How can I create a review site which is similar to craigslist?

Question

I want to create a site where you can review different things in the town. Example could be a Restaurant, a park, a doctor, a school. The user creates review and uploads pic if he has. I want to create a new page for a new item. Basically it would be similar to what craiglist do. When you create a new ad, a new page is created, as in example below.

http://boston.craigslist.org/nos/hab/2770582006.html

1. Does anyone know what framework craigslist is using?

2. How would I achieve this in PHP, MYSQL?

3. A side question. I know of one approach that I can take but I am a little reluctant on that. For example www.mywebsite.com/review.php?item_id=12. There is basically one page and the review is taken of out the database based on the item_id supplied. Is this approach better or the craiglist approach? In short

www.myreviewwebsite.com/review.php?id=123 vs

www.myreviewwebsite.com/12345.htm

Which one is better from marketing point of view, esthetic effect, functional, maintenance and more practical. (note I think I am going to create a separate question of no.3)

Answer 1

1. No. If it consists of a lot of html pages they've probably got some custom programming creating static html files.
2. I'm afraid I'm not going to design your site for you.
3. The answer is, it depends. For what you want it's probably easier to use the www.mywebsite.com/review.php?item_id=12 approach, as then you can use tools like PHP and MySQL, rather than writing your own system like Craigslist. It's easier to maintain, you can use similar templates for all pages. For SEO purposes you might want to embed some words in the URL too, like this site does.

Answer 2

1. I'm not aware of any imparticular framework Craigslist are using and that really shouldn't be the focus here. What you'd like to achieve is do-able in a multitude of languages and frameworks for the web.

2. This part of your question is far too vague, this can be done in a number of different ways with varying complexity depending on the features you'd like to implement. It could be as simple as having a database with the following schema:

   ID
   Review Type (School/Business/Restaurant)
   Name
   Location
   Review Body
   Reviewer's Name
   Photo
   

   ...then the necessary PHP to enter and recall the data.

3. As for getting the data from a query string, the two examples you've given are very much the same with the exception of url rewrites being applied to the second. Lookup the mod_rewrite Apache extension for how to do this.

Hope that sets you on the right tracks.