nucite

I transfered this post to this forum based upon a user suggestion...

I was directed to this forum from a SitePoint Forums member. I am a developer that just had a client screw me over for a piece of software he wanted developed in PHP/MySQL/AJAX. I have never done work in the "adult" arena, so please bear with me. This project was quoted at about $8,000 and the client paid my initial 20% deposit to get me started with no problem. After creating everything for him, I sent him the demo links and my email got returned. After trying every phone number, email address, and ICQ number I had on this guy, I have come up with nothing but blanks. My "30 days to pay" clause in my contract has now expired and I don't know what to do with this... I don't know what the software is actually worth in this industry.

So I set it up on a domain (PornSwipe.com) and put it for sale at SEDO.

Here's what it is...

A way for an adult webmaster to house the content (images only) he gets from any webmaster program. (For the sake of the demo site I used the Free content from a program called Platinum Bucks). Basically the webmaster can just download the zip files, then upload them to his server. Then, use the admin panel to point to any zip file and it will automatically extract all the images, thumbnail them, sort them and store them as being associated with a predefined web site. The admin sets up the web sites in the admin panel and associates other information with them like Affiliate link URL, banners, descriptions, display ranks, etc.

There's more to it, but that gives you the point. The client just wanted his whole process to go smoother and be far less time consuming.

So here's the kicker. His grand vision with this software was to resell it. He figured he could do better selling the software then to run the sites it was established on. Therefore he required an easy to create template system so that the layouts could be easily changed for any design without having to alter the infrastructure in any way, making each site look as if it was completely different to the end user.

So I did it all for him. It is a true MVC framework design making full use of solid SEO practices. I used PHP/MySQL for the processing engine, Smarty for the template technology, and of course HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.

I own a number of non-adult sites that do quite well and I'm a bit hesitant to enter this arena... so I will likely sell this software off. My problem is that I have absolutely no idea what types of questions need to be answered in order to prove its worth. I'm hoping you guys will throw some questions at me to get me started. For all I know I may have to alter it if I want to sell it.

Because of the large file transfers needed (big zipped image files) I do not want to set up a working demo of the software... and, let's face it - PornSwipe.com has a totally generic, ugly design that any decent HTML developer/graphic designer could easily make a thousand times better. The Smarty template system allows the designer to easily make updates. Actually you could even store an unlimited number of layouts within one site and change them on the fly... whenever needed.

Anyhow, thanks in advance for your thoughts and questions. I'll keep an eye on this thread.