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How much does a custom PHP programming job cost?

Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
Hey guys. I'm looking into paying a programmer to write a PHP script for me. I have never done this before, so I thought I would pick everyone's brain so that I don't get ripped off.

I want the programmer to make a question bank for board style question review. When users log in they are given the option to create a quiz, which draws questions from the database at random. I want questions to have a category and subcategory. Users should be able to specify which category, or subcategories, they want the random questions to be selected from and how many questions they want to answer in their quiz. After a user takes a quiz, I want the program to remember what questions that user has answered, so if he creates another quiz it doesn't give him the same question a second time. Users should be able to toggle whether they want the answer for each question shown to them right after they answer the question or to wait to review the answers until the end of the quiz. I also want an explanation to pop up when they review the answer.

Admins should be able to add questions to the database, create/delete users, and reset user accounts so that if the user has taken all the questions they can do it over again.

I have no idea how much work it would take to create something like this, but my gut says it isn't too terribly much. Anyone have any thoughts?

Posts

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Anywhere from $20-1000 depending on who does it and where they're from. Depends on if language barrier or professionalism are going to be a concern.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
    Have any good recommendations for reputable programmers? Google searching got me a few sketchy looking sites.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Guru.com is one. Keep in mind with the websites you'll get non/broken-english speaking bids. There's also local options, like local college or high school but then that brings up the question of professionalism.

    There's actually a few of us here that will do stuff like this.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
    I'll look into guru, thanks for the tip! Who on here does stuff like this? People on the PA forum have always been very professional.

  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    edited July 2014
    I'd also expand your description of it a bit to just specify it as a web app, unless you need it to be PHP for some reason. There are a bunch of other languages that can do what you want(Ruby, ASP, Python etc) so you might not want to make the post restricted to PHP.

    Also this seems like something that has to have been solved already judging by the number of "Jackie scored 21/24 on the how well do you know Frozen quiz" BS that pops up on my Facebook feed. So you may want to see about finding a ready to go solution to buy.

    tinwhiskers on
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  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies drinking coffee in the mountain cabinRegistered User regular
    I'd also expand your description of it a bit to just specify it as a web app, unless you need it to be PHP for some reason. There are a bunch of other languages that can do what you want(Ruby, ASP, Python etc) so you might not want to make the post restricted to PHP.

    Also this seems like something that has to have been solved already judging by the number of "Jackie scored 21/24 on the how well do you know Frozen quiz" BS that pops up on my Facebook feed. So you may want to see about finding a ready to go solution to buy.

    Seconding this. Also think about things like security and persistence - if you have to reboot the server, are you okay with losing all your data? If not, that's something you want to say up front.

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  • Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
    Thanks for the responses guys. I have looked around the net and there isn't really a program already created that does exactly what I want.

    As far as security, this is basically going to be an in house program that few will be using in the grand scheme of things. I doubt this would ever turn into a high traffic site. For persistence, as long as the data is stored in a database I assume it would be easy to backup (like in MySQL), or am I wrong?

  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies drinking coffee in the mountain cabinRegistered User regular
    Mace1370 wrote: »
    Thanks for the responses guys. I have looked around the net and there isn't really a program already created that does exactly what I want.

    As far as security, this is basically going to be an in house program that few will be using in the grand scheme of things. I doubt this would ever turn into a high traffic site. For persistence, as long as the data is stored in a database I assume it would be easy to backup (like in MySQL), or am I wrong?

    Shouldn't be hard, no, but if I'm a rent-a-coder and you don't tell me you need persistence, I'm not going to build it in, right?

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  • Mace1370Mace1370 Registered User regular
    Good point, thanks!

  • SeguerSeguer of the Void Sydney, AustraliaRegistered User regular
    If you're going to go with hiring a freelancer off the Internet you're going to have to be very very careful in what you ask for.

    As some of the others have implied, "you'll get what you ask for".

    This generally means detailing things out in a specifications document. It doesn't need to be super-formal, but it does need to cover pretty much everything you want and need it to do.

    This can include something as simple as "users should be able to login" and something as detailed as "users should have a username that is their email address, which we have to validate and send a confirmation email to"

    Then you end up having to detail what contents of the confirmation email will be as well.

    I would definitely +1 the suggestion of finding something off-the-shelf to buy/use unless you can really spend the time to figure out the specs, and then to work with the freelancer to cover the stuff you missed (there is always stuff missed).

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