Puzzling Project Ahead, Please Advice

[DomainLoco]

Hi,
My name is Dan and I am the owner of DomainLoco.Net, I am excited to enter the world of Joomla and explore its possibilities to create great things.
I am currently investigating the possibility of starting a new company that focuses in the "Lowest Unique Bid" system as explained here by WikiPedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_bid_auction and seen in these sites:
BidJam.Co.Uk
GlobalBidders.Com
UniqueBidHomes.Com
limbo.com/
Auctions2Acause.com
lowbids.com.au/
bassabids.com/
bid4prizes.com/
silvertag.com
Etc.

The purpose of this site would simply be to auction off things that a normal person would not be able to afford. My background and previous positions allow me to contact individuals that are in control of such things as real estate, premium vehicles, electronics, furniture, consumer/b2b services, etc.

I would love to hear from the experts of this platform how I would be able to achieve my vision with a twist of originality. Almost forgot to mention that one of my scavengers dug up a wonderful domain that will surely do the job in creating a recognizable brand.

Thanks
Dan

[travisdh]

Thats quite an interesting idea, i do believe that there are some components that do part of what you are after already, that is the auction style system. Some even may look at doing it in reverse style. What they lack is a payment system as well, so it essentially creates the contract that is then followed up.

But in answering your post, i can give a few suggestions but mainly on the database side (herein refered to as db). Since you are looking at setting up an action system, it would be best to have an efficient db system, probobly spread across a few tables for the information you are looking at using.

So you might either leverage the Joomla Sections & Categories system, and develop a mambot that works based on these, or allow your component to use these. In alot of ways it is probobly the easiest to do that since the Sections & Categories already exist.

Then you may have another table for the listings, so for each listing you want to action off, an entry is created in the db table.

Eg say i want to sell "1 x Ford Focus 1999 Model"
You might have a db table that has the following fields.

ID|Title|Description|Entry-Date|Section-ID|Category-ID|End-Publish-Date|Quantity|Other

When you create a new item, it is entered into the db, so the ID becomes an autonumber, title in this case would be Ford Focus 1999 Model, Desciption is self explanatory, Entry date is important for both legal reasons, and it can be used to pre-enter items which are auctioned at a later date. Section-ID could just be an select list from the joomla sections, as could category, end publish date would be when the item auction finishes, quantity self expanatory, and other could contain any other notes etc.

That essentially sets up the item entries much like Joomla Content (com_content db) does without author, but that could be easily added.

Your next step would be a bids table. This could be done a few ways, but may as well focus in simplicity here, so we would need to have a table that holds the bids applicable to an item id in the items db.

say a db table like this.

|Bid-ID|Parent-ID|User-ID (& Name)|Bid-Date|Bid-Amount|Verified

Thats just a rough table, but it presents most of the fields i think you would need, bid id is autonumber, and the parent-ID is the id of the listing the bid represents, userid is important as you need to track the person who made the bid, as is the bid-date for legal reasons etc. Bid Amount is self-explanatory, and then verified might be something like we send an email to make sure its you that bidded for the item, but that is not needed.

The beauty with an approach like this is that alot of it can be run through things like cron and SQL. For example in the parent db which holds the item info there is an end-publish date, so you could code that if the current date is after the end publish date, then execute sql command.

And the sql command could be something like Select from bids_db, itemid (which is the applicable item) where bid_amount=min im sure there is a select and show lowest value.

That would handle selecting and then you could get an automatic email notification system running from there. Of course there is a heap more to it than that. But it presents a few ideas that might be starting points, the trick with any system especially db is to try and make it as efficient as possible, so that you can keep alot of information without suffering performance issues. and you can then craft your interface around the way the db works. (I know it does seam like a backwards approach).

Good Luck with it all, my knowledge is very limited, but if i can help in any way i will.