Virtual Community Site Project

This is the latest mock up of the virtual community web site that I am currently developing. The design has not been finalized yet. But from the 22 different ideas that I produced so far, this is the one that I prefer.



I'm doing the project for Dr. Leisa Armstrong at uni. Initially she was thinking of using existing ColdFusion code from another project that uni did, an eco portal. However, I had a look at the code and I believe that it would be more productive for me to start over in PHP. I have some code from previous projects that I could use. I already have a basic content management system and a bulletin board that I coded in PHP. These could be adapted to the virtual community site.

I am also looking for a hosting solution for the site. I plan to do most of the development work on my development server at home. However, the project will need a permanent home eventually. My upload speed at home will be limited to 128kbps (512 ADSL). The best solution would be to obtain permission from uni to run our own server off the uni's network. We plan to run a chat server for the virtual community. So we need our own server where we have admin access. There's no way the school of communications or the school of computing would give me access to their projects servers to run a chat server! If we do get the permission to run our own server, I am willing to set it up and demonstrate that it is secure. I'll probably use FreeBSD, because that's what I know best.