Looking for advice on a big project

What technologies do I need to learn?

[kaled]

I've had an idea that, so far, no one seems to have done before. To implement it, I would need to design a website that...

1. is super secure and reliable - both being absolutely essential.
   
2. can process card payments (in the £50 to £1000 range).
   
3. can make payments to user bank accounts.
   
4. can track movement of monies around internal and external accounts with sufficient accuracy and security to satisfy tax authorities. (Some users might be able to make substantial monies - enough to give up their main jobs.)
   
5. can be scaled to cope with tens of thousands of user accounts.
   
6. can send and receive/forward texts.
   
7. has several levels of permissions.
   

The site would need to be functional rather visually stunning but the ability to stream video would be useful. It would operate in the UK only for at least the first two or three years.

My programming knowledge is essentially based around Windows. I've written stuff in javascript and perl as I needed it but that's all. What technologies and programming languages should I look at for this?

Any and all suggestions will be much appreciated. Book recommendations would be good. At this point, I want to get some idea how much I can do myself and how much I will need outsource. I'm also trying to figure out a way to start with a somewhat minimalist website to generate development money so any thoughts on that would be useful too.

Kaled.

[jackie9527]

you also need a good web domain

[topr8]

1). become intimate with your database! a well structured database with well crafted queries will scale well and also be much faster, not to mention that you should be very familiar with how to make the database as secure as possible.

i'm vaguely concerned with your point 4, although i probably misunderstood what you are tring to do ... i'd check that you don't need some kind of financial services license.

[optik]

You're not going to be able to make payments to peoples bank account unless you basically bribe the bank with a huge deposit like the gambling sites do.

[kaled]

I'm not concerned about domain names at this point - this might sound odd but any old domain name will work within reason - just look at moonpig-dot-com. I don't expect any significant growth/business to come search engines.

Point 4 (banking/payments) is important and certainly looks tricky and yes, I may need some sort of financial services license - I'll look into that. However, when I googled banking software I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of good leads. I've also done a little research to see if I could set up my own bank, however it would seem that would cost £25million upwards so that's something for the future!

I'm going to start writing my business-plan today. As much as anything, this will help me get things straight in my own head. Apart from designing the website and organising a payment system, I'm going to have to find some serious startup money (might have to sell/downsize house) and figure out how get the first few customers.

I'm confident that this can be done but it's going to be very tricky not to mention expensive and most of what I need to know I'm going to have to learn (i.e. it's way outside my area of expertise). Plus, I'll only get one shot so I have to get it right first time.

Assuming I move forward with this, I'm probably going to be asking many more questions!

Kaled.

[rocknbil]

I see money changing hands, tens of thousands of users, revenue service considerations, this is not a one man/one woman job. Due to the money, I would **never** trust it in the hands of outsourcing either, that's a little on the insane side IMO. :-)

When you're dealing with something of this scale involving personal details and money, the first thing I would say you need? A set of servers in a secure location, one that can be physically monitored, and at least two well trusted administrators to maintain it. One for OS/web server(s), one for database server(s) and maintenance. As that grows, you may need to do load balancing and all the other stuff I am clueless about to handle the load. This is not something I'd trust to any leased hosting. Your physical and software considerations will come under close scrutiny and be a prime target for attacks.

If you have these items for a foundation, your administrators - if they are good ones - will help you through the programming and the implementation to keep you from making mistakes. I wouldn't touch something like this without having a solid foundation, that's where I'd start.

[kaled]

Yes, I'm sure you're right about secure servers. One wild idea I had a couple of days ago was Iceland. After the banking collapse, I read that the government there was planning to encourage a server industry to start up. I presume they also have the banking experience I would need. Just a thought - that's some way down the line.

Having now begun working through my business plan, I'm seeing a gross margin ranging from about 2% to about 11% (less fixed overheads). This is a little less than I hoped but should still make it worthwhile.

Kaled.

[caribguy]

The physical location of your servers may have important legal implications. 3 and 4 need to be solved before trying to decide on a technical solution - 10K users does not require an atypical architecture or infrastructure.

[kaled]

I'll be aiming for 100,000+ registered users but I would only expect 10% to 20% of those users per day but this would probably peek in the early evenings. Whatever I go with will have to be scalable and will need real-time backup (even if the financial stuff is hosted elsewhere). There's a lot of research in front of me. I've also got to find my way around certain legal problems - but at least I have some experience and a head for that.

Kaled.

[ang_bain]

kaled have you considered using paypal for your banking and card transactions...then you would only have to hold usernames at your end...but as it was said above your database is the key...