private website to keep track of customers and book them in for visits

user_2609557 0
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I'd like to develop a simple online system that should be accessible by me and few of my colleagues too where we could maintain a list of our existing customers and book visits for them (as opposed to let them book the visits). What I have in my mind is some sort of "private website" with a login process that would only allow selected users. The website should have access to a database too, so that users could register new customers, book them for visits, see the calendar for a given day, etc.

Which type of service would you suggest for this? I am not a web developer, so I'd love something relatively fast and simple to set up. Also I don't mind going for paid services, but only if they are relatively cheap. This is not an actual professional service, but more of a "side job".

I thought of something like weebly, wix and similar, but I don't know whether it's going to be easy to do the database bit, and authentication.

Any suggestion would be very appreciated. Thank you!!

content-management-system database
3 Answers

You'd better become a web developer, or hire one

Disclaimer: these are my personal opinions as a professional web developer, however I'm sure (and I hope) others chime in with their radically different perspectives and methodologies so you can find what's best for you — the following would outline what I would do, however this road should only be followed by an aspiring web developer or another professional who has an affinity for javascript and straight-up building new things

I would personally not consider using Wix or Weebly or Squarespace or any similar such platform. Unless you can find some plugin that does exactly what you need (this is possible, booking platforms are probably a fairly common use-case), I think you may need to develop your own custom functionality, in which case, the frontend website component is the easier part

I would develop a new node application, and host it on the cloud with Heroku, AWS, Google cloud, or Microsoft Azure

The following is my take on your general requirements, along with my suggestions for possible implementations (I myself would explore the bolded alternatives first)

  • frontend website communicates with backend server for business logic
    • two separate private github repositories (paid)
      • backend: nodejs application handles authentication, serves API for business logic, where admins can book events, and other visitors can view bookings
      • frontend: static single-page website built with react (or better yet, preact) which makes calls to the API to get business logic done
  • users and admins can login with their google accounts
    • (alternative) integrate with (paid) auth0
    • (alternative) integrate directly with (free) google sign-in
  • cloud database service to store users and bookings (paid)
  • display bookings on a calendar (free)
    • (alternative) integrate with google calendar
    • (alternative) create your own calendar display
user_10334260

Honestly, I have to agree with @ChaseMoskal on this one. This is a large project, and would not consider it a project which you can setup relatively simply and fast. If you want to have complete control so that all the components/features you ask for fit together well and work together well, it's better you hire a web developer.

That being said, you could consider WordPress. Wordpress has site templates so you can use those to get a site up and running quickly, and it natively has user capabilities to register new users with. It also has plugin capabilities with a plethora of different scheduling plugins that will allow you to schedule visits and view a calendar.

The issue with Wordpress is scalability. As your company grows and requires more features of your website, you may not be able to add those features. You won't really know what's going on back end, thus you won't actually have control of the data your website contains (if you change services and need to migrate data).

Again, I really feel like a project like this requires an actual developer. However, for the short-term, I'm confident Wordpress can do everything you wanted out of your website currently.

user_55256090

Contract with a third party travel agent/professional booking service (e.g. Carlson Wagonlit, who, disclaimer, is the first one that came up in a web search and with I have no commercial affiliation).

To be honest, not insulting, you are in over your head on the technical and security side. It sounds like it would be best is to hand over a list of your known clients to a company with a security infrastructure already in place; with a web presence already in place; with a tech support infrastructure already in place.

Any developer worth his/her salt is going to tell you that building this from the ground up will cost you dearly. Maintaining it even more so. You've done yourself the greatest favor by being honest and saying you don't have the experience to pull this off. There are services out there that do this every day. They advertise profusely. Pick a reputable one, and best wishes to you.

user_34568120
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