website

[chippy mark]

I want to set up a website for my work, is it worth paying someone to do it for me or trying to do it myself, I want something fairly basic probably only five or six pages. any help or advice?

 

[maltrout512]

Wizer (Tom) knows about websites and I am sure that he will give you some advice.

 

[Ad de Crom]

I want to set up a website for my work, is it worth paying someone to do it for me or trying to do it myself, I want something fairly basic probably only five or six pages. any help or advice?

Make your own website with frontpage, just like I did.
You can make a choice of templates for working with to create the pages you need. Free hosting is possible with asking an account by Lycos.
Okay, the first time you doing this it needs time.
But look to my website http://mitglied.lycos.de/adecrom
A lot of backgrounds are to find on the internet, also the needed buttons.
Once you did it, you never forget it.
Ad

 

[wizer]

Yes I am a web developer and am currently specialising in small tradesmen and artisan sites.

You will get a few people here saying you can get what you want from either free or paid web design programmes. That is true. But if you want something that looks stylish and works well, then IMHO you need a proper developer. Off the shelf programmes generally write poor code and as such aren't as friendly to search engines. There's no way to offer you my services without it looking like a hard sell. But if you would like to talk then just drop me a PM.

Cheers

 

[CHJ]

....Off the shelf programmes generally write poor code ....

But some do a good job.

Whereas some web developers efforts don't always ensure W3C compliance.

:wink:

 

[cambournepete]

If it's just a personal website then it doesn't really matter how you produce it.

If it's for you business, then unless you're an expert web designer (which you aren't otherwise you wouldn't be asking) you need to get it done professionally by someone with experince in your work area ideally if you want to make a good impression.

This isn't meant to sound like an advert for "Wizer Web Works" thigh

 

[Max Power]

Couldn't agree more , you only get one chance to create an impression , so best make it a good one.

 

[RogerS]

Well, I did mine all on my ownsome (with a little bit of advice from here and there) . I don't think it's too bad.

I agree that Wizer was right re being search-engine friendly. iWeb isn't but there are tools around that will make it so.

 

[joiner_sim]

My website http://www.simonswoodwork.tk was made by myself using http://www.webs.com good free service! You can pay for premium services that start at about £35 a year, like I did once. Now I'm on the "free" version again.

 

[matt]

Whether or not you have a go yourself is largely dependant on the type of person you are and your inclination toward design and development.

It's dead easy to produce a web page (check out how many word processing programmes to can export to HTML :shock: (this is not a recommendation!!!) ). It's even easier to produce a very poor web page or site from poor use of colour, font, etc to the code behind the scene (even when it's hand-coded versus exported from or created in web design packages).

CHJ makes a very good point where demonstrating a degree of competency is concerned - if you work out what he's referring to then have a go at producing a site (just don't publish it live until you're satisfied that you've done a good job). If you haven't the foggiest what CHJ was referring to and can't be pineappled to find out - then perhaps leave it to someone else to produce for you.

You might also want to consider something like Wordpress (again, if you're sufficiently intrigued to explore then go for it, if not, palm the job off on someone else).

 

[CHJ]

My website http://www.simonswoodwork.tk was made by myself using http://www.webs.com good free service! You can pay for premium services that start at about £35 a year, like I did once. Now I'm on the "free" version again.

The problem is Simon, although a site may look good in a browser it may be relying on the browser to make a lot of guesses as to what was intended due to some basic errors, hence why some sites don't display correctly on alternate or differing edition browsers.
See here for instance

Don't take it too seriously, the site works and there are a lot worse coded by web developers.

 

[AIrSupplies]

I would say get someone very local to build it for you. You can not beat meeting them face to face even for half an hour and again if you want any changes. Trying to describe changes down the phone is a nightmare.

So yeah stick to very lcoal and try and get a free lancer to do a 6 page website with a CMS (Content Management System - where you can log in a and change the text on the website, eg new opening times etc etc). Should cost around £200 and no more than £30 a yeah for hosting of website and emails if you want it. Domain name should cost no more than £10 a year for a .co.uk

 

[wizer]

So yeah stick to very lcoal and try and get a free lancer to do a 6 page website with a CMS (Content Management System - where you can log in a and change the text on the website, eg new opening times etc etc). Should cost around £200 and no more than £30 a yeah for hosting of website and emails if you want it. Domain name should cost no more than £10 a year for a .co.uk

Really? A six page CMS system will take me about 10hrs with a very basic site layout. £20 per hour. When you factor in liaising with the client, design mockups, initial alterations. I couldn't live on that. Could you?

 

[CHJ]

Anyone with an interest in checking the coding of their site can do so, it's free.

Just add the web address to the end of this line in your browser.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=

Example;

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.bbc.co.uk/

There is a similar check for CSS use.

 

[wizer]

Anyone with an interest in checking the coding of their site can do so, it's free.

Just add the web address to the end of this line in your browser.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=

Example;

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.bbc.co.uk/

There is a similar check for CSS use.

....and very few sites pass. It's not something web designers are striving for, strict validation is not what search engines are looking for. Clean, well written code is much more important than closing every single statement. Most clients would run a country mile if they were charged for strict validation. This would require every single site to be written from scratch, on AIrSupplies quotation, there would be very little web designers in business.

It's like saying every drawer should be made with hand cut dovetails and finished with french polish..

 

[matt]

Anyone with an interest in checking the coding of their site can do so, it's free.

Just add the web address to the end of this line in your browser.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=

Example;

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.bbc.co.uk/

There is a similar check for CSS use.

....and very few sites pass. It's not something web designers are striving for, strict validation is not what search engines are looking for. Clean, well written code is much more important than closing every single statement. Most clients would run a country mile if they were charged for strict validation. This would require every single site to be written from scratch, on AIrSupplies quotation, there would be very little web designers in business.

It's like saying every drawer should be made with hand cut dovetails and finished with french polish..

It's not so much about strict validation. You should declare your doctype and version and see how it validates, whether that be strict, transitional, etc. That way you are best placed to stop the site breaking as browsers ease out of quirks mode through subsequent releases. That said I've never found coding to XHTML strict especially taxing - it kinda becomes second nature, although I do admit to ignoring some warnings where I'm completely confident about the background to the warning.

Although I agree - so many designers/developers etc don't bother. Some in ignorance (too many sites without a doctype declaration let alone attempting to validate :roll: )

 

[mailee]

Check your PM Chippy. :wink:

 

[motownmartin]

I made a website with freewebs and although it looked decent it didn't give me what I wanted, as I looked into it further there were a lot more costs, they soon started to mount up as I wanted to be able to sell some of the items that I made.

I ended up with one that my son made for me, my own little online shop complete with a shopping cart, costing absolutely nothing apart from my domain name at a few quid a year.

At this moment in time my son can't get a job, website developing is what he wants to do but there isn't a lot of oppertunities out there at the moment, he's thinking of joining the RAF, maybe he could do both.

What I am saying is that it depends waht you want your website for, if you just want to share your work with others then a free site would do (complete with their ads) or if you want to go further I am sure someone like Tom (wizer) could do a decent job.

 

[SBJ]

Why not have a go yourself, if it works out then all well and good, if not pay someone to do it for you. If you end up having to pay someone, then atleast you will have a very good idea of what you want.

It's really not that difficult for the sort of site that you require, if you are prepared to put a bit of effort in to it.

If you do end up paying for it the my advice would be to search google for a local webdesigner, whoever is top/front page obviously has a good grasp on what it takes to get their site seen, so long as you can see a few of their previous examples and feel comfortable you should be ok. £200-£300 should get you something pretty reasonable i would think.

I think you should be aware that there are loads of people out there that claim to be web designers/developers just because they have knocked up a few sites for friends. if you can get and check references all the better, especially with regards to getting information updated or pictures changed etc.

 

[big soft moose]

So yeah stick to very lcoal and try and get a free lancer to do a 6 page website with a CMS (Content Management System - where you can log in a and change the text on the website, eg new opening times etc etc). Should cost around £200 and no more than £30 a yeah for hosting of website and emails if you want it. Domain name should cost no more than £10 a year for a .co.uk

Really? A six page CMS system will take me about 10hrs with a very basic site layout. £20 per hour. When you factor in liaising with the client, design mockups, initial alterations. I couldn't live on that. Could you?

200 is seriously low - when i used to do freelance "web design" and i was using an editor as unlike tom i wouldnt know html from a hole in the ground, i used to charge about 200 just for a basic site.

I didnt offer cms sites but i would have expected those that did to charge more.

and there is no reason to hire local - people travel for client meetings


if you think about woodwork as a paralell , the reason bespoke furniture costs so much is not the price of the wood but because you are paying for the makers skill - if someone who had no previous woodwork experience wanted a display cabinet for their shop, would you advise them to buy a copy of woodwork for dummies and knock it up themselves out of 2x4s and ply , or would it make more buisness sense to hire someone like brad to build it properly.

and assuming the latter course, would you expect him to do it for the same price as a piece of ikea tat, or would you think that you should pay a decent rate for quality