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Bolt has impressed me thus far, but would it be a good choice to rebuild an existing web app (PlateWire)?

Directed to: Bolt and Bolt experienced developers

Site in question: PlateWire

Brief Description: Website where people can basically register their automobile's license plate and send virtual messages to other drivers using the license plate as an identifier.

Currently the site is built using ASP.NET (built over a weekend in 2006, has not really been updated since; I know, bad developer). The site was built with plans to globalize, but never got further than just the US; this version I intend to include the ability for every country, and eventually, many languages to be available as well (localization).

I'm confident I can build extensions for some of the more specific parts, for example creating/adding a plate that will look visually similar enough to the actual plate to display for previews. My questions are more in the how much of Bolt's internal structure can I/should I use if I decide to go this route?

Specifically using taxonomy and relationships (?) for the following items:

  • Location (City, State/Region, Country)
  • Vehicle (Make, Model, Color)
  • Plates (background image (if any), background color, text color, etc)
  • RateType (Name, Color, Icon)

Rates/Wire themselves I believe would work best as ContentTypes if I am understanding correctly.

I would love to journal this process and hopefully develop some interest in both PlateWire and Bolt if this turns out as easy as I think it could be. If there are any examples or guidance you guys might be able to provide me, it would go a long way to help me figure out if this truly will be not only a fun but successful project.

I do have a sketched out database diagram which is based on building it from scratch, which would not require as much due to Bolt's available functionality. Let me know if you'd like me to share this; I'd prefer to do it privately if so.

Thanks in advanced,

Mark

Solution

  • The data model you describe would work within Bolt. All of the items you describe can easily be caught within Bolt's contenttypes.

    As for the links between them: I think location, vehicle and plates ought to use Relations. The ratetype should probably be a category taxonomy.

    That said, perhaps vehicle could be a tag taxonomy as well, if you're not too strict, and just use them as [Volvo, green, hatchback].