"1. What is the timetable for setup of a website such as aptratings.com for the average experience web/database designer? Please explain why."
I'm a fairly experienced, professional programmer (not a graphic designer by any means), and I would guess it would take me about a month to do apartmentsite.com. I'd probably charge $5,000 for it. It obviously has a fairly complex back end and lots of fancy design elements. I could whip out a version without all the fancy bells and whistles for about $750.
Core DB design: As a minimum, You need a way to store reviews, users, apartment complexes, and reviews of review. You need a way to efficiently gather statistics on that data and have the db be searchable.
Core UI design: about us, contact us, search by zip, city, state, average rating, or apartment name, view search results, view rating, view rating of rating, enter rating, enter rating of rating.
"2. I was wondering if there were any options such as pre-fab database programs or templates, which would improve setup time and avoid re-inventing the wheel? Please provide examples."
I don't know of any...But in my experience the time you spend trying to make templates fit your needs is usually more than it takes to do it from scratch.
"3. If not, does anyone have any suggestions as to which database software would be right for this job? Or are they all relatively the same regarding this application?"
They are not relatively the same...There are tradeoffs in performance, maintainability, cost, and learning curve. For this project, I would only consider PHP, ASP.NET (NOT ASP), or JSP for the language, Access, mySQL, or SQL Server for the DB.
PHP: Low cost, smooth learning curve, good performance, terrible maintainability due to it's lack of strong data types and weak object oriented capabilities. By far the most popular.
ASP.NET (w/C#), High cost, steep learning curve, excellent performance, excellent maintainability.
JSP: Medium cost, medium learning curve, terrible performance, medium maintainability.
------
mySQL: Low cost, good performance, not alot of features (current production release doesn't have stored procedures or views)
Access: Medium cost, terrible scalability, O.K. Features. Just joking when I said would consider it...I really never would. But some people might.
SQL Server: High cost, excellent in everything else.
My personal choice would be to do ASP.NET with mySQL or SQL Server. IMHO, PHP gets cumbersome once you get over 10,000 lines of code or so.
-SN
