New Dating Website (Cost to Build)

[Damien]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

If you get the template you get the basic code and then start customising the look.
Take a look at x-cart and the basic templates and then how customised it can get by modifying the view scripting.
http://www.ryandesignstudio.com/portfolio-xcart.html
Shows some examples of how the look and feel of the same database can be adjusted.

It really depends what your doing, if you are really setting up a professional site then you should avoid templetes and build a site that meets your exact requirements from the group up and is free of bloat and unneeded options and code.

[SMHarman]

True but if you look at the FGU cost and the cost of buying the template and developing and the ongoing development and support the templates recieve I would still think the template approach is the better starting position.

Looking at the above you would pay $2k so GBP1k for the template. So say you want your own server cert etc I will be generous and say that is also GBP1k for the first year.

On the numbers above that leaves someone to spend GBP30k to customise. You can probably customise away for GBP10k

[Halcyon]

I really hope this guy has studied the market as from where I'm looking the market seems quite full with plenty of match.com style sites or people even using free social networking sites to find dates.

[NeilH]

Hiya

1st... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not use SMHarman's idea of xcart.

Reason : google dork : "X-CART. Powerful PHP shopping cart software"

Is exploitable and easy to hack into all your customers details.

I am not going to explain how to do it but lets just say its a massive way of nailing peoples websites.

PHP programs from my experience and many others are not the sensible way to go just now. And if someone pipes in that the new php disables the rfi etc then do some research as it not always a great idea to disable it as it kills some functions that rely heavily on the web.

Neil

[SMHarman]

I didn't suggest that you used x-cart for a dating site I was comparing the costs of FGU build to starting with something that meets many needs. X-cart is for selling things, not for dating sites.

[NeilH]

Sorry mate. Didnt mean to cause any offence, it's just that i have seen to many webservs compromised because of poorly installed php programs and it costs some people who pay for the bandwidth a month a massive amount when they get the bill in. It's their fault because they did not secure the system.

Neil

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by NeilH

Sorry mate. Didnt mean to cause any offence, it's just that i have seen to many webservs compromised because of poorly installed php programs and it costs some people who pay for the bandwidth a month a massive amount when they get the bill in. It's their fault because they did not secure the system.

Neil

Indeed, those are common exploits for a poorly installed x-Cart. So common that x-cart installation instructions tell you to delete those files once the application and those modules are installed. Simple additional security like adding .htaccess controls to the /admin folder and changing the file rights on other folders help a great deal also.

As you said, poorly installed. Nowt to say that the dev that creates a brand new $64k dating site also does not poorly install it.