I was told to come here for some guidance, I know that my questions can be quite broad, but I just really want some kind of direction to go towards (links, articles, etc). So here it goes:
For the past month I have been planning and started implementing a wholesale website, but plans got changed on me and I need to allow both retail and wholesale orders which will also depend on whether the account is a regular customer or also has a seller account. There are various types of products and it has been decided that I would use subcategories as tables to organize them and allow various specific item fields. So here are some of my specific questions:
How different is the database structure for each item to be available for both wholesale and retail? Will it just be adding a quantity column and have two different pricing, or much more complicated? I am unaware if there's any price tables but would that be more difficult?
They use Quickbooks POS software, how difficult/inefficient will it be to update inventory quantities if they have like 2000-4000 products? And what would be the best ways to extract the information and update the system? I know it export an excel spreadsheet so maybe a suggested php plugin for it?
How difficult is this project in your professional opinion, and how big should a team usually be? (At the moment it is just me.) Projected time for planning, implementation, and quality assurance in accordance to team size?
I am an entry level developer and I know that I do not have enough knowledge to direct myself on this website...What kind of web developer skills will I need to find to help me? (My company is willing to hire people to get this website done as fast as possible.)
Also, what would be some great questionnaires to ask the product stakeholder about what he wants from the website? (He has made it clear he is neither computer or internet savvy...)
Sorry for the amount of questions, I'm an entry level web developer and do not have a senior to look up to for guidance. I have knowledge in HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin. I have never used any frameworks like Zend, Magento, etc, and is doing this all from scratch. So far the website is built in an object oriented way, MVC architecture to the best of my abilities, but I have many doubts because I would really want to have this done right. If I have been unclear on some parts please tell me and I'll add more detail.
I'm sure I'll have more additional questions later on, if anyone is open to that please tell me. Thanks in advance!
