have any questions on this or feel that I haven't
answered as fully as you would like please don't hesitate to use the
Clarification function, and I'll try to answer more completely in any
area you feel you require it.

Thanks, 

webadept-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 28 Oct 2002 10:18 PST

Hi Joel, 

Haven't forgotten about this, I'm waiting on a few other programmers
to get back to me so I can give you a more "rounded" bid totals than
just mine. In some areas I'm much faster than other guys and slower in
others, so I thought it best to give you something based on more than
just my experience.

They should get back to me soon and I'll post as soon as they do. 

webadept-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by joel1357-ga on 28 Oct 2002 13:05 PST

webadept,

I was discouraged in the beginning with your answers, but I can tell
now that you are all over it. This is an great example of why you are
so highly esteemed within this community.

Thanks,
Joel

---

Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 05 Nov 2002 01:09 PST

From # 5 

webadept-ga,  
 
I need the development costs, or design and graphic artist costs. 
 
Thanks, 
Joel

Most of those I have in here. I thought I might have messed up, maybe
I should have read the question again during the last week, but I was
off on other things. I did get the emails back, sorry for the wait,
but it is the silly season for programmers with real jobs. :-)
Everyone wants the new changes before the Christmas shopping season
starts. Good for them, but not so good when you have to wait on them
to get back to you.

Okay, 

Development Costs

Main Description of needs. 

1) Main Page design. The hook. 
2) 25 pages of text and introduction areas. 
3) Help Section
4) Profile entry and search
5) Member profile page
6) Member search page
7) Member communication
8) Banner ad entry and switching ( covers all ad areas) 
9) Graphic Design and Logos
10) Database development
11) Back office area
12) Feature areas ( articles, contests, forums) 
13) Menu System
14) Documentation 


Estimates are based on the program using MySQL as the database and PHP
as the main language. Variations will not be much if you decide to go
with another language or database. PHP is very common and easy to find
programmers for.

All said and done, with html, PHP and your Mysql database you are
looking at a project that will take about 36,000 lines of code. This
is a rounded figure of course and isn't very accurate to use for time.
Some code functions can be 50 lines, but take the guy 2 hours to make,
but a function that does the same thing may be done in 15 lines, but
it takes the guy 6 hours to come up with the right code to do that.
Because it's a smaller, and probably better, it runs faster, so in the
long run, this is the guy you want, and the code you want. There's a
lot involved in that and from your previous comments you probably
don't want to be deluged with all the information.

1) Main Page design. The hook. 

Page design for the front page needs colors, content, graphic design
and logo.
	3 main people in the project are the programer, the main designer and
the copy person.
	est time to do this about 2 weeks. Total hours 120, since they won't
be working on this full time. There is some "germination" time
involved and probably several changes to get the "right look and feel"

	Total 120 hours developement 



2) 25 pages of text and introduction areas. 

Once that main page is done you have a basis for look and feel for the
rest of the website. Just about everything will be designed off that
main page. So our hours of involvement there drop off, and coding
hours and copy hours now are your larger areas of cost. The main
designer needs to be constantly involved, but more of a guardian at
this point than anything else. These will include legal notices,
member benefit pages, what your site is about, how it's different..
etc.

	People involved, Main designer, programmer, copy writer, most hours
are on the copy writer, about 80-100 hours. Main designer 10 hours,
programmer 20 hours.  Programmer is creating the templates for the
text. Main designer is creating the "look and feel".

Hours 	10 designer
		20 template creation
		80-100 text creation

	Total 130 hours development.

3) Help Section
	People involved, Main designer, programmer, copy writer, most hours
are on the copy writer, about 80-100 hours. Main designer 10 hours,
programmer 20 hours.  Programmer is creating the templates for the
text. Main designer is creating the "look and feel".

Hours 	10 design
		20 template creation
		80-100 text creation

	Total 130 hours development.

4) Profile entry and search

This section is for the profiles to be entered and the profiles to be
searched.

	40 hours programming
	10 hours designer

	Total 50 hours development


5) Member profile page

	This is where the members are seen. Most of this is design, the rest
is template creation for the programmer, no real "copy" is needed
here.
	
	10 hours designer
	15 hours programmer

	Total 25 hours development


6) Member search page

	Good search engines take some time to create. I'm giving you here a
middle of the road bid, that will work off the main cells of the
member profile page.

	70 hours programmer
	10 hours designer

	Total 80 hours development

7) Member communication

	This is the area where the members can send each other notes and
private messages. This can get rather involved to with features and
things, or you can have it pretty bare bones. This estimate is for a
middle of the road solution.

	30 hours programmer
	4 hours designer

	34 hours development


8) Banner ad entry and switching ( covers all ad areas) 
  
   If you are going to use banner ads and the like you are going to
want some type of system which rotates these on the pages and keeps
track of them. This is a large function area with quite a bit of
detail involved if you do it right. It needs to run fast and clean,
because it's getting called several times, for just about every page.

	60 hours programmer

	total 60 hours development


9) Graphic Design and Logos

	Most of this is in the other areas, as she designs new pages to go
with the main look and feel of the project in progress. But I would
add at least 100 hours into the budget for the unseen. It's always
there and you can't really plan for it, that's why we call it the
"unseen" :-)

	100 hours designer. 

	total 100 hours designer. 


10) Database development

Once you have a list of all the features you want and where everything
is going to go, then the programmer has a basis to start on the
database. This is his skeleton, or backbone that everything else
depends on. You will be able to judge how well you did your start up
planning by how often he has to change this data structure during
development.

	80 hours programmer

	total 80 hours development


11) Back office area and security setups. 

	This is all your reports, payment areas, schedules, calendars,
subscriptions, etc. There is a lot in here. Most of this is
programming but it's what I call the "ditch digging" of programming.
It's tedious and long. There's no real "easy" way to do this area.

	150 hours programmer
	30 hours designer 

	total 180 hours development

12) Feature areas ( articles, contests, etc) 

Hours 	10 design  (one time )
		40 programmer (one time template creations )
		40-100 text creation (really depends on how much you do)

	Total 90 - 150 hours development.


13) Menu system

	60 hours programmer
	35 hours designer



14) Documentation 

	I can't stress enough on making sure that your programmer does this
part and spends the 80 hours doing it. Good documentation of this
project is absolutely imperative. You need it. It has to be done. It
will save you 100's of hours in development time later during upgrades
to the system or adding new features, and trouble shooting. Make him
do it and pay him for it.

	80 hours programmer

	total 80 hours development


Again, sorry for the long wait on this. 

webadept-ga

webadept-ga,

I have talked over your answer with people that work for me. They felt
like your answer was superb, and were able to break your answer down
to a level I could understand. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and
thoroughness. My only request is that in the future when answering my
questions that you would over-compensate for the fact that I am a
technical idiot.

Again Thank You,
Joel

Really great and indepth answer - job well done. One of the best
answers I've seen in a little while :-)

i have been seeing this answer for a update for 3 days now. Is it a
norm for the researchers to take this much time for clarification
answer as they have received their dues already?