Questions about starting new project

[redslush]

I have some questions in regards to how to approach a new site idea.

In the past I have run several web sites that have been either forum (vbulletin) or cms (drupal, geeklog, etc) based. This is mainly because I didn't want to spend the time creating something from the ground up. Now I've reached a point that I think the ideas I have need to be created from scratch...or maybe not. That is where I'm kind of getting stuck. I want to pose a few questions to the v7n community cause I know many of you are experienced designers and implementers.

For a Online Magazine type of site, would you recommend sticking with an existing CMS or building from scratch? With this type of site, how much content should you have before you go live?

When you have an idea for a site but know it's out of your scope do you hire out or spend the time learning?

Any good books or links for building something from the ground up? I've read some web design books but haven't found anything covering everything from ideas to reality.

Is there anyone out there that offers any type of mentoring services for this type of stuff?

[Dan Williamson]

It honestly depends on what you want doing, I tend to go with a brand-new system which I work with myself but thats mainly because I can familiarise myself quickly with the CMS and know how it works and don't have to take the time to learn a system such as Joomla or Drupal.

For an online magazine you could either code a CMS yourself, have one coded for you, use an Open-Source Content Management System or pay for a professional one.

For something which is out of my depth, I will try to understand, but if I don't have the time to learn how to effectively do the job which I want then I will seek the services of someone who can.

For books it really depends on the language which you want to code in, I haven't done much web based systems i'm more of a desktop applications programmer but PHP or ASP would perhaps spring to mind and Kevin Yank's Build your own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL comes to mind as a good read.

[scottdizzle]

For an online magazine you could use pretty much any CMS right? I would recommend Cutenews (flat-file) or Cutenews.ru (flat file & mysql plus advanced features) because of the way they work. They allow you to publish news, content, media (whatever you like) into a database which you can customize however you like (with HTML and CSS) to display matching your sites theme or layout. This means you build your layout, then implement your CMS database of content instead of the popular vice versa scenario such as Wordpress. Doing it this method gives you 100% creative freedom.