Thread: Where I should start from?

Anyone can tell me where i should start from and Which host is suitable for me?

1) I want to build a website (or blog? I'm not sure, pls tell me) to introduce various foods and restaurants.

* I'm going to update the site daily (or twice a week), since some restaurants will have promotions regularly.

* I want to allow my website visitors to write some reviews on a specified restaurant/an article.

* Besides of my articles, i want to have a one-page discussion forum, visitors can freely chat there and the contents/topic in the discussion forum will be on a "first in first out" basis (I do not want to store it permanently).

* Also every registered user will have 1 point each time they post a message on the forum.

Do you think I can build such a website (or blog?) without html knowledge (i can learn it if necessary). Thanks.

Henry

Originally Posted by zen00

Anyone can tell me where i should start from and Which host is suitable for me?

1) I want to build a website (or blog? I'm not sure, pls tell me) to introduce various foods and restaurants.

* I'm going to update the site daily (or twice a week), since some restaurants will have promotions regularly.

* I want to allow my website visitors to write some reviews on a specified restaurant/an article.

* Besides of my articles, i want to have a one-page discussion forum, visitors can freely chat there and the contents/topic in the discussion forum will be on a "first in first out" basis (I do not want to store it permanently).

* Also every registered user will have 1 point each time they post a message on the forum.

Do you think I can build such a website (or blog?) without html knowledge (i can learn it if necessary). Thanks.

Henry

Sounds like you could use both...but before you get going you need to start at the bottom and work your way up..You are going to need a basic understanding of html or XHTML so I would start there. Pretty difficult to start with everything you mentioned without knowing the basics at least.

If your going to update something on a daily or weekly basis, probably a blog would do. They are more of a daily diary type of thing, whereby you can add content regularly and receive feedback. I'm not sure if they have forums for blogs, but others will chime in on that.

A website is more professional, and would do nicely in your food/restuarant endeavor. You could add your content, have forums for discussions, reviews and other things. To update a website on a dialy basis, would be one heck of a lot of work, but can be done.

Or like Lisa, you could end up with a combination...A blog linked to a website.

You have some great ideas and it will take a lot of work, but you can do it! Start with the basics, don't get discouraged and build your site one step at a time. If you do this, you will end up with a product you are proud of.

Since you have a lack of knowledge in the scripting language. I would suggest looking into a CMS(Drupal or e107). Both of those will work for what you are looking to do. However, I think you would be better off with e107 in this case. It comes stock with some of the features you are looking for. It has a very nice and clean news section that can be used as a blog and either put on the front page or a page of its own. This also has the ability to let your users submit news articles to your site. with the ability to accept or deny each article before it gets posted live. You can use a number of chat plugins for your chat section but, I think you would be suited better to use a forum for this instead as the chances of enough people being online at the same time to utilize the chat would take a while to develop.