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General discussion

WordPress and custom web application

Jun 3, 2010 10:55PM PDT

I need to build a very custom community, blog and forum web application. I was told that WordPress is the best solution for a community blog site. I hired a web programmer to install the WordPress blog. When I asked him to customize the functionalities, change the layouts, add forums and events, he told me that my functionality requests are beyond the capabilities of WordPress. My web programmer is recommending that I should start looking for a custom web application development company.

I called a couple of web development companies; the salesperson from one of the companies, right off the start, asked for my budget and said that they won't take on any web project for less than $250K. The other company never called me back.

Can someone give me some advice about WordPress? Is it possible to add a forum, events, and research tools to WordPress?

Can someone give me some guidance on how to go about hiring a custom web Application development company? What are the steps and processes to get started on building a custom web application?

I appreciate any help.

Discussion is locked

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There are two schools of thought on this.
Jun 3, 2010 11:09PM PDT

1. Get it done for you. Can be expensive.

2. Learn all about web servers, web apps and more. You might get lost here and head done a few blind alleys but in the end it is exactly what you wanted.

And there is one other option. See if there are folk that will invest in the effort. If you can show your business plan and projected revenues some might get on board and help you along.

Nothing like money to motivate them.
Bob

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Re: Wordpress and custom web application
Jun 4, 2010 3:32AM PDT

Hello,

As for Wordpress, there are plug-ins that you can use to add functionalities. But if you want something custom, I think you are better off building the application from ground up. In my experience customizing WordPress is really tedious unless you use one of their templates.

As for hiring a custom web application programmer, you want to make sure that your application is built correctly. Ask the right questions to make sure that the company you're hiring is going to do a good job.

Here are my suggestions / opinions:
1. Make sure that the company that you are hiring uses a framework, structure and guidelines. (ask them to put it in the contract)
2. Stay away from off shore developers that have a reputation of duplicating and reselling web application packages; it is almost impossible to get your money back or hold those companies legally liable if they give you unusable code or duplicate, package, and resell the same code to your competitors.
3. A successful blog and forum can get thousands of unique visitors per day. If the development company does a bad job especially on the database queries, the site will crawl and come to a halt once it reaches a high number of visitors. You should make sure that the database queries are capable of handling hundreds of con-current connections and the company you are hiring has experience with stress testing, versioning, etc.

There are lots of things to cover here. Here are a couple of good resources:

http://www.comentum.com/how-to-hire-web-application-development-company.html

http://www.comentum.com/guide-to-web-application-development.html

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WordPress, Forum & Event Calendar
Jun 4, 2010 11:38AM PDT

Thank you for your help.

I was able to get a hold of a couple of companies that asked me for a request for proposal and web application specifications.

In the meantime, do you know if WordPress has a plug-in for a community forum and events calendar?

Thanks again,
Terry

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Re: Wordpress, forum, etc.
Jun 4, 2010 11:05PM PDT

Hello,

It is very common that most custom web development companies won't discuss your project over the phone. They want to make sure that you have done all your due diligence and have clearly thought through what you would like to do. By you furnishing them an RFP (request for proposal), you are showing that you are serious.

As for Wordpress plug-ins, yes - there are Wordpress plug-ins for both forum and event calendar. Just use Wordpress plug-in directory search, you will find WP Forum, WP ecommerce and plenty of Wordpress event calendar plug-ins:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/