New Online Networking and Friends site - Unique concept

This is a new site with a LIMITED budget, however if you win this bid and do a good job you WILL get all future design work and development work at your hourly rate at the time of doing this project. This will be reviewed every 6 months and adjusted accordingly. There is also another project coming off soon – a large one and you will be given the opportunity to present designs and become the exclusive designer for it. This project will involve a dedicated server and SQL so you must be proficient in these. Languages still to be confirmed. But you will also be expected to design newsletter, logos, product pages etc. Large ecommerce site. Lots of work, so lots of money for you. Work is expected to start end of 2006 if this project gets the green light. The objective of this networking site is to create a “friends” and “networking” site aimed mainly at the business and corporate market but must also be “friendly” enough to allow normal non-business users to want to use it. Users will come onto the site, register for free and add their profiles and itineraries. They can then search for other users by location and can then, once paying a monthly or annual fee, contact these users to arrange meetings and events or simply a meal or a drink. General Observations The site look has NOT been designed and I require three different visuals experimenting with layouts and colours. You are also required to do a logo for the site and three visuals are required. The site must be dynamic, modern and have a clean feel. It has to be extremely easy to navigate and search for what you’re looking for. The site must have a “look” and “feel” similar to the following sites: o [login to view URL] o [login to view URL] The site should contain large and easy to read graphics and buttons and I want to give a Windows Vista feel. So, large buttons and vibrant colours. In short: FUN. Current site A script was purchased from Alstrasoft ([login to view URL]) and is currently configured and running on the site. Please familiarize yourself with this script. Efriends have numerous features. Though I would like to keep almost all of these features and the site has to be built around it, you will need to build functionality to turn them on and off very easily into the new site. There are lots of work to make the searches better and add some new features. There are currently two parts to the site – the main part accessible through the home page which users will see when they visit the site and an admin section which can be accessed by going to the admin pages. All of this must have a similar look and feel. The admin section must be modified and pages added where information can be added to the database, e.g. adding hotels, locations, amenities such as restaurants or cinemas. There is currently 1 x MySQL database (100MB limit). I would like to spread the site over several databases, so the first can stay as it is. Then we need to add a database for hotels, one for amenities and one for FAQs and Support section. Additional databases can be created (up to 10) and login details can be supplied as and when needed. Good luck to the winning bidder and thanks for your patience and understanding of the nature of this project and its limited startup budget. Do a good job and you will be well rewarded in the future. Timescales - I've allowed 3 months until launch. I will also be looking for some support work after the project has completed for a period to iron out any bugs.