website design help

[Deleted User]

The unfortunate situation is that you need professional help if you want you site sprucing up. I would never expect to ask a housing professional to come round to my house and survey it without paying for the service, the same goes with web design.

What you've got is a good start, most of my previous clients would never go to so much effort, you're 75% there if you've got the text and pages. Try to find a website designer buying a new build and do a 'services' swap

natanddan1

ringo_24601 wrote:

The unfortunate situation is that you need professional help if you want you site sprucing up. I would never expect to ask a housing professional to come round to my house and survey it without paying for the service, the same goes with web design.

What you've got is a good start, most of my previous clients would never go to so much effort, you're 75% there if you've got the text and pages. Try to find a website designer buying a new build and do a 'services' swap

whats the chances of finding a web designer buying a new house!!!!!!

If there was one then it would be a very good idea.

Astaroth

Well, the average person moves home every 5 years? Web developers are probably more upwardly mobile than most too. House buying probably takes 6 months and so more or less one in ten web developers are probably looking to buy a new house.... doesnt seem that far fetched to me

save-a-lot

Astaroth wrote:

Whilst it can be done on the cheap you tend to get what you pay for and as this is your income do you really want to jepodise it from day one?

Get what you pay for, well, affiliatewindow used scriptlance to produce their IPS (Integrated Product Search) system - affiliatewindow is a multi-million pound business in the UK affiliate scene. I used the programmer who created this complex system in a later project to implement IPS into my site. https://www.pricegrabber.co.uk - another example was a scriptlance project and this has been used by most comparison sites ever since. Again another highly successful site.

Personally, I have had screen scrapes to put directories onto my URL using php to pull the directories and php includes to optimise the pages for search engines and mod_rewrite to make the URLs search engine friendly - mod_rewrite = the URLs come out as html and are therefore search engine friendly. So doing it on the cheap is not always bad.

It is only doing it on the cheap because you are scouring the whole World for the programmers and designers, SEO experts etc etc etc. In their own countries they are charging the going rate and Western equivalents cannot compete with the prices charged. It just seems cheap to the UK market, which is in most cases very expensive. So, https://www.scriptlance.com everytime for my projects.

[Deleted User]

I'm moving house at the moment :-)

It's not a new build though, its 18 years old, back when they made them without intentional faults for surveyors to put on their reports

Astaroth

save-a-lot wrote:

So doing it on the cheap is not always bad.

Hence why I said you tend to get what you pay for. There certainly are good cheap web designers/ developers out there but there are many more poor ones.... the question when it is your income though is if it is worth the risk - obviously this is very different if it is a hobby site or such

[Deleted User]

My personal 'cheap and technically simple' way of doing a small/medium size changable site is to use a combination of Macromedia Dreamweaver and Contribute. Contribute is designed for website 'owners' to edit their site - the designer puts limits on what can be changed, such as defining areas of text that can be changed. This limits what damage can be done. I have previously removed a horrible ColdFusion database from a website before and they found it amazingly easy - so easy that after I taught them to use Contribute i've not had any further questions.

You cut costs - Contribute costs 70 pounds. Compare that to installing a context-management system. All it needs is a site designed using Dreamweavers' template system.

Personally, from a business point of view, i'd stick with the site you've got for a little while, getting a bit of money together in order to find about 600 - 1000 pounds to get the site made.

natanddan1

ringo_24601 wrote:

I'm moving house at the moment :-)

It's not a new build though, its 18 years old, back when they made them without intentional faults for surveyors to put on their reports

That is why i decided to set up this business. I used to work for one of the largest house builders in the UK. One of the most frustrating problems was that it was all sales driven and the quality was and still is shocking. Buyers are sheperded around their new home and are not afforded the time to look closely before moving in. One recent inspection I carried out, on a house coming up for its 1 year defect liability, I found and documented 135 defects with the house.If you were to pay for these defects your self it would have cost in excess of £3000. My inspection cost £270 and the builder agreed to rectify every one of the defects. I really do feel there is a market for this. I have researched other companies offering this service. Everyone of them have a useful link to builders websites!!!! how can they say they are imarcial!!!.

I would like to thank all the MSE guys who have contacted me with offers of designing a website. If there are any others out there then please get in touch.

I am now looking into where I could advertise so again any help would be appreciated. As i stated before I need to get some more inspections under my belt so I can reinvest in the short term to build up my profile.

natanddan1

Any advice / ideas on how I can get my business advertised at people who are in the process of buying their new home would be appreciated.

I can mail shot the customers who are in their new homes and are within their defect liability period, the hard part is getting to the people who are in the process of buying so we can inspect their home prior to moving in!

Is their a data base ?
Would estate agents be a good way of advertising as more and more seem to be selling on behalf of builders?
Advertising in property papers (not sure how expensive this would be)?

really appreciate any advice.

Maybe I should start a new thread with this request?


I have to say, I have had a fantastic response to the initial website help request.

Iffy'swifey

Is it cheaper/better to buy a package such as these http://www.astutech.com/ to make your own website or get someone to do it for you?

Also, I have posted in the sticky, can someone please have a look and get back to me?

Thanks.