Understanding e-commerce start-up needs

Can you help stop my head from spinning!

[newbie]

Hi all. I'm working on a business plan for an e-commerce site, and am trying to quickly learn the components and costs of making the site a reality. Needless to say, I've become a tad overwhelmed with the choices and options for hardware and software, and could use some help making sense of it all. Although I have a million and one questions (which is reflective of my learning curve), I'll try and limit them to the most important for me at this time.

The site will be a subscription service, so in the short term my 'product line' will only consist of a handful of subscription choices (3-4). I may in the future want to sell additional products not related to a subscription, such as digital content, so need to have a scalable solution upfront.

What I'm beginning to understand are the complexities associated with the database not related to the shopping cart, but in the content I'll be providing. Because of the content database size (greater than 200K records) I'm being advised that it will influence what server platform I should get for hosting, and what database I should use. When I look at local hosting and developing services for small business, they don't seem to offer a big enough solution. I've started requesting quotes from higher-end web developers, haven't received any back yet, but am afraid their prices will be too large for a start-up like me.

Not having a complete understanding of the technology (yet!) makes me feel vulnerable, and I don't trust that I won't get price gouged. To help me make the best decision on web developer/host I'd appreciate some advice. Basically I'd like your opinion (or advice on what web resources would help) on what mix of hardware/software would be best. Another problem I have (again because of my learning curve) is knowing what's easily programmed and what is complicated (i.e. customization adds to $$$).

What server platform is best suited to handle a >200K record database? And what data base would be the most efficient/effective? I personally will be creating the field content for the db, so I also need to know what software to use for this (I'm not too concerned that it's highly user-friendly, only that it's stable and can be half-easily learned). I'll also personally want to continually add and update the rest of the site content (text and digital images).

To the customer, the database will be fully searchable and will display the search results and then allow them to add a flag to any record so that future searchers can link to the flagged customer's 'profile'. Without going into more detail, basically the site will require the 'smarts' to allow for actions to be taken based on customer preferences.

I've rambled enough! Any advice would be appreciated, or any net resources you can refer me to would also be a big help. As you can no doubt tell, I have a lot to learn, and of course a short period of time to learn it. I'm just afraid at this stage of business planning, that I've come up with a 'big business' idea on a start-up budget. Thanks in advance.

[Shakil]

welcome to Webmasterworld, do not forget to read the Welcome Post [webmasterworld.com]

Without going into the technicality of things (which i know very little about)

Can I give you a bit of advice:

1, Get a techy person who will NOT be working on the project to explain your requirements to you, this person will tell you the truth along with expectations and pitfalls of various solutions.

I myself have lost lots of hair and sleepless nights over similar stuff, now I just go ask a developer to break it down for me:

1, What I NEED
2, What I may NEED
3, What I definately do NOT need.
4, How much will it all Cost.

I have found techies to be very cost concious, unlike marketers, and will NOT blow your budget on Overkill.

I know this is probably not the answer you are looking for, but take it from me, it works this way, and allows you to concentrate on other important things

Shak

[bcc1234]

1) MySQL or PostgreSQL (my personal preference) would be able to handle 200k tuples without any problems. Last time I messed around with MySQL - it crashed after about 3 mil records in one table; PostgreSQL worked fine with over 5 mil in one table, but was getting slow.
Afaik, MySQL has better support for text-indexing (search) but lacks many other features.
What I'm trying to say is that for 200k records - don't even think about Oracle, MS SQL, or DB2 - those 3 are overkill.

2) I agree with what Shakil said. If you want to extend it - hire somebody to be a project manager. That's the way it's done. You are not paying him to develop, but make him responsible for the end solution. Otherwise, you'll be completely dependent on the programmer that does your stuff. And after a few months the programmer will just dump you and the new programmer or maintainer will tell you that the system is unusable and has to be re-developed from scratch.

3) IT solutions are just like the rest of the world. You get what you pay for. Don't go for low-end bidders or you WILL be sorry. Seen that many times (and made a lot of money fixing other people's results of being cheap) :)
If the developer is local - think of how much time would you spend working for somebody for that amount of pay. That's your estimate.
There are many desperate developers out there, who would accept a project for a small amount. Why? Cause they need money right away. Once you paid a deposit (or 2/3 of the total at some stage of development) - you are not an income any more, you are a bourdain. And you will be treated as a liability that just won't get lost. Strangely, but offering bonuses at the end does not really help.

4) Even with a project manager (part-time, if you want to save a bit) - make sure you understand everything that developers are doing. You don't need to know the internals of the implementation, but you MUST understand and APPROVE the reasoning behind the architecture.

5) Good luck.