I'll probably repost this into a specific area like Web Languages? I wasn't sure.

Anyways, I'm looking to develop an App that people will use to access a database of information. This info will be exclusive and will help the members who sign up for the App. I myself might be able to do it if i spent like a good year researching and learning but I was hoping to get some tips on this specific kind of App, figures of how much it would cost to hire a professional to design it and any other general info you might think could help me.

Thanks.

AND

I forgot to ask if once the app has been made, logo all professionally ready for mobile devices and tablets(too?) after its done my question... is can I have a link to a blog somewhere in there that they see off on the side, bottom, top whatever. Will they be able to go to my blog which signs up people for another area of my business. Kind of like free advertising??

Determine your target device. Android? iphone? tablets? ipads?

sounds like you will probably hire at least two groups: one for the art / graphic design and one to do the programming. if this is for a business and you have extra $$ to shell out, you might wanna hire someone for UI/UX, testers, and people to spam/advertise your app

before you approach a professional, start by scoping it out. if you approach someone with what you just listed, you'll end up paying a lot of extra hours while they narrow down what you want. it can get expensive. so list all the functionality you want. mock up all the screens you're imagining. if you're not comfortable with programs that can do it (photo-shop, wire frame designers), then just draw it out on paper/pencil. make sure you mention all the menu items, message boxes, animations, error messages. give as much information as possible up front.


Don't. this post is fine.

i personally do not need answers to the following questions. these are just to guide your thinking process.


Is this data constant? or are there updates? will you have someone maintain it? does it need to work offline?


does that mean anyone who has the app can see it? or everyone who has the app needs to login/register?


if you can mock up what it should look like, they can make it.


it's good that you realize you can't do it quickly. everyone else thinks it's so small and simple they can do it in a week. as for cost, start around 50$/hr and go up from there. the graphics will be much cheaper than the programming. if your app has exactly one screen and it's just a big list, then it wouldn't take long to make. however, i expect you won't be happy with that and you'll want a lot more to it.

idk about ios but for android you will need
a java program w/ xml, a database, and a server to hold the database if you want to make it web accessable
if you have the coding knowledge to make it you can put it up on the google play store for free and use android studio sdk to put it together http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
the database you can use a utility like mariadb to make/access it with sql from terminal or within your java program https://mariadb.org/
as for the server, it depends on the size/traffic but there are some cheap cloud solutions out there, just looking at https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/cloud/servers/pricing it looks like you could get a linux server going for like 300$ a month with 100gb storage 4gb ram 1tb bandwidth 200mbs connection and, 100x load balancer , once you design a system it can scale up as needed but you will save a fuck load of money using a free db solution like mariadb on a linux server compared to a windows+sql os by like a factor of 10

or you could save a lot of long run money and buying your own server and setting it up yourself

blogs are free and all over the place, if ya wanna buy your own domain godaddy has them on sale for 99 cents right now for 1 year lol there are tons of free html/css templates out there

This post was edited by Ideophobe on Mar 27 2016 05:41pm

I developed something similar for my employer utilizing JQuery Mobile. I made calls to the DB using AJAX, returning JSON to display on the client. Fairly straight forward.