Thread

I’m thinking of starting a website that does the following:

Allows two types of accounts; one for advertisers and one for website owners.

The advertiser account lets the advertiser upload/delete advertisements on his account.  These would basically just be jpg’s.

The advertiser would have to pay to upload the ads, either per ad or on a subscription model.

The website owner can embed a snippet of code on his website that would show only the ads that his website is qualified to display.  This would be determined by the advertiser selecting his website when uploading the ad.

Both the advertiser and website owner will need to be able to log in to their accounts and see how many times an ad has been viewed and/or clicked.

I know this sounds like an ad server program like OpenAds but I’ve got some twists to it that I already know can be done.  I just need to get feedback on what I’ve asked above.

So basically- it would work like OpenAds- you aren’t hosting the websites that offer the ads or anything?  Just act as an intermediary?  Hmmmm….  honestly, sounds like something I’d probably use CodeIgnitor for, and build from the ground up.  There’s no particular reason you couldn’t use EE as a framework- but it doesn’t sound like you need a ton of the existing functionality, and a lot of what you do need will have to be custom work.  While the Simple Commerce module could handle some of the purchasing- it won’t do for subscriptions.  And I suspect the purchasing will be more complex than what’s available w/ SC.  Plus- it limits you to Paypal, which might not be desirable.

EE isn’t leaping out at me as the obvious choice for an OpenAds derivative.  There may be more to the site than I know- much of which does cry out for EE functionality.  But the above outline suggests you’d need to do a lot of custom work to achieve the core functionality required.  And if you don’t have more to the site that uses EE’s basic functions?  I’m not sure how far ahead it would really get you in the creation of the application.

So- I’d say it’s doable with EE and a lot of custom work.  I’m just not dead sure EE would be my first choice based on the specs.