Travel Booking Website

We have a current website that deals with booking travel related resources (accommodation, air-travel, car-hire, etc). The site was originally developed using Ruby on Rails, and we want to translate the site to PHP (using smarty templates). We use Firebird as the database engine. We have a good PHP developer who has developed a framework for the new site, and we need a meticulous translation of our existing site. The current site may be viewed at [[login to view URL]][1] . We would like to see some continuity in our association, and would prefer a developer that will be able move on to new projects once this one is complete. ## Deliverables 1) Complete and fully-functional working site in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. 2) Deliverables must be in ready-to-run condition, in other words, the site must exactly emulate the existing site. 3) All third party scripts considered for use by the developer must be approved prior to inclusion in the code. 4) All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. (No GPL, GNU, 3rd party components, etc. unless all copyright ramifications are explained AND AGREED TO by the buyer on the site per the coder's Seller Legal Agreement). * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Monday Aug 6, 2007 3:41:42 AM: We have had a high number of bids and questions, and it seems that the best way to respond is to answer all the questions at once in a message to all bidders. Q: We response to our clients within 24 hours and expect clients to response within 48 hours. A: We do not normally work on weekends, so questions asked on a Friday will normally only be answered on a Monday. Q: Please send us your more detailed description of the project / Can you provide a detailed specification list which you want to develop in your new PHP website? A: We are in the process of preparing a more detailed specification, though the current site is as good as a specification on account of the project purpose being to port the existing Ruby on Rails site to PHP. Q: We have estimated $XXXXX value and XX weeks development effort purely based on general description and assumption that business logic contained in ROR version is valid A: Most of the business logic is solid, though many of the SQL calls are inefficient, and some of the mechanism employed could be improved upon. We would expect to leverage on the developers skill and insight to improve on the stability and efficiency of the system. Q. IS the booking on your website a realtime? or it is offline? A: It is a real-time booking system. We are currently implementing XML interfaces to other reservation systems. Q: I assume that you want to keep your interface and database design same during? conversion? Kindly confirm? A: Yes, this is correct. The database is currently in use and we would rather not make profound changes to the database until the conversion is complete and the next phase of the project begins. Q: Do you have integrations with any third party APIs too? A: Yes, we do, but most of these are handled via ISAPI dll's, and service applications. Interfaces to the airlines are currently via iframes, but this will change (probably in the next phase). Q: Also like to know (if possible review) the backend admin function that the current application has, to estimate efforts? A: The Admin back-end exists, is written in PHP, and is not part of the current brief. This aspect is also currently under development, but we are doing this in-house at the moment. Q: we can provide you with website according to your requirements in joomla A: We specifically want to stay away from joomla (and PHP Nuke, etc). We believe that at some point we will find ourselves limited in the direction we choose to take if we are dependent on extensive libraries over which we do not have absolute control. One exception to this is the use of Smarty. Q: What do you mean by "meticulous translation" ?? Human or Computer languages ? A: What we mean here is the the conversion from Ruby on Rails to PHP must be exact. We need the exact functionality and look and feel of the existing site to be present in the “new?? PHP site. Q: On your new translated site, i must redesign the interface, or just use the existing one (so the change will be made only in the engine, not the interface). A: We don't want the interface re-designed - we know there are some conceptual flaws with it, but the changes will be for the next phase of development. Q: Are you looking at an hourly rate for association or do you need a fixed price ? A: For this project we require a fixed price as it has very clearly defined boundaries, and it is easily possible to quantify the time required. Q: Would you provide us existing source code of ROR? A: Yes, of course. Q: Do you want re-designing of the website too or only conversion of the language? A: Just the conversion for now. Q: Would you also like to change the Database to MySQL? A: No, the decision to use Firebird is pretty fixed. For us, going to MySQL would be going backwards ??" stored procedures and triggers are pretty new to MySQL and very well established in Firebird. There are other compelling reasons, but they are beyond the scope of this discussion. Q: We are assuming that your existing website in ROR won't have any errors/bugs because we will be doing straight forward conversion but if you wanted to remove bugs/enhancements etc. then we will have to provide you the additional Man-Hours for that. A: Well, it is always a dangerous assumption that any particular piece of software is free of bugs. It is reasonably error free, but of course in the process of translation it would be foolish to merely translate without insight ??" if you find a bug it would make more sense to correct it there and then. Of course, I understand that this was not exactly what you meant ??" you are concerned about translating a piece of software that has absolutely no chance of working conceptually. This is not the case here. The software works reasonably well ??" but of course you could check this yourself as the site does exist and is available to you. If I have missed any questions, I apologize ??" please feel free to remind me of your question. Thanks Gary * * *This broadcast message was sent to all bidders on Friday Aug 10, 2007 5:15:46 AM: Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to bid on our project. We have extended our bid deadline to Wednesday, 15th August as a result of a local public holiday and a long weekend, during which all staff are absent. Regards Gary ## Platform PHP 5 Linux Firebird