Need ASP/SQL Migration to PHP/MySQL Help...

[Winstons Myth]

My husband and I run www.starttherevolution.org and, after some fairly widespread success (2.5 million visits in one day at one point!) we decided that we needed to offer more people the chance to write for the site.

After a fair amount of researching, soul-searching and gnashing of teeth we decided upon a .ASP/SQL site.

Not realising exactly what we were getting involved in we then inadvertantly proceeded to design and create what transpired to be a pretty fabulous Content Management System!

This was not without merit as we really did not know the first thing about .ASP/SQL or CMS prior to doing this!

However, why are we telling you all this...

Well, the site got to the testing phase, all great apart from a couple of loose ends to tie up and it seemed that we were about ready to rock and roll.........

Then the disasters began!

Graphics that were there on the testing server, weren't there in the live site. Admin sections designed to let permitted writers add their own content to the site simply refused to update the database.

And so on, ad infinitum, aaarrrrggggghhhhhh!!!

One year has now passed and we have asked in various areas and worked with various web designers to try and get this thing working, but to no avail.

People seem to come into the project with all the enthusiasm in the world and then just get bored or too busy with paid work or, well, you get the picture.

With this in mind we took some advice. There appeared to be two common themes to this advice:
Convert the new site and backroom from .ASP/SQL to .PHP/MySQL
Actually pay somebody some money to do the work!
Not having actually had any money (let alone to put into the project) had definitely been holding us back but, without a magic money tree that situation was pretty much fixed.

***NEWS UPDATE***

We have come into a LITTLE bit of money...

Does somebody here wish to earn it by helping us to migrate an almost finished site from .ASP/SQL to .PHP/MySQL in the Very near future?!

We don't have thousands of bucks to spend and with three children and a web site that all generate costs and no sales, we need to ensure that the little we have tucked away lasts us as long as possible.

That said, we are willing to pay a fair price for a fair job.

Please PM us if you are interested and we will get back to you asap.

Thanks,

Natasha

We changed our hosting server back from Windows to Linux so the test version cannot be viewed online although a basic .html version (our original mock--up) is available here...

http://www.starttherevolution.org/indextest.html

...although it is minus the menus and header (for some unknown reason!)

[SSJ]

HI,

I can help you on this.
Please contact me via PM or my web development company website's contact form.

Thanks,

[bcarl314]

I've got a couple of quick questions in regard to your post.

First, you mention that the site got "2.5 million visits in one day at one point!", yet when I look at the Alexa ranking and compete.com rankings, there is nothing in the past year to support that. Seems that 2.5m visits should equate to at least 2.5m page views and at a CPM ad rate of $2, that would equate to about $5k in potential ad revenue / day on the site. My question is, what is your average traffic on the site?

Second, why convert to PHP/MySQL? Sounds like you had a 90 - 95% completed project. Starting from scratch (even using asp2php) is going to be very time consuming. If budget is really a concern, finding a solid ASP programmer is by far your most cost effecient route.

Third, what's your budget? From points 1 and 2, you can probably deduct that I'm thinking this is a large project ($10k +), but you say you don't have thousands to spend. A good idea on budget will save you time when talking to a potential programmer for this project.

[Winstons Myth]

Originally Posted by bcarl314

First, you mention that the site got "2.5 million visits in one day at one point!", yet when I look at the Alexa ranking and compete.com rankings, there is nothing in the past year to support that.

Then I guess it must have happened more than a year ago then! For clarity, the site was ranked by Alexa in the top 10,000 (and for a few days when things were really cooking, in the top 5,000) although it was fairly short lived as it was at this point we started the rewrite due to the lack of time to do ANYTHING else but publish articles and Op-Eds by the dozens of writers volunteering to join us.

Had the rewrite not taken up about 20 months of our time so far I am sure that we would be carrying at least half of that readership regularly as we had done for some time prior to stopping.

Originally Posted by bcarl314

Seems that 2.5m visits should equate to at least 2.5m page views and at a CPM ad rate of $2, that would equate to about $5k in potential ad revenue / day on the site. My question is, what is your average traffic on the site?

You clearly decided all of that without checking out the site. Shame, had you wandered over there you may have discovered a site that the "real money ads" don't want to be seen dead on! You see, when you take pretty much every corporation on Earth to task over their disgusting behaviour, they tend to refuse to advertise with you. After that you are left with crappy accounts and a LOT of clicks for rather than impressions for.

Truth be told, the most successful "campaigns" that we have run have ALWAYS been products that WE chose for the site as being relevant to our readers. Of course, these only come from the people that have no corporate raping motives and thus doesn't pay so well.

Originally Posted by bcarl314

Second, why convert to PHP/MySQL? Sounds like you had a 90 - 95% completed project. Starting from scratch (even using asp2php) is going to be very time consuming. If budget is really a concern, finding a solid ASP programmer is by far your most cost effecient route.

Except that the long term costs of hosting ASP/SQL will more than pay the difference, would they not?

Some of the quotes that we have had from hosts, including through our bulk user package on Streamline, are almost completely prohibitive. If you have other ideas on this, please let me know as we would LOVE to not have to rewrite the entire site.

To be honest, we achieved some pretty amazing things for a couple of duffers working from their living room. Had we actually gotten it finished, I think that there may have been a decent open source CMS in there somewhere!

Originally Posted by bcarl314

Third, what's your budget? From points 1 and 2, you can probably deduct that I'm thinking this is a large project ($10k +), but you say you don't have thousands to spend. A good idea on budget will save you time when talking to a potential programmer for this project

We are obviously hoping that this is NOT a large project as we were under the impression that most of the work has already been done! That said, if it is a large project, we will need to spend some time evaluating exactly how much we can afford.

In terms of asking about budget, you are probably looking at an available pool of 1k-2k but we would try to throw in a LOT of incentives to a willing party to sweeten the pill.

I hope that answers your questions.