Hi Brent,
It's a publishing company. I have already put up the main site at
http://leisurepublishinggroup.com.
The site that I am working on is
http://familyholidayandleisure.com - It is based on a print magazine which is due for first publication in October/November. My sis has quite a reputation in the industry, and the mag will surely be a great success. Her husbands (and her's also additionally) expertise lays in advertising.
So the business revolves around publishing/advertising.
The Family Holiday and Leisure site will incorporate a variety of things - I have already installed phplist to handle the newsletters, and openx to keep the advertising on the site organized (still got to wrap my head around these completely).
My main concern right now, is that the site will also host a thorough and in depth database of family friendly holiday accommodations, events, activities, kids clubs, parties etc.
What I am trying to figure out, is how to approach this - the site will have a custom search functionality (searches by interest, type of accommodation, star ratings, facilities available, by country, region etc etc), and at a later stage (as soon as possible) I also want to incorporate a search function with clickable maps. I have a few sample sites and search forms, that I will post, as soon as I have a more clear idea of exactly how to approach this.
As I say, I am familiarizing myself right now with database creation (in Open Office Base). The amount of information that will be needed is quite overwhelming, in terms of fields - I don't know yet how many tables and/or databases will be needed to host this information sensibly.
Functionalities such as users being able to list their establishments on site, and to keep information updated is one aspect that needs to be figured.
I am not sure which elements will be needed to accomplish all this - I am guessing a combo of php and mysql, and perhaps some javascript.
Worst of all right now is that we have a limited budget, though I have spoken to them about my need to outsource some stuff. I still, however, would love to learn how to do all this. It's an awesome challenge and I really love designing - even though my experience is limited, and I am (slightly) burning out after months and years of trying to get some of my own projects going...
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