Community-based website

My client wishes to launch a website with certain community-based features. Please note that the functionality of the site will be reviewd based on the bidders chosen solution, so we are only expecting outline costings at this stage. The basic funcionality of the site will allow users to: - Register with the site and fill in personal details and background about themselves and upload a photo - Contribute to message boards (threaded or otherwise) - Chat in real-time, in public chat rooms or in private groups - Read editorial content posted by administrators or other authorised users - See who has viewed their details - Register for attendance at off-line events - Search for people or content by various criteria, including full-text searching E-mail addresses must be validated with a test e-mail. Certain features will require the user to pay for membership. Administrators, or other authorised users must be able to: - Add editorial content - Add or remove topics for chat & discussion - Moderate chat rooms, and ban offending users - Report on usage statistics - Send e-mails to registered users, or a subset of users based on some simple filters We expect this site to based on an existing platform or code library, such as Drupal, phpBB, Novashare etc. Many of these plaforms have additional "nice-to-have" features built-in. We will provide a full funcitional specification based on the capabilities of the recommended platform. This specification will contain screen designs for all public pages, all text and artwork. Look-and-feel (fonts etc) will be fully specified and sample HTML will be provided. We understand that we have not given a sufficient specification to produce a cost at this stage, and there will be an opportunity to renegotate pricing when the functional spec is complete. However, we wish to write the functional spec with a particular platform in mind, which is why we are inviting outline bids now. ## Deliverables At this stage, we are looking for: - A recommended approach, in terms of platform, applications and code libraries and code you intend to write yourself - Examples of sites where you have used this approach before, with URLs if possible. If reference sites are not available, a significant Coder Deposit Guarantee will probably be required - Suggestions for additional functionality which can be be supported by your chosen platform. You may omit such features from the price you quote or quote for these features separately, providing you make this clear - A statement of how you intend to test this site, including how you intend to "size" the hardware required for a given load (we appreciate that there is a degree of guesswork inherent in this) - An outline cost. This will be a starting point for discussion when the functional specification is released (i.e. it's fine to increase the price when the scope creeps, but you will be expected to explain how you got from your bid to your final price). To aid this, you may make whatever reasonable assumptions you wish about the functionality, providing you make this clear. The cost should include: - Provision of code, as described in the functional spec. The functional spec will be written with your chosen approach in mind, to minimise the effort required. You will be expected to provide advice on how we can make the development easier for you. - Installing the completed system on our stage/test and production boxes and all associated configuration, including hardening the boxes to a reasonable extent - Full testing, including indications of behaviour under load - Documenation sufficient for maintenance of the site (software and admin) to be performed by a third party. It is acceptable to embed much of this documentation in the source code comments. Documentation should include procedures for backup, removal of old data, release of content from the staging site and database administration. You can assume that your quote will be read by a technical audience who has project-managed many web project before (Linux and Windows), but not one with these requirements. ## Platform Choice of platform is open. However, we require that we should be able to use an alternative coder for further enhancement to the site in the future. Hence all software used in the site must be under GPL or otherwise licensed for maintenance by third parties. We are anticipating a solution based on a GPL package and a Linux platform, but other approaches are acceptable. Browser compatability is IE 4+.