Buidling a dating site, questions

[CFizzle]

Ok, forgive me for my ignorance. I've taken an HTML class in college, and that's about it.

I have an idea, a good idea I think. I'd like to make a full blown profile based website. I do understand that this would be a pretty massive undertaking, but I'm up for the work.

As it stands I have the skills to make a static website. As in I could make mock pages that look the way I want, but the buttons wouldn't work. (I know how to make links and stuff like that... but not how to script anything.)

What I ask of you all, is what kind of plan should I follow? Everything is truly in it's infancy, and almost all of it's still in my head. So I'm a blank slate. What do I do first? What kind of things will I need to learn? Is this something I could complete on my own? Etc.

Thanks much for the advice.

[TiGGi]

Question is: are you doing this for money or just for fun?
If you're doing for money and career then I suggest you give it up unless you have thousands of $$$$$$ for advertising and competing with big guys.
As far as the website it's a huge task and without pretty good programming knowladge it's impossible.

[Albert_chu]

yeah, i think it would be pretty hard to come up with a new dating website and be able to make a lot of money off it especially with the existing ones here today. it will be a big responisiblity for you to keep up with this business as it seems that you wiill look into it several times a day. you'd probably want to think about it thoroughly until u choose to take it up, otherwise alota money will be wasted if u dont feel so sure about it.

[CFizzle]

yeah, i think it would be pretty hard to come up with a new dating website and be able to make a lot of money off it especially with the existing ones here today. it will be a big responisiblity for you to keep up with this business as it seems that you wiill look into it several times a day. you'd probably want to think about it thoroughly until u choose to take it up, otherwise alota money will be wasted if u dont feel so sure about it.

To be honest, it's not really a dating site. I just said that so people would have an idea of what I'm talking about. The site would be structured similar to a dating site, but the purpose of the site is definetly not dating. I surely don't think that I could create something that would compete with match.com or eharmony.

I do understand your points though. I am thinking this idea through as best I can before I start on something I might not finish.

My questions stem from my ignorance of programming and web design. I don't see a clear cut path. I'd like to work on it, but I have no idea where to start. Eh whatever. I'll see what I can do.

[TiGGi]

I would sugest something like phpnuke.com then. With some knowledge of it you can modify it to fit your needs and has lots of add-ons!