Web coder needed, not a huge project - Advice wanted also :)

[obsidian desire]

Ok, well i'll get the utterly horrible newbie style question out of the way:
The cheapest .com domain I can see is £9.99 for a year (British pounds, yes, i'm from that small island)
Are there any cheaper than that I could use?

Second, more important request:

Once I buy this domain name, I hope to work closely with a web coder, someone who knows how to get from buying a domain name to managing a full site. Including hosting a forum (advice on which forum to use), and how to serve a site.

Perhaps 2 seperate sites (On 2 domain names) would be a good idea as I have 2 "projects" if you will, to concentrate on. One of which will fuel the other.

You'll have to appreciate that this will be done for free, unless/until the main project takes off, to which a portion of the earnings will be given to you

I don't want to get all secretive and stuff, but i'm kinda afraid of someone stealing my idea, although in all honesty, I hope to get a little company running, as the project itself could be distributed among a few people.
But for now, i wouldn't want any rival sites :P

The project that needs fuel is the development (Ie: just an idea at the moment) of a completely open source, modular (addon card based), games console, practically a computer, but with more emphasis on graphics processing etc (Much in the way of the PS3), the idea being that it's a one time payment of similar cost to any current generation console, yet you can develop your own games, applications, port linux, develop your own addon cards etc. But i don't want to turn this into a advertising thread, i'm just laying out a basic idea

It would be usefull if The site had a blog style front page, To allow for major updates, a screenshot page (for eventual pictures of the hardware), a development blog (for getting into the more technical stuff), a forum page, and a link to other sites page.

Any usefull methods of advertising would be appreciated also and if i've piqued the interest of any hardware modders then don't hesitate to contact me.

 

[Tdata]

I'd like to try for your 'web coder'...  Odd name that... ^_^  PM me and give me a few parameters for a test site and I'll show you my skill level.  If you need a sample now, http://impur.no-ip.org/ac/ , is my clone of AnimeCasting's layout.  Mine loads faster than his... :smile: Well I'll be waiting to hear back.

 

[Xilef]

I can do a quick* website for you.
Credentials

*Quick meaning decent, but when finished I'll give to you and never touch it again.

 

[Mistraval]

You can get domain names a hell of a lot cheaper than that. I'll give you the link here, but I'm not too sure of forum rules here (and I don't feel like reading up on it really) so it might get deleted: www.ezhoster.com. Also, 2 domain names is quite unnecessary and if anything it causes confusion. You'd be far better off with a generic domain name and having your projects as a subdomain ex: projectx.obsidiandesire.com and projecty.obsidiandesire.com. As for your forum, I'd recommend either smf or phpbb. Both are free and relatively simple.

Looking at the direction of your site, and your overall lack of experience with websites, it seems you'd be well off with a cms or blogging software. Try wordpress. It's one of the easiest to learn, and you can find hundreds of themes at http://www.freewpthemes.net It also doesn't hurt that it's free.

Hope your stuff works out.

 

[So fist]

Mistraval, suggesting places for hosting/domain names is fine when in context to someone's inquiries. Just advertising or link spamming out of context is where we'd call it ad spam. Plus the amount of thought in your response shows.

Like Mistraval suggested stick to as much open source stuff as you can. And try and consider what to do with the features the site provides. What will you do with your blog? What will you do with your forum? What niche does one serve that the other doesn't?

phpBB3 v. SMF 1
SMF 1 has an abundantly simpler interface concerning the admin panel settings. On the other side of that coin it has always been buggy, Lacks an action log (which is neccessary if there is more than one admin with access), and it does less than phpBB3 admin panel.

While phpBB3 has a higher learning curve it does carry more out of the box features. It also seems to have a more active modding community that can cater to additional functionalities you might want. However I would warn that modification especially a lot of modification to the back end will complicate the process of patching the software so if you aren't willing to learn a bit about php or have someone who is capable of doing it as a staff member I suggest you keep your modifications to a minimum and just use lightweight stuff in those regards.

Another issue to consider in this argument is the frontend skin or template files. I'm not a fan of phpBB3's default skins and I don't think many with any taste are. You can find some custom skins around but a lot of them are simple color modifications with very light layout changes. I'm sure shadow can talk more about the skinning process for smf since he was involved in that, but for the skins we produced (mostly shadow though) eventually had to go through several drafts before we settled on something we liked.

 

[Flickayy]

Well if you still need a webcoder then im intrested..please either PM me or
email me at rickster090@googlemail.com

my home site is http://blackfire-creations.co.cc

my own forums is http://blackfire-creations.co.cc/forums

hope that i'll be working with you in the future

oh..and i'll do this for free even if you do manage to earn money from it...i'll still do it for free.....i just want to help =)