Hello I was having a look at some sites and they were small sites with a booking page, which were pretty poorly designed, both visually and the coding was also in tables. I was thinking I could perhaps construct a better one and make a suggestion to the owner, however am not sure how the booking system is constructed. I am aware that you can use PHP but do not really have a knowledge of the language. Does anyone have any ideas? An example of a site I am referring to is http://www.centralguesthouse.com/tariff.php. Any help greatly appreciated, thank you.

Yes, you will need knowledge of PHP and ASP because some sites are hosted on Windows servers and others on Unix systems.

Is there anyway you could set one up using one of these software packages that you see advertised on the internet, i.e zen cart?

Hello,

 

Try out Magento ..Its easy to customize.

I don't think Magento is the right system for an availability/booking service. Plus although it is customisable, the time involved means it's unlikely you'd be able to do it for a price that they'd go for.

 

There are scripts out there that are much more suited.

I don't think that you should use Magento if the project is under £5000.

For a site such as this, I would advise that you learn some PHP as a booking forum would only require some basic knowledge of the language. Then you just have to integrate it into a payment systems such as PayPal, Google Checkout or perhaps SagePay.