Looking for advice

[richhinton]

I'm new to this forum and looking for advice.

I am currently developing a new portfolio website service (think livebooks but much more flexible and more affordable) and want to include a designer section to the service, where graphic designers can create and sell template designs and also be commissioned by customers to create new designs for them.

Some existing portfolio website services do offer a version of this service, however they only provide the services of a couple of in house designers. I am looking to make this more open, similar to how Wordpress openly allow designers to create new templates and there are now hundreds of different sites out there selling custom Wordpress templates.

What I am trying to find out at the moment is what you guys (and gals) think about a more open system, and what your requirements would be.

My initial thoughts would be to have a design section to our service where we offer designs by approved designers, but to also allow users to import designs which have been created externally.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. :)

[bigdave]

You would need to manually vet work to help keep standards high. for instance, iStock are very strict and users have to pass an exam and submit samples before theyre allowed to upload images to sell while Stock.XCHNG will allow anyone to advertise images and it shows!!!

As long as you can keep ontop of the monitoring, it sounds like a good plan!