How can I go about building a web site that sends emails matching each customer to certain products?
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The web site (call it XWZ.COM) should match each customer with products s/he is interested in, if/when these items become available. In detail:
1– Each subscriber is assigned a password that is sent to her personal email for security/ verification. Once subscribers receive their passwords and log on to XWZ, they identify their desired product/s and receive emails telling them to check their XWZ-inbox for product availability.
2– When they logon, and before allowed to the inbox, they are given subscription options.
3– Payments are processed automatically (credit cards. PayPal ..etc)
4– Once subscribers pay and reach their XYZ-inbox, they are told if the product is available. If product becomes available after a week or month, subscriber receive email.
What programming language, sever, database, firewall and other technologies should I use to get this without paying an arm? All technical or marketing tips or references to similar small sites are appreciated.
Comments
Programming language, server, database etc are really not all that important. Most Design/Programming houses have staff on-hand that are capable of programming in php, asp, asp.net, java, javascript, etc.
Your real concern would be hosting set-up for the coders to work with, if you are expecting exceptionally high traffic loads, you will probably not be able to use a shared hosting provider. On the other hand if you are not sure you can probably start with shared hosting which is less expensive and then move to dedicated resources if the need arrives.
To get cost for a project of this nature you need to talk to a company and fully explain how you want the application to work, things like is it subscription based, or a pay when accessing based, how do you want to procvess payments, etc.
Techient
July 10th, 2010 at 9:59 am
Depending on traffic and quality.
Java/JSP – High quality (less chance for bugs), expensive and scales well.
PHP – Messy, but there is a lot of stuff written in it already.
Perl – Not quite as bad as PHP, but still has some of the same problems.
Personally, I would try to use perl or consider using PHP for the web front end and perl for the email functions and any control panels when possible.
You might look around for some of the technology already out there, inspect the source code to determine how viable it is to modify it for your needs.
For subscription stuff, you could consider:
(PHP)
http://www.geniegate.com/listings/dolphin/
It’ll confirm email addresses for you, but, won’t manage the mailings. (you could write code specifically for that later) Full disclosure, I own GenieGate.
As far as the ecommerce, there are a lot of shopping carts out there, look for one that is simple (don’t go for "lots of features" go for "written well and can be modified) I sometimes see people go for whatever has the most toys, this is a mistake for this kind of software, you really want "easy to code in".
You’ll probably want to interface with the product catalog to generate the email, so, your ecommerce package should have a nice table structure and/or good, object oriented code for accessing the products.
It goes without saying, once a package is modified, you can’t "upgrade" it.
It’s important to start off with a decent one that is relatively bug free (or at least, written so that you yourself can fix bugs as the crop up.)