I present with a problem that I have noticed and experienced in my community that I have been wanting to see if I can help provide a solution for. Feel free to add any thoughts and or concerns.
First the problem - I live in a very rural area, and while that is great and I would not change it. I have found that it is very difficult to find for example a contractor, or plumber etc. let alone other businesses. Sometimes ending with making a post on Facebook asking for recommendations
Second the Premade Solutions - Yes these people could go the normal route and create Facebook pages like most do and if they are really spunky can create their own website. But what I have found is most could really not be bothered to do that and honestly would never check an email if they had to.
Third my Idea- what I would like to create would be a database of all local businesses that would be searchable. So if I wanted to find a HVAC specialist I could go to this site and boom pull them all up. then have contact info and maybe a little bio or something listed. So yea I maybe trying to recreate something that already exists.
Fourth the Benefits - I feel like this would help boost local business. One stop shop for everything in my county. While this isn’t the end goal I feel like there is a chance for a small listing fee to cover hosting and time invested.
Notes - as always if you are still reading and feel that this is a stupid idea and needs put out to pasture let me know.
Hi,
I think a local services database could work quite well. You seem a bit unsure about a few aspects of the project, which is fine. I just wanted to drop a reply to remind you that one of the key things about any coding event is to do a thing; don’t be concerned about if the thing you make is good or will win you something. I’ve made absolute trash before in code jams but taking part made it fun.
As for actual advice, it’d be good to think about your experience level and how much time you realistically have left to work on this until the end of December. That will give you a general time box that you can plan your feature set around. It’s also good to have a very quick and simple deliverable as a V1 that you can iterate on Vs something that will take until December 29th to have something to show.
Thanks for the response. I honestly don’t even mind if it isn’t part of the Devember event. I just saw this as a good jump in point if you know what I mean. I more see this as a passion project, with Devember being its birthplace.
As for the experience part that is where it gets tricky haha. One could say I am in over my head.
Timewise I am going to be getting a good bit of time off from the day job here anytime now. So I should be able to spend sometime working on it. Though I have no idea where to start.
In hopes of not wasting all my time looking in the wrong direction I am going to continue to post what I think I need to do to complete this and updates.
I think I am needing to create a database to house all the information and then build a web app to query said DB and display those results in a nice fashion.
That is about all I have. If someone has some reading material that the would like to shoot my direction it would be greatly appreciated.
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I’m AFK for a few days but hopefully some other kind soul will step in with some more specific guidance. It sounds like you’ve got some good forward momentum.
I don’t have any documents to hand but I can suggest a few options. If you like something more structured and traditional then PostgreSQL is a good flavour of SQL. If you’d like something more flexible then you can look at MongoDB. I’m sure there are also more out of the box, all around solutions but unfortunately I’m out of the loop on those.