So, I came up with this nice website idea, but I have no idea where to start. It's a website for companies that build detached houses to advertise their house tours/displays. There is no such site here in Finland yet, and newspaper advertising is getting old.


I'll just throw in some of my current thoughts about it and things the website needs.

Idea list:

- Database system to categorize all displays under company and location of the display (town).
- List of towns on the front page to click on and show house displays listed under that town. And same thing for the companies.
- Automatic system to remove old advertisements after the display.
- A login system to collect contact info from the users.
(They have to login to see the whole advertisement with all the info about the house)
- A form for the companies to fill in the info of the display, add images, map etc. And the form then automatically inserts the info in to a HTML template and creates a page for the advertisement.

There are sites for real estate advertisements but none of them have sections for new and sold house displays.

Some examples:
http://www.trulia.com/
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Basicly, I have no idea where to start.


Please, feel free to throw in any suggestions/ideas you might come up with.

What I find that helps me, is to start coding the front end. How you want it to look, etc. Start off super basic using the shapes and colors you want. Then, once you finish you can go back through and fine tune the style: textured background, corner shadows, javascript, etc.

Consider making it viewable on a mobile device as well ?
As Comic suggests, start small and simple with the core functionality as a priority - don't get bogged down with clever coding. The eyecandy can come later - much later.
Good luck!

Yes, I will probably go with the m. mobile site since making it fully responsive brings in a lot of hassle.


EDIT:

Found a nice example of the concept I have in mind.
http://phpsqlrealty.com/demo/

After starting over with the look and layout couple of times, I came up with the current layout.

Current progress:

- Frontpage
http://i.imgur.com/J09N6DM.jpg

- Search page
http://i.imgur.com/O8ODHV2.png

Please, post thoughts about the current layout / looks of the site.

Next on the list:
▪ Layout for the page of individual advertisement. (Search page results -> Individual pages)

► Move in to MySQL:

▪ Learn how to make a database & how to get search results from it and display them on the search page.

Current problems:
- 0 knowledge of MySQL
("How-To MySQL for dummies", here I come!)

To-do list:

► Ads Sorted by date, Town & Manufacturer in databases
► Form for creating advertisement
▪ Add them automatically to database
▪ Preview page
► Login & Registration
▪ Sort user info for easy fetching later
▪ Manufacturer accounts with permissions for managing own ads.
► Collect info about user's searches and show correct ads on front page. (Sorted by last searched town)
► Contact system
► Something
► ....
► Profit


I'll keep updating the to-do list, when I get new ideas before going to bed

MySQL is pretty easy in fact, it is almost like written english.
For a php implementation I would recommend you to use mysqli as the mysql one is outdated. You also have to escape anything the user enters to prevent sql injection.
As a visual backend phpmyadmin is always helpful
Anyways, mysql tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_intro.asp