Ideas for a PHP Summer Project

Question

Each student in my school, has to develop a Technology Summer Project. I was thinking in doing something in PHP, using MySQL databases, and something that has some utility for the real life. I'm an advanced PHP developer (not an expert one :). The project has to follow that rules:

1. It's in PHP
2. It's a front-end and a backend
3. Has to be something to solve a real-life problem and useful.

I don't have any idea. Can you help me with an idea, please?

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UPDATE 1

I'll make something similar to GTD, and a reminder working together. Can you suggest more features an GTD and a reminder have?

Answer 1

Some ideas I have had in mind:

• A simple reminder system: A password-protected page in which I can quickly enter a date, a time and a subject line (March 3rd, 15:00, "Print and send out invoices".) Using a cron job, the reminder will send me an E-Mail at the desired time. To me personally, the emphasis would be on quick - a minimalistic page looking like Google's start page, with just three fields and a big "save" button to enter reminders into when you're in a hurry.

  Ideas to "fatten it up" a bit:

  • A back-end to edit the reminders.

  • A (protected) front page showing the next upcoming reminders.

  • The possibility to add recurring reminders (Baseball practice every tuesday 15:00.)

  • The possibility to postpone reminders: Every reminder E-Mail contains a number of links: postpone by 3 hours postpone by 6 hours postpone until tomorrow

  • A SMS gateway to get reminders to your mobile. Maybe in the form of plugins for national providers (or using an international provider like Skype if they have an API - I'm not sure.)

• A really good, universal web site backup system (FTP + mySQL, incremental) for non-technical users - but that is more than a summer project I'd say

• A simple tool for people with no programming experience to set up their own full-screen Google Maps pages with multiple markers, say for Marathons, Festivals, Parties, Travel routes etc. Say you have a back-end where you can enter locations. The front-end is then those locations showing up on an embeddable Google map, and when people click on a marker a bubble comes up with more information. Bonus points for being able to upload own markers and bubbles. This is trivial for anyone who knows a programming language, but it's still quite a challenge for somebody who doesn't.

I'll add more when I think of something.

Answer 2

What about an administration for messages - emails, twitter, RSS?

Features:

• Searching

• Reminders

• Filters (I'm at work, I'm at home, I'm lazy amuse me :-))

Answer 3

I would highly suggest doing something you know. What are some problems you deal with such as:

• Finding a tutor
• Tutoring
• Finding or buying used books
• Organizing your time

Doing something you know will save you time learning the domain, and allow you to create something useful, because you know about the use.

Please don't write another forum though ... it's been done to death ...

Answer 4

Web Based Library Information System

• Login systems for Librarians
• Records of all books
• Records of issued books
• Records of People who exceeded the book returning date
• Search books by topics
• Stats of books issued in last week
• etc

Answer 5

Try to do an open source GTD to do list. As far as I know, there are none for free and it'd probably even help you to save your precious time in the future :) It probably even wouldn't be that hard, it'd just require you to read some more materials.

Answer 6

I would suggest making your own basic framework, even if you don't end up using it later on.

Yep, the whole 'reinventing the wheel argument':

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/02/dont-reinvent-the-wheel-unless-you-plan-on-learning-more-about-wheels.html

Answer 7

Anything with trees.

For example, whatever you decide to do you can always have a concept of categories with infinite levels and items that belong to one or many categories. The backend and frontend for this feature will flex your muscles nicely especially if you go down the ajax way and allow complex operations on the categories and items.