In a previous post I discussed my decision to start and build UnAnchor.com – a platform for users to create do-it-yourself travel itineraries for other travelers to purchase. In this post, I’m going to discuss how I’m actually going about the creation of the site.

To be honest, I have very little experience in building web applications. In college, I took a few computer science classes where I learned the programming basics – but other than that, I really don’t have much experience. In essence, I started from the beginning.

I decided to go the book route and read the electronic version of “Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites” – it was an excellent book. It taught me the basics I needed to get going. Many of the code examples they gave were extremely practical and I was able to directly use them in building UnAnchor. I constantly refer back to the book as I run into issues.

My biggest resource, though, is Google. I continue to be amazed by the amount of helpful information there is out there on every topic. Here are a few excellent sites I’ve discovered so far:

• Stackoverflow – Question and Answer site for all technical, back-end queries
• HotScripts - Good collection of pre-built scripts
• Doctype – Question and Answer site for the front-end (HTML, CSS)

How’s the site coming so far?

It’s going well. I’m finishing a good amount of the back-end items at the moment and then will get started on making it look pretty (front-end). I’m targeting early-April for a beta launch and so far I still believe I can hit that time period. I am going to need some help, however, and I’ll be asking for it in future posts.

Off-Topic Thought

Sharon and I recently watched the excellent documentary, “A Map For Saturday” – it’s about a twenty-something filmmaker who quits his job at HBO to travel around the world for a year. He stays at hostels, lives out of his backpack and video tapes the entire experience.

If you’re at all curious as to what Sharon and my life has been like the last 5 months, or just want to see a really well made documentary, I highly recommend it. Thanks to John, who told us about the movie!

Photo Credit: Anders Adermark

Filed under: Money Making | Unanchor