Any website designers here?

[ChrisHynds]

First off, sorry if this is in the wrong section, I thought it might be under "Graphic Design/Promo" thread but didnt see anything.

Im wanting to set up a website, but have absolutely no idea how to do this myself. I would rather tell someone what I want done and pay them to do it.

Do any of you know how to do this or can you recommend a designer thats not gonna charge me a fortune.

Also roughly what kinda cost will I be looking at for a basic website, that will host my music, and small amount of promo photo's etc.

Cheers in advance

[Alex Murphy]

Best to have someone in your area to deal with, as it's generally not cheap. The do it yourself websites look mostly cheap nasty. Sigma had one done for cheap, that tight bastard.

what kinda cost will I be looking at for a basic website, that will host my music, and small amount of promo photo's etc.

Depends really,. The hosting is in the affordable range, the person who charges you to make the website will be more expensive but that depends as in piece of string depends.

[djeternal]

Check out elance.com or 99designs.com I've used elance. If you use elance be sure to read the "How it works" page - https://www.elance.com/q/how-it-works Basically what you do is post your job requirements (what kind of features you want, etc.) and then different designers/programmers submit bids. You will need to post some sort of budget so that the designers have an idea what you are willing to pay. It's like buying a house or a car. You gotta say what you're willing to pay so that they show you the right house or car. Based on what you said you should be able to get a site designed for about $800 to $1200. The key thing is you want to make sure you can maintain the site after it is built.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. Check the reviews for any designers you plan to use.
2. Don't just pick the first person who submits a bid. Wait a few days so that you have a number of bids to consider.
3. Don't automatically pick the cheapest. Website designers are similar to DJ's - the cheapest is often not the best.
4. Try to have the website setup so that you can make changes (like page updates, upload music, etc.)
5. Ask the website designer to use a popular CMS (Content Management System) like Wordpress or Joomla. That way you have lots of options if you need to have a new developer help you.

[Finnish_Fox]

You're in luck. I am teaching myself HTML and can definitely help you out. I just learned how to turn the background yellow.

[Rek_Aviles]

You're in luck. I am teaching myself HTML and can definitely help you out. I just learned how to turn the background yellow.

[djeternal]

You're in luck. I am teaching myself HTML and can definitely help you out. I just learned how to turn the background yellow.

Maybe you can spice up the DJF site. The gray background is boring.

[Synaxis]

You're in luck. I am teaching myself HTML and can definitely help you out. I just learned how to turn the background yellow.

Here is how to make it blue!

<style type="text/css">
body { background-color: ##336699; }
</style>

I do freelance web development. Price depends on what you want.

[Jamie D Music]

My advice is to use someone who lives near you and who you can meet in person for a series of meetings before, during and after the website has been constructed. When it comes to giving the personal touch everyone wants their own website to have I think email and telephone communication with the developer just isn't enough. I learnt the hard way.

Shop around for a designer using the yellow pages and word of mouth but first you should spend some time creating your website using something like MS Paint. Create the first few pages at least as you can then show this to the designer and simply say "do that". Check out their other websites and make sure they are good quality. In HTML there are several tags you can use to stop whatever you write being sent to the browser and they are usually used by programmers to make notes and reminders that will not be seen on the webpage. I've seen plenty of web programmers that spam random HTML between these tags to make it appear like a webpage has a lot of HTML and Javascript behind it. Avoid people who do this at all costs! The HTML should be clean and structured so it will load quickly in all browsers. Web design software is notorious for generating redundant tags and the author never removes them because usually they don't even know it's happened as they don't know anything about tags. For this reason use someone who writes from scratch and uses no authoring software like Dreamweaver. Just my opinion of course.

A few website pages with pictures and some text and links should take up no more than about 10Meg on a server but when you start adding embedded music and video the costs for storing that on a server to be hosted on your website increases a lot. I would just have links to free hosted websites like soundcloud for now and migrate them in the future when it's all been up and running for a while. It will be much cheaper to start up the website this way and much easier for the web designer you use to write and host it.

[Rek_Aviles]

When it comes to giving the personal touch everyone wants their own website to have I think email and telephone communication with the developer just isn't enough. I learnt the hard way.

It really isn't and the client never knows what they actually want. I now have a series of questions I ask to get a good amount of info but it's still tough working with someone via email or phone only.

[ChrisHynds]

Sorry guys, I only just noticed where this thread was moved too,

Thanks for replying, luckily I have found a friend of a friend who lives close by so I can work in with them on a regular basis, which is what I have been advised is best, and I see a few of you have mentioned that already.

Again thanks to all of you that replied,