Web App Question

I suspect there is no right answer to your query. However here's my tuppence worth.

All decent software developments should begin with analysis/design. Whether you need to do every step you mention is up to you, but before committing that first line of code it is always good to get your thoughts down on paper. That can include some basic prototyping to make the ideas a little clearer. That design document doesn't need to be particularly neat and tidy in terms of a published document - but you should try to clarify your ideas in a way which someone else could read and understand what you are intending to achieve.

These design documents are usually good for designing the test plan which will take place after development. If you said at the outset that your web site was going to allow someone to choose 3 books from a list of 20 then your test plan should include that definition.

Getting someone else to review that design document would be good. Us developers are very good at missing the blatantly obvious, whereas someone else will say "hang on, I'm missing something here".

Next, write your test plan. That will scope your deliverables. No code written yet, but you can lay out what your test(s) will be first - that way when development gets underway you know what you are going to have to achieve to pass your test plan. Most developers leave writing the test plan until after development has completed, which isn't good in my book.

If you have previous experience of ASP then that would be a good starting point. However perhaps this might present an opportunity for you to get started with ASP.NET? I have several years of experience of ASP, but I jumped the fence to ASP.NET in 2002 and haven't looked back.

You probably also need to identify (but not necessarily advertise) your motivation for starting this project. Are you doing this for fun? Are you hoping to make some capital gain from it? Is it to help with future job prospects? Let's cover those angles briefly.

For fun: Excellent. We've all done a bit of that in the past and it is very useful in terms of motivation.

Commercial gain: Be very careful. The dot com boom is over and the ebay's and googles of this world are already out there. Unless you are going to be red hot lucky the likelihood is that you won't earn a dime from this exploit.

Future career: Whilst ASP is still a sought-after skill, IMHO .NET is the way to go. You really don't want to become a future Cobol dinosaur if you have years ahead of you trying to earn a living. In my view ASP is cooling down rapidly now, new projects are mostly being developed with ASP.NET, so the sooner you get on that bandwagon the better your future employment prospects will be.

Others will no doubt disagree, however as I said earlier there's no perfectly correct answer.

Andrew