*** 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!

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.

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! :)

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.

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