Affordable Web Designer Wanted

The Cannibal

I'm looking to launch a website that covers all forms of Irish media and just exlclusively Irish. It will feature sections for Irish bands, wrestling, drama, sport, politics etc. All Irish things that need exposure will be presented on the site and hopefully the collective readership will cross over into things they read about on the site and expand the audiences of all things presented on the website.

I am looking for someone affordable to design this site for me. They must be able to show me something of past work to assure me of quality and once I lay out my plans to them be able to give me a quote on price before work begins. If anyone is interested in this project they can hit me with an e-mail at miholik@hotmail.com

GoneShootin

Interested, but need to know more about your requirements - ala databases and so on.

Webmonkey

Me also...same as above..

The Cannibal

What I'm looking for is something that is easily navigatable between multiple sections. It will have a lot of media, video uploads, audio uploads etc.

I want it to be easily updateable. I don't want to have to rewrite a bunch of code everytime I want to fit text into a template.

General specifics I'll leave to whoever I get to design the site, I will give a general idea of what I want it to look like and what material I want represented then whatever they think is best to make the site look good or whatever they think I might need I will go along with if it sounds reasonable.

Webmonkey

Roughly what budget are you on here?

The Cannibal

I'd rather get quotes for the work to be done rather than state what I'm willing to spend. I'll give you a summary for my overall vision for the site and then you can decide a figure you deem appropriate for your time.

I want an eye catching index page, it's going to be all Irish themed so maybe that can be incorporated into the design. There will be multiple sections, at the moment the rough idea is for the sections to be Music, Drama, Sport, Society, Wrestling and Misc. I want the index page to have like a summary of what is featured in all sections kinda of like www.411mania.com. I want each section to have it's own page that is indentical to the index pages template but maybe in a different colour scheme to give that section its own trademark of individuality. I want all sections to have the following links accesible, About Us, Interviews, Biographies, Forum, Chat, Links, Reviews, Multimedia, Articles, Other as well as links to all the other sections of the site.

As I said before I want it to be easily updateable. So if you are still interested, factor in what I want and what you think you'll need to put in to complete the site and come up witha quote for me.

TomBrady

For something like that you are talking over €4000 with a decent designer and coder. Is this within the budget you had in mind?

smeggle

The Cannibal wrote:

I'd rather get quotes for the work to be done rather than state what I'm willing to spend. I'll give you a summary for my overall vision for the site and then you can decide a figure you deem appropriate for your time.

I want an eye catching index page, it's going to be all Irish themed so maybe that can be incorporated into the design. There will be multiple sections, at the moment the rough idea is for the sections to be Music, Drama, Sport, Society, Wrestling and Misc. I want the index page to have like a summary of what is featured in all sections kinda of like www.411mania.com. I want each section to have it's own page that is indentical to the index pages template but maybe in a different colour scheme to give that section its own trademark of individuality. I want all sections to have the following links accesible, About Us, Interviews, Biographies, Forum, Chat, Links, Reviews, Multimedia, Articles, Other as well as links to all the other sections of the site.

As I said before I want it to be easily updateable. So if you are still interested, factor in what I want and what you think you'll need to put in to complete the site and come up witha quote for me.

Oh right - I thought you had a new idea, most of that is done allready and with a little thought you can do most of what you want there yourself. Heck I could put you the basics of what you need there to run a site like that for around 750euro or I could teach you the basics in a couple of hrs on im (Well maybe longer than a couple of hrs ).

Most of the rest of it is just content input which you would do from an online admin editor/control panel.

Wouldn't pay out 4k+ for it - not these days anyway...

GoneShootin

I think the kind of site your looking at could initially be done by yourself using a CMS along the lines of php-nuke or mambo. For example, here is a php-nuke template:

http://www.templatemonster.com/phpnuke-themes/3246.html

But 4 grand? Lol at that!

Figment

Oh right - I thought you had a new idea, most of that is done allready

For that reason would have thought 4k would be close to the mark as well.
For features and content it doesnt look like it will stand out from the croud.
Good design is the only option left. Good design costs.

Webmonkey

750 wouldn't pay for something good. I would charge about €3500 and you would have a CMS for your pages so you don't need to know any html

GoneShootin

Figment wrote:

Good design costs.

Hmm - good point

smeggle

Webmonkey wrote:

750 wouldn't pay for something good. I would charge about €3500 and you would have a CMS for your pages so you don't need to know any html

And what I would be installing would have cms support, rss feeds, image upload support, mp3/mpeg support, ability to add/change/rotate xhtml/css template sets.

The 750 is to install the software and basic lessons in how to use it, after that the rest is upto the owner.

4k is a jk of a price to charge someone for what essentially they can do themselves.

btw - I allready have a sample site in place that belongs to a client of mine that will do exactly as the OP wants. That is being charged at 500 + 50% of all online advertising net returns. After (Simple) training the client can fully utilise the system - any extra template adjustments, such as an xtra hardlink, I do at no xtra charge - (cause I'm a nice guy ).

As I say, 4k is a jk to set someone up with the backend for a site like they require. As for 'Professional'? Well at least it would be upto current W3C XHTML/CSS standards and most of the 52 pre-set templates can easily be adapted to your own style. Again 99% of these are to current W3C standards. (A couple of templates do still use the sub-standard html 4.0/4.01 - these I do not install for that reason).

op can pm me for a link if he/she cares to have a look. I'd say there friend would be easily capable of installing the system for them at an even lesser cost. OP then gets the fun of building and developing there concept/project themselves. Much more fun than paying 4k out IMO.

Webmonkey

Ok and this includes a whole design with it. Man you are really charging below what you should be. Just a little bit of advice. No doubt in your skills, hell you're probably better than me with it but i just think 750 for a site like this would be too little.

Figment

smeggle what happens when the client wants it to actually look good, professional and usable. You don't seem to have quoted for any design there, just instalation. Is this all you do for the price?

ChicoMendez

look whos out to make a quick buck!

smeggle thats exactly what i call the fly by night approach....
What you are offering is a BOG :eek: standard solution... there are alot of CMS solutions out there....like mambo .. but hey they provide 2 things
1 - the ability for a non-tech person to set up a 'standard' website
2 - the framework for a real developer/designer to create a pro solution... its just a stepping stone.

Take for example mambo... take a look at the increasing number of mambo sites out there... they are all basically the same and provide no competitive advantage over the others NONE what so ever ....design wise of functionality wise... just bland

On the web today differentiation is everything because no matter what type of a site you set up you going to have lots of competition.


The Cannibal - Hey if you want a good deal then there are thousands of 'template flyby nights developers' over in india that will beat smeggle's price hands down... giving you a similarily 'bog standard solution'.
- just dont expect it to be successful.


smeggle have you ever heard of Michael Porter ? .... guess not.

heggie

hehe, pointed that out about smeggle in a previous post, glad to see im not the only one who thinks this. The guy has no concept of design being something necessary!

smeggle

heggie wrote:

hehe, pointed that out about smeggle in a previous post, glad to see im not the only one who thinks this. The guy has no concept of design being something necessary!

Totally agree - no idea of design whatsoever except like 30yrs in Engineering design, A degree in Arts (OK & Humanities), A level Art & Design About 25 years experiance in stage work including design of stage back drops, nope not much of an idea in design.

Design is simple, a monkey can do it - getting that design to work correctly and be functional, interoperative is a different ball park all together.

smeggle wrote:

I'd say there friend would be easily capable of installing the system for them at an even lesser cost.

And basic sample of how a site like that can be done to the required standards..

http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty/

Each part of that has it's own seperate section and those can be sub-sectioned at will. Templates can act globally or not as you wish across the system. Special templates can be added to any section. Global Admin log-in across each seperate section though access to each section seperately (To prevent unneccessary errors by end user).

I use free open source software so to charge any thing like 4k would be wrong of me. I may not charge high rates for my work but I do give a very good solid product at the end that easily equals more expensive sites. I also as you know work or try to keep my work upto the latest standards as set out by W3C. Tell me any coder in India that does...


btw: Link if for a 'Sample' site only. It should no way be viewed as an end product.

heggie

lol what age are you? 75 or so ? a monkey can do design sure, but not design that looks or functions well, you really are a bit of an idiot, trying to be jack of all trades. To the OP, design is as important as the implementation of the site, so look for a design co or development co that will outsoure one of these aspects or else has the expertise to do that in house.

smeggle every site you have linked to or shown some association with looks like a bloody template, are you that creatively challegned that you cant see that ?

ChicoMendez

smeggle wrote:

And basic sample of how a site like that can be done to the required standards..

http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty/

Amazing.... you are hired

(in front of yashid askrod from new dehli)

heggie

lol

Figment

smeggle wrote:

And basic sample of how a site like that can be done to the required standards..

http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty/

And so where is the design? There are standards...and there are standards.

smeggle

Figment wrote:

And so where is the design? There are standards...and there are standards.

At least go and fix your own page design to fit in a browser properly before you even attempt to question mine - across all resolutions as well. Nice to see your attempting to come upto some sort of reasonable coding standard. Maybe center your pagecell content area against the back ground may start to help. As it is your left/right borders are imbalanced. This is to comply with the W3C recommended standard for web sites resolution of 800x600 btw (That never changed even though we have clever high resolution now), in any case the website/design should function properly across all resolutions.

I And that was with just a very brief look - as you say

There are standards...and there are standards

Why not try using them?

Serbian

smeggle wrote:

At least go and fix your own page design to fit in a browser properly before you even attempt to question mine

There's nothing wrong with Figment's site. It fits perfectly into my browser window. Maybe your resolution is too low?

Figment

Velcrow

This thread was a good read -

Now this is a good website

http://www.dgi.ie/

smeggle

Serbian wrote:

There's nothing wrong with Figment's site. It fits perfectly into my browser window. Maybe your resolution is too low?

I never said there was anything wrong with the design but the site does not work in all resolutions. Just because approx. 20-25% 0f users can now and do use higher resolutions doesn't mean as a designer/coder that you should ignore the lower compliant resolution as adviced by W3C.

Whilst the site is rather pleasing I wouldn't put it in the category of exceptional especially considering it's very basic mistakes in resolution/coding.

As I said though I did in fairness to the site only have time to give it a brief look. In that time I found 3 coding mistakes - the validator found four. Whilst that doesn't affect operatability of the site overall, a few simple edits will make resolution compatible and coding standard compliant to xhtml 1.0 Strict not xhtml Transitional as stated by the page coder.

ChicoMendez

Totally agree - no idea of design whatsoever except like 30yrs in Engineering design, A degree in Arts (OK & Humanities), A level Art & Design About 25 years experiance in stage work including design of stage back drops, nope not much of an idea in design.

first you preach about you being a god in the design world

I never said there was anything wrong with the design but the site does not work in all resolutions. Just because approx. 20-25% 0f users can now and do use higher resolutions doesn't mean as a designer/coder that you should ignore the lower compliant resolution as adviced by W3C.

then you preach about standards

http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty/

but good god just look at it ... not pretty at all
If i came to that site- unless i was really really interested in what lovely linda said i would click back.

http://www.spoiltchild.com/

on the other hand that is just bliss (a few coding errors or not). first time i saw that i said wow... power in simplicity and class. I took the time out of my busy schedule to study it and eventually bookmark it under cool sites

That my friend smeggle is what Mr Michael Porter preached about so many years ago ... .... 'Competitive Advantage'

Design is simple, a monkey can do it

what does that make you then... (250 years experience and all)


**private message to the rest of the readers**
I honestly thought smeggle was a 16 year old kid that came on to mouth off and try to make a quick buck and compete with the indians... But if this 30 yrs experience is true then thats worrrrring

heggie

yeh, what a waste of education!

Figment

Thanks ChicoMendez, i appreciate the review

rsynnott

Figment wrote:

smeggle what happens when the client wants it to actually look good, professional and usable. You don't seem to have quoted for any design there, just instalation. Is this all you do for the price?

That was unkind.

rsynnott

smeggle wrote:

Totally agree - no idea of design whatsoever except like 30yrs in Engineering design, A degree in Arts (OK & Humanities), A level Art & Design About 25 years experiance in stage work including design of stage back drops, nope not much of an idea in design.

Ah, yes, degrees and experience automatically make you good at things, you know

smeggle wrote:

Design is simple, a monkey can do it - getting that design to work correctly and be functional, interoperative is a different ball park all together.

I'm not sure that word means what you think it does.

smeggle wrote:

And basic sample of how a site like that can be done to the required standards..

http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty/

Each part of that has it's own seperate section and those can be sub-sectioned at will. Templates can act globally or not as you wish across the system. Special templates can be added to any section. Global Admin log-in across each seperate section though access to each section seperately (To prevent unneccessary errors by end user).

What's 'genral'?

smeggle wrote:

I use free open source software so to charge any thing like 4k would be wrong of me. I may not charge high rates for my work but I do give a very good solid product at the end that easily equals more expensive sites. I also as you know work or try to keep my work upto the latest standards as set out by W3C. Tell me any coder in India that does...

Ah, racism.

smeggle wrote:

btw: Link if for a 'Sample' site only. It should no way be viewed as an end product.

Well thank dog for that.

Webmonkey

http://www.blogireland.ie/corkandcounty/

Honest to god, when I loaded this site i thought it was a parking page that was full of advertisments.
If i came onto this site browsing through the internet I would turn away from it automatically. Nothing there attracts me into the site.

Fair enough it has good coding standards, but nothing beats a good design in the end of the day. Design is the first thing people see, not the HTML code underneath - you know what i'm trying to say.

Fairplay to Figment. He produces good quality attractive design. Has a unique edge over the rest of the sites out there and that to me is what catches a users attention.

I would rather pay someone good money for good design. Not a cheap template look because in the long run it will cost your business.

Regards

miju

smeggle if the blogireland website is anything to go by I wouldnt pay you €100 let alone €750

at the end of the day you can have the most perfectly coded site in the world but if the design is rubbish (and the blogireland site design is beyond rubbish) well then all the coding and content in the world cant help you IMHO

personally i think that €3-4k is a good quote for what the OP is looking for, theres an old saying that would ring true here with smeggle and thats

BUY CHEAP AND YOU WILL PAY TWICE

as someone already said in this thread theres the actual professionals and then theres the fly by night professionals guess which one you are smeggle

kstanl

Web design is much the same as any other service - you get what you pay for.

RicardoSmith

If you have to explain good design to someone they'll never understand. Its that simple. Either you have an eye and apprecation for aesthetics or you don't.

Figment

Sorry guys, this thread has strayed a little and its partly my fault. I was just trying to highlight the difference of the perceived offerings of different businesses for what you pay. its never a clear cut case of this firm has a better price to that firm.

I am sure smeggle offers good value and service for what he offers and has many happy customers. He just perhaps needs to be a little clearer on what his service does and does not contain.

It is very easy for someone from a design background to not understand and dismiss the importance of a good backed and relevant standards and accessibility.
It is equally as easy for someone from a coding background to not understand and dismiss the importance of design.

It can also be difficult to recognise good standards when you don't have the relevant background in that areas.
However good knowledge of both areas is important if you are to offer that kind of service and consulting to your clients. While in some cases clients themselves mightn't recognise the importance of both you are being hired because of you do and you need get across a particular image of them and their service to their clients.

RicardoSmith

I think the crux of the matter is you charge what people are happy to pay. If your "product" allows you to charge 4k for a job someone else is charging 1K then you're obviously doing something right.

You want the client to define a budget, a time scale, and list of deliverables, and milestones. You also want to be crystal clear when a milstone has been met and a deliverable, delivered.

If they can't do that then walk away. Because they don't know what they want, and they haven't planned, or budgeted for it. If someone is serious they'll have this all worked out in advance. If they don't well then they are not serious. For new clients I always wanted part payment at one of the mile stones.

Otherwise you might aswell ask how long is a piece of string.

Laguna

smeggle wrote:

Design is simple, a monkey can do it - getting that design to work correctly and be functional, interoperative is a different ball park all together.

Totally agree with Smeggle on this one. 4K is a not only a huge amount of money for the site in question but an uncompetitive quote. For that price the person who wants someone else to build a site could go out, buy a high spec P.C, take local nightschool classes in web design, buy every decent book on HTML/ASP/JSP/CSS and teach themselves everything they need to know and build the website EXACTLY how they envision it themselves.

ChicoMendez

BUY CHEAP AND YOU WILL PAY TWICE

i have a more apt saying than that

PAY PEANUTS AND YOU WILL GET MONKEYS !
(thing you all know whos the monkey on this thread)

For that price the person who wants someone else to build a site could go out, buy a high spec P.C, take local nightschool classes in web design, buy every decent book on HTML/ASP/JSP/CSS and teach themselves everything they need to know and build the website EXACTLY how they envision it themselves.

Good god man... what are you talking about.. Yes the person could do all that... it might cost the same in terms of euros but it would take 10 times as long.... ie 3 years (taking into account the person in question has a job, a family and a social life!)
And at the end of the day it would not be as good as a pro designer/coder
(not to mention that in that 3 year period 6 more sites have popped up in your area and any ealier starter advantage you would have had you have now lost)

Hey... lets do a little comparison...

1) i want to deck out my house with lovely asian furniture ... but fu*k in dublin it would cost me about 10g's for top notch. So by Laguna's twisted philosophy i would be better off buying a ticket to indonesia... paying the locals to teach me how to design and build furniture over a 6 month period... buy the raw materials, build my furniture and ship it back... and hey guess what IVE saved a few cent.

2) a good plummer is too expensive, so ill pay the young lad down the thats says he can fit my bathroom for $100 over a weekend. what a deal!

i know im getting a little of the point, but Laguna and smeggle, you catch my drift ? (where is smeggle anyhow - hes dissapeared - probably burried in newest & hottest standards book!)

kstanl

Laguna wrote:

4K is a not only a huge amount of money for the site in question

Maybe for what you produce, yeah. It's only uncompetitive if you're competing against a similar calibre of designer/developer. Otherwise you're just another conman trying to make a quick buck on no talent and basic understanding of the skills and technologies involved.

To the OP - your website is your business' window to the rest of the world. Why save a few quid by getting some cowboy to design and develop your online presence when, for a few grand more, you'll get a well-designed and competently coded website? It's up to you of course but there's no such thing as a cheap website that's actually any good. Not that I know of anyway. You wouldn't hire an unqualified grifter to do your accounts so why make the same mistake with your website?

Rollo Tamasi

Laguna wrote:

For that price the person who wants someone else to build a site could go out, buy a high spec P.C, take local nightschool classes in web design, buy every decent book on HTML/ASP/JSP/CSS and teach themselves everything they need to know and build the website EXACTLY how they envision it themselves.

Money can't buy you expierence mate! I think your comment is a bit unreasonable to be honest.

RicardoSmith

Then theres the people who'll throw it together in frontpage or word and think you're robbery at €200. Your pitching at different markets.

Laguna

Shut the **** up saying I have a twisted philosophy. You should be careful saying personal comments like that.

rsynnott

In fairness, it does sound rather eccentric, like the dreams of a mad libertarian. Please note that it was not a direct personal comment, rather he was criticising your ideas. That is allowed here.

Rollo Tamasi

Laguna wrote:

Shut the **** up saying I have a twisted philosophy. You should be careful saying personal comments like that.

I didn't intend that as a personal swipe at all Laguna

smeggle

hmm Some intersting comments.. I especially liked the one 'Pro-coder/Designer' one. I've probably near enough reviewed the majority of Irish Websites and design wise some of them are top class. Some overuse flash but I'll not let that detract from them. (Personally I dislike flash/.swf - Theres still a lot of folk on dial up but thats a personal opinion as i say).

I never once insulted Figment's site design in anyway yet you lot still feel the need to have a go at my stuff, in a very insulting manner in places, just because I pointed out the coder had made a couple of basic mistakes, which when fixed will validate the document as xhtml 1.1. A bit of tweaking of the css values and the site would operate across all resolutions.

That is your job as a designer/coder to ensure that the site operates across all browser platforms and at all resolutions. The site should also be fully accessible to disabled users and should be fully functional and easy to use. I even commended the coder for attempting to upgrade to the newer coding standards. Brilliant stuff is that - but just cause I say ' Hey you got a couple of small mistakes' I get slagged of?

By a bunch of 'Pro-designers/Coders'? if your so 'Professional' Then why is your code not valid? Very easy to throw insults about but I'd rather say hey look it's your java insert throwing you out on the validation. Here's the bit of code instead of trading insults.

Doesn't bother me much if you don't like my designs - a lot of other people do and some don't, you can't please everyone *shrugs*

If the guy wants the fix for his xhtml it's the java doing it specifically this bit

<script language="JavaScript">

Change that to the correct code and the document should validate - the css is just adjusting values to percentages as opposed to fixed pixel value. Then the document becomes resolution friendly across all sizing.

dahamsta

Funniest thread so far this month. Smeggle, you're not qualified to lecture Figment on design, ok? Really, you're not. I've been laughing my ass off at the entire concept all the way through this thread.

adam

Laguna

ChicoMendez wrote:

1) i want to deck out my house with lovely asian furniture ... but fu*k in dublin it would cost me about 10g's for top notch. So by Laguna's twisted philosophy i would be better off buying a ticket to indonesia... paying the locals to teach me how to design and build furniture over a 6 month period... buy the raw materials, build my furniture and ship it back... and hey guess what IVE saved a few cent.

I wasn't telling you to STFU Rollo Tomassi mate, this 'smart' **** here was saying I have a twisted philosophy and as you can see by his response he went off at a tangent about some ****

Rollo Tamasi

k.




(did that flash code work Laguna?)

ChicoMendez

Laguna wrote:

I wasn't telling you to STFU Rollo Tomassi mate, this 'smart' **** here was saying I have a twisted philosophy and as you can see by his response he went off at a tangent about some ****

:eek: :eek: :eek:



Just drawing paralels....
but hey perhaps your reaction to the actual wording and not your actual argument proves that perhaps you thought about what you wrote and realised that Rollo Tamasi was right after all.

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Money can't buy you expierence mate! I think your comment is a bit unreasonable to be honest.

Well said!