News, Information & Price Comparison Website

We’re looking for a website developer to create an information website for us, preferably utilising WordPress as a platform, although this is up for discussion if the winning developer believes that another platform will accommodate the functionality we require better. The will be in informational, rather than transactional site, but since it requires automatic price updating, emailing and dynamic navigation, it will require some relatively sophisticated functionality so PLEASE don't bid if you don’t think that you are capable of providing the functionality we request in this brief within our budget. As previously stated, this will be an information/price comparison site featuring products that have a variety of attributes and categories. The site is going to have both product pages and blog posts (hence the preference for WordPress) and will be updated multiple times a day so will require a back-end that is easy to use. Navigation / Site Search: There will be a left navigation and a top navigation. The top navigation will simply have categories with drop down subcategories that expand when clicked. Pages and posts will both need to be tagged so that there is a left hand side navigation in the site allows selections of categories & sub categories for selection of content as demonstrated in the eBay site. The values for the tags will need to be established in the backend so that when a page / post is created they can be selected rather than having to be typed in. The tags that each product / page needs to be tagged with include multiple categories & sub-categories EG: Furniture, Sofa, Black, Leather, Two-seater and Couch and whether a page is news or product. This will also be included in the advanced search functionality. Automatic Updating / Price comparison: A number of elements on the site will need to be updated automatically – On product pages, there will be a spotlight segment that features the 4 most recent news / blog posts related to that particular product. Within the home page and the right hand navigation of the site there will be spotlight segments including a segment with products coming within the coming week / month and a chart of best-selling items as well as regularly updated polls. Each product page will also a feature a table with a list of prices from multiple vendors that will need to be updated automatically on a daily basis. These prices will form a price comparison table that will have the product name, product link & price with the cheapest at the top, ordered by price. Emails / Accounts: There will be a number of different points at which an email address can be entered each will needed to be tagged up separately so that the point at which the address is enters determines which one the different newsletters they will receive. This automatic email will need to be integrated into the backend so that once the prices are automatically decreased, the emails are sent out if appropriate. No matter where the address is entered, once the visitor has entered their email address, they will be given a chance to enter a password to create an account. The account functionality will consist of 2 elements. Once signed in, their account page will simply be dynamically generated list of news letters to which they are signed up, and from which they can remove themselves. Signed in visitors will also simply have an “Email me” button instead of the email address entry form and clicking that will add their email address to that newsletter list. Back End abilities: In the back end of the site, we must be able to add / edit / delete pages, polls, tags and page elements such as images. This will also include being able to edit the Special Offers segment manually. Look & Feel: Professional above all else. The website must be creative and interesting but maintain a professional overtone. This spec is a distilled version to help bidders understand what we need. A more detailed spec is available on request.