Web site management

robotsunshine

I want to make a site where people can register and upload different forms of media - photography, art, music, video, etc. - basically like Deviant Art, but more focused on the community and with providing users with the tools to generate cross-media projects (you got your music in my photography!). I'm envisioning some sort of on-site script that lets you play with music and images, like some sort of bizarre Flash keyboard. But on to the real question:

I'm looking at DreamHost for domain name and hosting space, but what else will I need to create a site like this? I'm unfamiliar with anything outside of basic HTML and a little bit of CSS - what would one need on a website to allow submissions of text, audio, images, and video, and to allow registrations and a member/user type relationship? Is it a matter of simply buying some software or the services of someone who can do that sort of thing, or what?

Also, if I'm looking for a flashy but functional layout, something weird and pretty, who should I look for? Something on the cheaper side oh budget, preferably, if you guys have any recommendations.

Thanks!

fforde

For the community and content management parts of it you will want to use something like Drupal, a free content management and community framework for websites. The new version just came out and it is really easy to install. It has a steep learning curve setting things up, but it is pretty flexible and you really don't need to know any html, css, php, etc to get a working functional site up. As far as the fancy collaboration stuff I don't know, you might have to do something custom to get it to work just the way you want. What your describing though sounds to me like a cross between MySpace and DeviantArt. And unless you want to use a standard template you will need to muck around in html/css and maybe php. Drupal has a pretty decent them engine, if you wanted to use Drupal you could make a new theme for it to give your site a unique look.

Jimmy King

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you want, I'm not sure most standard hosting packages will even provide what you need. Just being able to upload stuff is pretty simple and most current CMS apps such as Drupal mentioned by fforde can handle that stuff.

Allowing your users to do media stuff encoding stuff to mix media types, etc. is a bit more demanding, though, especially if you're talking collaborating by using other people's media with your own, etc. That's going to require having ffmpeg, mencoder, etc. installed on the server, custom scripts with a web interface to allow the users to specify their input and output files and formatting, and so on. This will require at least some knowledge to write, the host may not actually have the needed software (ffmpeg, mencoder) available, and can rack up some nasty cpu usage and piss off the host.

robotsunshine

Drupal looks good, I'm going to give that a shot. As far as the hot media collaboration action going on, it's admittedly a little vague right now, in terms of overall goal and process, so I'll try to flesh that out some more.

Thanks for the help!

Jimmy King

Yeah, might be good to start with drupal and a standard cheap web host to get what you can setup there and then if you still can't do what you need look into what it's going to take to get there.

powerss

TextDrive is THE host to use for this kind of heavy 2.0 mashup stuff.