Do I need an indicator or EA?

I am working on a strategy on MT4 that uses a few indicators made by other people.

What I'm trying to achieve is an alert that pops up just once when a few conditions have been met.

I'm fairly new to MT4 and have zero programming experience with it (although I've done some programming in PHP and a bit of C++ years ago).

How can I achieve my objective? Do I need an indicator or an EA? And where/how can I code such a thing? I tried reading through the help files in the MQL editor but I don't really know the software well enough to feel confident to program something myself. Is there some kind of software for MQL newbies like me that I can use, or is there a place where one can hire an expert to code such a thing?

Thanks!

RM2

Indicator will suffice.
Mql is a subset of c++; just enough c++ a mortal will ever need..
Metaeditor can create a stub of indicator code for you.
There's one basic function in the code: OnCalculate(...); it is called upon every change of price, bid or ask side.
This is where action happens; also it passes you all the relevant data series, like time, open, high, low, and close prices etc.
If you have to do some initalisation, or clean up at the exit, implement OnInit() and OnDeinit().
That's all to it..
All the functionality of Mql and program structure can be extracted from: docs.mql4.com

Thanks rockit, I'll check that site out for the documentation and have a go at doing some coding.

If combination of the indicators is profitable, you should code them into ea.

Don't make EA. You may use Moving average indicators but you need to master Candlesticks. I suggest you to read Steve Nison Candlesticks book.

Wow there's a lot of conflicting advice on here lol

I used one of those online indicator builders the other day but it didn't seem to work well and my MT4 was extremely slow to start up for some reason.

I might spend some time looking at the code for the indicators that I use and if I can't combine them into one, I think I'll just get someone to code them for me.

Thanks anyway