Random Fun Question: Dynamic E-book creation?

[princevaliant]

*** I read and reviewed the rules and don't think this violates them, but please feel free to remove this if so. ***

I've got this really great idea but no expert knowledge and no experience in how to execute it. I figured I'd come ask the experts.

I want to create a website that sells customized e-books using a database. The customer would fill out a survey, the e-book would assemble certain pages based on the answers, then they could check out, pay and download the e-book.

Process is:

survey-> e-book assemblage or selection -> purchase -> download.

I don't know what kind of software I would need, add ons I would need built or what kind of database to use for this.

As you can probably tell from my question, I know zero about web development. It would really help if someone could point me in the right direction regarding the process of getting this up and running.

Thanks for reading!

[TannerT]

Microsoft's Beginner Developer Learning Center is a good place to start. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx

However,... you would have to be offering something pretty snazzy to make people pay for what Google basically does for free.

[smantscheff]

In short: don't. Hire a programmer for the job who will achieve in days what you will likely spend months with.
If you still want to do it yourself, get some working knowledge of Apache/PHP/Mysql.

[princevaliant]

Microsoft's Beginner Developer Learning Center is a good place to start.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx

However,... you would have to be offering something pretty snazzy to make people pay for what Google basically does for free.

That looks like a cool resource and I'll have to check it out! I believe the below poster is right and I should look into hiring someone given my complete n00b status. As far as the product, I'm hoping to make the tool very niche/specific and have a lot of "on the ground" information google/etc doesn't really offer. Thanks for your response! :)

[princevaliant]

In short: don't. Hire a programmer for the job who will achieve in days what you will likely spend months with. If you still want to do it yourself, get some working knowledge of Apache/PHP/Mysql.

Great! This is exactly the kind of direction I needed. (I also didn't want to go to someone and have their response be "Buy this existing software package, moron." :P) So thanks! I'll start headhunting.

[smantscheff]

Look at getafreelancer.com and rentacoder.com.