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Daily Deals forum + site, which software to use?

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Just wondering what would be the best software for a website that has a daily deals page and deals categorized like TechBargains.com, DealNews.com, SlickDeals.net, etc.? Is it possible to use Joomla for this? I also want to run a forum section so would you prefer vBulletin or IPBoard? I always liked vB 4.0 but i've been hearing a lot of negative comments on vB 5.0. Also, I'm curious about IP Board since many people on the vBulletin forums were raving about it and suggested switching over

Lastly, how long would a project like this take on average?
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I would not recommend Joomla for this kind of application, unless you already know of a suitable extension. The sites you have shown are more similar in structure to e-commerce rather than a CMS.

I haven't used IPBoard, so I can't comment on your forum dilemma, but may I ask what value a forum would be to this type of site?

Where do you plan to get daily deal links and product information from? As a developer, I find the example sites you listed to be of very poor design, and quite hard to navigate. I imagine that they do not convert as well as they potentially could.

If you would like to create your own solution, the design and development process could take anywhere from 1-6 months depending on the complexity and features you're looking for, and the quality of developers you are willing to hire.
 
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Lithium, thanks for your reply. I guess since you're a web developer, you would know what quality design looks like, but to a shopper, I find these sites to be "straight to the point" by displaying popular deals. They scour the internet and display only the good deals. Their design may be poor, but it seems like almost all deal sites follow this same design so it must be working.

The forum is invaluable to the deals site because users can discuss about shopping related topics, provide their shopping experience, share deals, etc.

I plan to get daily deal links from ClickBank or Commission Junction
 
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Do you plan on updating the deals yourself manually then? This seems like it would be an unsustainable amount of work. Are these click programs where the competitors are finding their deals from? You may need some aggregation script which searches sites that you have affiliate programs with and finds items on sale. I've noticed most of these products being listed from sites like Amazon, TigerDirect, eBay, etc.

Regarding the design, I find these sites to be cluttered in terms of the amount of information they provide to your eye at any one given time. Its hard at a glance to discern what each product is. I imagine that most of these sites look so similar because they are based off of the same modified ecommerce site, or the owners have commissioned clones of the first one to do it. Perhaps your key to success in this niche would be to try something new and fresh.
 
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I plan to update these deals manually because I want to handpick the HOT deals. There are both good and bad products, so I only want the good stuff to appear on the site. I know it will be a lot of work, but I will make it my full-time business. I'd be working with a few partners on manually entering the deals. I don't see any other way to do it if you want quality content.
 
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I would not recommend either vBulletin or IP.Board for any purpose. XenForo is a popular alternative. phpBB is often overlooked since it's free, but it's much more stable than vBulletin and IPB. XenForo offers the best cloud support if you plan on building a serious website, though phpBB can be a serious competitor on that front.

Daily deals tend to be custom-implemented. I don't think you're going to find any existing software that works quite as well as you'd like. slickdeals.net has built theirs on top of vBulletin 3.8.2, which I would not recommend attempting--your site will fall apart if you get any serious traffic, forcing you to scale vertically (one really powerful server, rather than multiple mid-range servers). See what you can find for XenForo: that tends to have the latest and the greatest. If you can't find anything already open to the public, you may need to try an outsourcing site. Beware, though, that those sites will yield garbage if you don't pay a lot.
 
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Thanks Paul,

I couldn't tell that SlickDeals built their entire site on top of vBulletin. It looks like something that is doable on Wordpress with the right plugins and custom template.

I have been looking into different options. I like the Wordpress + Sellfire combination. Also, Xenforo does sound like a good option after reading the feedback on several forums and also the negative feedback on vBulletin's forum.
 
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Hi interlagos

I would recommend you Agriya’s GroupDeal. It is a Groupon clone script which will build and launch your daily deal website within few days. It will act as a backbone to your website. Your website will have the capability to host many kinds of deals. The best part of this clone script is that it saves around $7000 of developing a website. This script has launched over 1500 websites in the world also has a forum software which can be integrated with this Groupon clone script.
 
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You can easily do that with WordPress, but surely you have already found something. Because we're already talking about deals like this, it would be smart to use a VPN. A VPN or Virtual Private Network serves to bring more protection to the network and for that I use TorGuard. For the purchase I also got a coupon code, where I could save money - » go to the link to get more info about, where to get such coupon codes.

Besides TorGuard, they also have other VPN providers that you should check out. Hope that I was a little helpful to you and good luck with that.

LG
 
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