need advice in designing website

[martez]

Hello to everyone. This is my first post here, hope I'm in the right place. Also, my English isn't perfect so please have it in mind

 

I'm working on a webiste for one company, and lets say I'm not sure if Im going the right way in building this webiste. The purpose of the website will be promoting company's products. The idea was to build a website where users would register/subscribe and thanks to that there would be possibility in sending those users e-mails messages regarding products, news, events and other related information. Also, from time to time we would run contests, something like a lottery with some prizes to win. Regarding contests part I was thinking just to build simple script that would pick random previously registered username or e-mail address from database. The thing is I dont know how complex I should go with this. I'm rather amateur programmer when it comes to php, so I was thinking that maybe gathering only e-mail addresses without any other user personal information will be enough to handle all of this. Ofcourse there would be an option to unsubscribe from the list and thus such user wouldn't take part in lotteries anymore nor receive messages.

 

What do you think ? What would you suggest ?

 

Thanks

 

[Cosizzle]

First off, Hello.

 

Complex or not to be complex... I like to think that no matter how simple the project sounds on paper, we are always pushing our personal knowledge to the point in which we have over complicated things and its well passed our capabilities.

 

I personally don't think I got to where I am today without taking risks, there have been so many projects that I didn't think I could pull off and came out fine on the other end. With that said I sometimes jumped to deep and couldn't swim back out. Long story short don't back yourself into a corner. Tell your employer you REALLY want this job, tell them its a great learning experience and that you are willing to learn whatever you need to in order to complete the project, but allow for an out. Perhaps make mention of another programmer whom might be better for the job in the event you can't succeed.

 

A lot of people want to see you at least try, at least if you fail you failed trying.

 

Anyways enough of my blabbing on - your site.

 

By the sound of things you will need to have a good understanding of your standard HTML/CSS. There will be PHP involved not a lot but a fair amount, and there will be quite a bit of database optimization (SQL) its 'EXTREMELY' important you understand how SQL and PHP can talk together, you need to understand security and how to prevent hackers from accessing your user database.

 

There are also CMS's that can do a lot of this for you. Try Joomla, or WordPress. Just remember to take a step at a time, if your not sure on something don't say you can do it, say you really want to, you believe you can and your going to try your hardest in doing so!