Building a PHP site

[j05hr]

I was on another forum asking how to go about building a website for an estate agent. I kept saying I need a content management system and they said to get CMS out of my head. They said build it in modules one step at a time. Look at other estate agent websites and see what they do and don't have. They also said stay away from tutorials as they won't be very good.

They were a bit useless and not very helpful at answering my questions.

So my questions are, how can you look at exsisting sites back end developments? If tutorials aren't very useful what's the best way to go about it? Commercial CMS's arn't an option as I want to learn how to build my own.

Thanks for all the advice,
Josh

[mack]

What you could do is work out exactly what you need your cms to do, then visit opensourcecms.com and try out the live demos. This will give you an idea of what application comes closest to your needs.

As opposed to writing your own cms from scratch it might be an idea to use an existing app as a building block to configure to meet your needs exactly.

Mack.

[jbinbpt]

Hi Josh,

The modules answer you got is correct. Look at the project and break it down in chunks.

I presume you are looking for a framework that allows a common structure with different data being inserted for different properties. PHP will do that for you.

As far the tutorials answer, I think it's off-base. There are many great references in the library of this sub-forum.

Check this one out [webmasterworld.com]

[j05hr]

Thanks for the replies, I will have a look at the open source place and have a look at them. I will also have a look at the tutorials on this sub forums.

Yeah jbinbpt, it will be the data from different properties to add on, also it will need a search function but that can come much later on after the cms is built.

I have done the Lynda.Com - PHP With MySQL Essential Training which builds a custom CMS but I'm not sure if the security or what not is very good or even if I'd be able to integrate it into my site.

Just looking for guidance how as a novice to go about it all

[jbinbpt]

First is to define the scope of the project. How many properties are expected?

[j05hr]

Well at the moment it's just a project I'm setting up myself (to learn how to do it) if it gets to a situation where it's good enough I will offer it to local Estate Agents. So could be any amount