How to Design Your Own Online Auction Software
Thanks to the likes of Ebay millions of users have become accustomed to purchasing products through online auctions in order to save money or to find hard to come by items. Ebay, however, is not the only online auction service. There are a number of competing services available on the internet and there little other than technical knowledge and server space preventing you or anyone else from creating and opening their own online auction site. Even those without technical skills can design the software and have someone else do the actual programming for them.
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Instructions
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Create a virtual server with an online server provider. There are a number of companies competing in that business. The large ones are Amazon.com, Rackspace, and Flexiant. Their pricing is pretty much similar and they all work in the same way; you can create a server in a matter of clicks and there is no need for any programming to create your server. During the creation process, you will be asked how much memory, storage space, and what operating system you want your server to have.
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Install the server tools that are used to host and server up website data. These tools will differ on Linux and Windows server and your provider may have already installed them for you. If they are not already installed on the system and you are running Linux, simply enter the following command into your server's command line: sudo apt-get install lamp. Please note that some versions of Linux require the following alternate command: sudo yum install lamp; this command is primarily used on Red Hat based systems, such as Fedora. If you are using a Windows server, you should already have the tools that you need, but, if you do not, then you are going to have contact your server provider as they are proprietary and are supposed to be built into the server.
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Design your website and its functionality. Even if you plan on hiring someone else to develop your site and service, you should still have an active role in its development and have a solid idea of what you want made before you consult anyone else. There are few things to keep in mind regarding your site's overall design: the visual experience you want your users to have, any technologies that you absolutely do or do not want used on your site, and scalability. The first two are a matter of personal preference, but scalability is a technical concern. Scalability refers to how easily a site can accommodate rapid and sudden increases in the number of users and visits your site receives. Using a virtual server is a major step towards scalability and for most users that may be enough. However, another step that can be taken is to move your databases on to a separate server, thus relieving the main server of a lot of database related activity.
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Code the site and its corresponding databases or have your developer do it for you. It is not possible to provide any specific code here, because there are so many different tools, programming languages, and database technologies. Furthermore, the tools available to you will depend on whether you are running Windows Sever on your server or Linux.
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