Creating an offline Content management System

Come September i am about to under go my final year at university. I am being a good student and planning my final year project now.

I have thought about creating an offline content management system for a website. What i need is some guidance to see if my project is possible.

The Plan

I plan to use VB to create a little software package that will take the user through various step to create a simple web site. This will involve

1. Installing a database
2. choosing a template design
3. add content into the database
4. upload files onto a chosen web server

of course the above step are the minimal steps for creating a website.

The main questions i am faced with is

1. Can i use VB to control other programs? I.e. install the database without the user seeing anything to do with the database itself; it all happens behind the scenes.

Any help or suggestions are really appreciated.

Alright, I'll bite.

Yes, you can use VB (what version?) to control other programs to a certain extent. Yes, you can install databases (what database server?) using different libraries provided to work with each. If you're talking about installing a database server itself, then that may have legal repercussions, since each customer would probably need a license to have, for example, SQL Server installed.

As for the rest of your requirements, yes that's possible, and there are many websites that already do the same. I don't know what version of VB you're talking about so I can't be more specific, but if you're using VB.NET and ASP.NET, then have a look at Themes.

Thanks for the reply mendhak. I dont have a version of vb installed at the moment.

I will look into VB.NET.

What do you think of the project idea?

I dont have much knowledge in VB at all. Can anyone recomend a good book or and website so i can begin to learn more.

Thanks

Welcome to the forums. :wave:

If you don't have VB, or have not studied VB, then why would you be planning on using it for a final project? :confused:

i have used it in the past a little.

I am studying systems design rather than computer science. For our project we can either design the system or create the system. To get a 1st when your only submitting a design is pretty unheard of. So therefore i want to make a system.

My programming knowledge is mainly Php and mysql.

I can make an online cms with php. But everyone does that for there final year project. Therefore i was going for something unique. I.e an offline CMS. I have done some reaseach into this which lead me to VB. Hence the reason why i am posting here.

Thanks

How are you in ASP?

Never used it. But i have plenty of time to learn.

Well, as this is going to be a web app, my suggestion would be ASP.NET

It has the benefit of being a web development platform, and something else you could add to your arsenal/resume.

ok thanks for the advice. How difficult do you think the project would be?

From a theoretical standpoint, everything is easy. :)

It would depend on how sophisticated you wanted it to be. In addition, there could be the licensing issues that mendhak spoke of.

Do you have a design yet, or are you just still thinking about it?

I am currently just thinking about it. I want to try and make a simple version first and then build on it later on.

With the licensing issue it shouldn't matter as i am using this for my personal use. Its not a commercial product.

Do you know of any good place to learn how to create an exe file