Need Help Configuring Membership Website with External Approval Process

Question

I am working on configuring a membership website for a group of scientist.  Here are the interesting requirements.  Any brainstorming would be helpful.
1 - A prospective member applies online. Within the application the prospective member has to include a reference for previous work proving his qualifications and naming a reference to confirm the qualifications.  The prospective member has to include the reference's name and email address.   (Site visitor creats a new user-submitted webapp item, easy enough.)
2 - The application needs to kick off a workflow to an external site visitor (someone who doesn't have a site login).  This reference needs to confirm of reject the prospective member's qualifications.
3 - If the external site visitor approves the reference, then the membership director needs to be emailed of the approval.  This approval should then kickoff another approval process to ask the membership director for his approval.
4 - If the external site visitor rejects the reference, then the membership directory needs to be emailed the rejection notification.  (If the reference rejects then there will be some sort of appeal process or ability to start over or submit a different reference.)
5 - If the reference approves and the membership director approves, then the prospective member is notified and submitted an invoice to pay.  His memberhsip is not active until he pays.
6 - Once the member pays, then he appears in the online directory.
7 - The member will also be able to login and edit his profile as needed.
That about sums it up.  Any ideas??
THANKS!

Answer 1

1. Do I need to connect the two base stations via an ethernet cable?
OR
Can I simply plug the second base station into a power outlet in any room, along with the external hard drive connected to it's USB port?
Airport Utility would not even recognize the second base station unless it is using an ethernet LAN-to-LAN connection. (It would not recognize the second base station with WAN-to-LAN connection.)
You basically have three choices here that will allow the second AEBSn to share the attached USB HDD:
Wired: Interconnect the two AEBSns by Ethernet; reconfigure both base stations into a roaming network.
Wireless: Configure both AEBSns for an extended network. Note: This is what Lowell Tuttman is referring to.
Wireless: Configure the second AEBSn as its own wireless network. This would work but would require network clients to switch network to access the drive or access the Internet. Not really practical and not recommended.
The following Apple Support link provides very detailed information on setting up either a roamng or extended network with multiple AirPorts.
2. Since I don't really care about the second base station utilizing the internet connection, do I set it up in Airport Utility as "create a new wireless network"?
This is the current setting and I have a steady green light. However, Time Machine does not recognize the disk.
In the first choice I provided, the second AEBSn would be configured to both "Wireless Mode = Create a wireless network" and "Connection Sharing = Off (Bridge Mode)."