website code plannning. help?

[blastman]

hey guys,

I have an idea for a website.

It's a service style site so it offers a service that can be coded. This site will have to have many phases to it if it's going to work as I have imaged it in my mind.

Firstly I'm going to have to write a portal for my customers to be able to access the services I'm offering. Then I'm going to have to find a way of running linux bash scripts on the host machine when key actions are done within the portal to for-fill these service requests.

After that, I've got to find a way of locking the whole process down so my host machine isn't left open for abuse or attack.

I've got a spare PC at home that I'm going to use to host the site and with dyndns and a blind forward I can make the site accessible on my newly brought domain name from my home network.

This means that there is very little in running costs and I have full access to the host machine and it's shell. Meaning my development time isn't restricted and I'm not pressured to try and generate cash from day one.

My question is this;

I have many thoughts running through my mind about how to achieve different aspects of this site. I've been thinking about it for over 6 months, but although I've got coding experience I've never taken any courses so I've never been taught how to plan the project from a coding point of view.

What's the best way to do this?

Can anyone offer any ideas on how I can map out how different parts of my site with integrate with each other?

As you can tell I'm new to large projects like this so any pointers or pearls of wisdom anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Tris

 

[GravyMonster]

You're going to let random internet peoples run bash scripts on your server?

You brave*, brave man.





*read: mental

 

[blastman]

yeah, but a very locked down version.

I need to be able edit config files in linux from the site. So I'm thinking of a script to sit inbetween the site and file to a, do the work for me and b, monitor what is being sent to the script in the first place to prevent some sort of injection hacking.

Either way, it's for this reason that I need to plan this site out before I start coding so I can resolve these issues before I start.

 

[.Jay.]

As you can tell I'm new to large projects like this so any pointers or pearls of wisdom anyone can offer will be greatly appreciated.

Plan, plan, plan, plan and plan!

Any large projects need thorough planning and need to be looked at in detail to save you headaches later on.

Work out what you want where, how your customers interact with the system and how your systems will respond to requests. It doesn't need to be technical, picture drawings are good enough.. I guarantee it'll change many times before the final plan is reached.