web design and how to do it

bargainboy

please someone help me I recently had someone going to design and get a website up and running for me. I bought a domain name and some hosting it cost me £51. I also bought some software that was not cheap dreamweaver and jasc paintshop pro. the problem is that he has now moved abroad and i have absolutly no idea how to make a website i don't even know how to use this software that i have on my pc. i need the website to be ready in about july-aug time as i will be launching a shop then but need a website to go with it. i dont have 3-4 thousand pounds to give to a web designer and seems that i will have to do the site myself can anyone help me out here in any way possible even if it is just to recommend something to do thanks.

wlfc1

Try Lycos

http://www.lycos.co.uk/

Click on web hosting and build a site within days, you don't need to a computer wiz !, I did it and I would never ever thought I could.

oh costs £5 a month

Good luck

lellie

You shouldn't be looking at £3-4000 for someone to do it for you.. shop around or find a student looking for experience.

sophiedb

Have you tried looking at an adult education course? Around here there are a few available in the evenings or over a weekend - even drop-in courses at the local college's IT department - that should be able to get you started with Dreamweaver and/or Paintshop Pro, espcially if you have a detailed (and realistic) idea of what you're aiming for before you get there. They're short, so they're usually cheap and it would mean that you'd know how to update the pages yourself rather than calling up a designer.

I did ours with Dreamweaver 4 - click here (not an ad! just for demo purposes) - nothing special and there was a lot of trial and error involved, but it seems to work ok

Getafix

People still charge 3000-4000 for a website? I can't believe it.
Even a fully working ecommerce solution shouldn't cost you any more than 2k these days.

Kudos to you for trying to do the whole thing yourself, but trust me its not worth the aggravation. Get a professional design first and then worry about buiding the site. You should be able to get a design for £300 or less.

If you let us know what you want the site to do and roughly how much content you will have then we can give you a guide price.

Skyhigh

To be honest, you shouldn't have to buy any software for the designer (such as Macromedia Dreamweaver) or the hosting or even the domain name.
(Thats what you pay them for).


Dreamweaver may take you a few months to learn to use to an OK level if you have no webdesign experience - but for the money, you'd be better off re-selling it again and putting the money towards paying someone.
I'd suggest using some templates if you want to do the site yourself, templates provide a good starting point for developing a site - giving you something to work with.

For example, I recently opened my own template shop:
***link removed*****
As you can see, templates offer a good starting base with images and some functionality for a reasonable cost

As for cost, yes, some people do charge up to £5k (or even more) for a fully functional website with a shop and other such features.
But if its a straight forward information/simple site you're looking for then you should be looking at around £500-£1000 (or less), including hosting, domain name and design.

As a CS student I've be doing websites occasionally on a free (magic word) basis, for the experience, mostly for family and friends though.

As Getafix said, price depends on what you want. Full blown online shops can be quite expensive (

:!:

ADVERTISING

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angeldiva

Try Moonfruit its brilliant and so easy to use you dont need to be a professional to build a fantastic all singing all dancing website. Its as easy as using word on microsoft.

http://www.moonfruit.com/

you can see what type of websites have been set up by going to 'sites' on its homepage.

millwalll

if your looking for a web designer best place you can go is https://www.webmaster-talk.com there loads on there and they are all very good if you need any more help let me know

payt20

Im a student and a web designer. I will do it for a few hundred quid for the experience and another site to add to my portfolio.

[email="mikepayton2000@hotmail.com"]***email[/email] address removed***

ADVERTISING

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: Sorry, this site is free of advertising and we ask people not to advertise their own services/websites/ebay sales (please see this rule). I have asked Board Guides to move any they see. If you have any questions about this policy please email [email="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/email].

bargainboy

hi thanks everyone for there there help in this matter. Unfortunatley there is no way that i am going (or can afford) to pay someone £3-4000 for the privilidge in doing this for me. i am in the middle of starting my own business and need to save all the money i can. This is mainly as i need to get stock (product based business) and premises. the website was going to allow me some mail order to generate some income prior to my shop opening. I understand that people charge alot of money for this but i would rather do it myself with some advise from people in the know. i took the solution for someone to do it free as he likes doing it and he was someone i knew however there are a few options that i may take up from this posting. sorry if i sound ungrateful to anyone here as that is not how i intended it to sound. thansk once again

lellie

We aren't meant to advertise our services here, which is why I didn't mention I was a designer.

You shouldn't have had to fork out money for software. A decent designer shouldn't need dreamweaver - they should be able to code in notepad or provide the software themselves..

If you want to do it yourself perhaps have a go at setting up an online shop using something like OS commerce, but find a techy friend to help you.. or try something with a blogging/CMS software such as wordpress. Have a look for decent open source software as it's FREE!!