Websites-Database/Ecommerce (Dynamic)

The site we are building will be a direct competitor to OurKids.com, TheParentPages.com, and DCUrbanMom.com – three sites that focus exclusively on parents and parenting resources in the Washington DC market. It will have some of the interactivity of sites like GoCityKids.com and LilaGuide.com – two sites that are national/local in their focus on parents but have very strong interactive community features.

We are interested in creating dynamic web presence and content management application that is built to scale – with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work - in the future. Therefore, it is important that the web presence use mainstream programming techniques that can be scaled to meet future demands without requiring constant reinvestment in the base application each time we wish to move forward.

Because we are self-financing, cost is a key criteria. We’re doing this for love, not money – but we understand that the people we work with need to pay their bills. We hope you will understand that we’re funding this out of our own pockets (and trying to run a family and keep our own bills paid at the same time).

The following is an outline of the project requirements:

Database of Events / Online Calendar (Things to Do)
This is the primary offering of the web site. This application will draw people to the site over and over again to learn about area family focused events.
The database will be searchable by date of event, age appropriateness of the event, location (distance), type of activity (indoor, outdoor, educational, entertainment, culture, etc.). The database must be programmed to allow for cross referencing among categories, age appropriateness and other specified attributes.

Other Databases (Resources)
The site will contain several other databases that provide information to DC parents concerning resources of interest to parents (e.g. toy stores, pediatricians, etc.)

The system should be programmed to display premium (paid advertising) listings at the top and the right side of the results page (similar to Google).

The system could be programmed to enable vendors to post their own listings as well as upgrade their listing to the premium service.

And, of course, members of the community must have the ability to rate and review items in the database.

Online Forums (Forums)
The web presence should include an integrated simple bulletin board / forum system based on open source coding and enabling custom programming when and if necessary.

Weekly Newsletter
We would like to send out a semi-automated newsletter each week informing registered members of upcoming events, new postings in the forums, etc. If this module will be too expensive to build/implement in phase one of the project, it can be postponed until a later time.

Advertising
The site should be designed to accommodate a variety of standard-size banner/button/boxes display advertising units. To the extent that advertising

Search
Users need to have the ability to search the site, ideally by a variety of subfields (e.g. events that are appropriate to kids ages 5 – 10 and are rated highly by other users and are within 10 miles of my zip code and are happening on Sunday, December 1st).

Contribute a Listing or Event
Although we will be seeding the site with content (and need to have the ability to add events/listings/etc easily on a regular basis) we would also like users to be able to contribute events and listings of interest. If possible, we would like users who want to pay to have events highlighted to be able to do so in the most automated way possible/affordable.

Design
We hope to create a fresh and original design that establishes credibility, encourages the user to explore the site, inspires the first time visitor to register and ultimately return to use the site again. The design will appeal to parents in the age range of 25 – 45. The design must be fresh and appealing yet not distracting. Additionally, it must be designed in a manner to make it easy for the site administrator to update the content of the site with minimal assistance from the web master.

Recommended Platform
To save time and money we would like to build this project on an existing platform like Joomla or Drupal rather than constructing the site from scratch. We will need your assistance to choose the right platform, customize it, and set it up so we can operate the site on a day-to-day basis.