website design help

Astaroth

Given many people pickup the free local houses for sale newspapers or local papers on the day they have their house sales section surely these would be the best places to place advertisments if you are looking for physical rather than online marketing

[Deleted User]

Since i'm guess that most people who need their snags finding don't even know they do.. they won't be searching online. I'd go with Astaroth - you'd either need an aggressive expensive online marketting scheme or a directed, localised 'physical' advertising campaign.

The price of a few of those adverts may equal the cost of developing your website.. this may make you realise that paying a grand for a website isn't actually bad value.

lellie

Kilty wrote:

Think they are intended for one website only. Domain names that come with email addresses can be bought from several companies (I reccommend GoDaddy.com).

And if you got it designed elsewhere you could buy hosting from GoDaddy as well, probably pay about £25 a year for that inc a domain name instead of £125.

Go Daddy are rarely recommended for hosting. They have a reputation for being rubbish. Hosting is best done with a small company that offers excellent, personal service. My host is a guy out in america - there are 3 staff, but the service is incredible - you email them and they respond personally and fix any problems within no time at all - even on sundays. Been with them nearly 4 years now and wouldn't move for anything - even to cut costs!

As for those web packages.. I haven't tried the software, and although it looks ok, you have to bear in mind you're not getting a custom bespoke site - you're getting a template which you have to adjust to your purposes. If that's ok it probably is cheaper.. but for a high-quality bespoke website you'd be better employing a designer - it may cost a little more, but will be worth it.

lellie

is it me or has kitty's post been deleted?

Kilty_2

Yeah, I said something I shouldnt have :shhh:

When I reccomended GoDaddy for hosting it was really based on the fact I've a domain with them, never tried their hosting before. Heard others tell me it was quite good though (and is cheap).

Streamline (https://www.streamline.net) offer hosting for £19 a year but sadly it doesnt come with PHP support, so not really much good to most people (a lot of websites use the tiniest bit of PHP).

That said, they have a package for £32 a year but £48 for 2 years that does offer PHP & MySQL. Both packages include a .co.uk domain name.

[Deleted User]

I've always used netweaver.co.uk - because it's cheap (20 quid for the smallest package, 10mb) and you get PHP/mysql plus rather good control over your account. This is pretty much all you need for a small companies website.

It would be nice if the people who did the post-deletion could post an explanation so we don't repeat mistakes

Kilty_2

ringo_24601 wrote:

It would be nice if the people who did the post-deletion could post an explanation so we don't repeat mistakes

Heh, I've already been "spoken to" about it, advertising my services :shhh:

Yeah, it is against the forum rules. Wont happen again

As for that netweaver.co.uk, £20 package doesnt include mailboxes, just e-mail forwarding :eek:

Doesn't look very professional when you reply to an email from a yahoo/hotmail/gmail/whatever mailbox does it?

[Deleted User]

Very true about the email, can't say i'd ever noticed that, i usually let the client set up hosting - i don't want the hassle myself.

Gotta be advertising your services in here, you're not paying Martin for advertising space after all

ahrimaniac

First of all, well done - if that's your first site, it really isn't bad. With a bit of tweaking, it'll look smart.

I can only really give you my own experience here - I've been designing my own website (personal) for a while, and only recently went into making websites for companies. This isn't an advertisment - I can't design any sites for anyone at the moment - but I found that with patience and the right resources, it works.

First of all, invest in either some decent quality photos from photobanks online or take your own. Nice simple photography makes the site look clean and professional, I feel. If you look at https://www.hijean.co.uk which was the 1st site I designed, there's actually not a great deal there - but I think (hope) it looks good.

Secondly, ditch the flash, completely. It rarely looks good, unless it's being used for navigation. Special effects and fancy text doesn't do much good - but I do like the colours you've used at the top - maybe pull that through the site a bit more.

The obvious things - like only using one font throughout (maybe a different one for paragraph headers) and, as someone else said before me, making sure you resize your pictures well, can all be changed dead quickly.

Finally, the people I use for hosting - 1and1.co.uk - never had any problems with and can fully recommend their customer support. Conversely, I wouldn't touch godaddy with a bargepole.

Best of luck!

natanddan1

ahrimaniac wrote:

First of all, well done - if that's your first site, it really isn't bad. With a bit of tweaking, it'll look smart.

I can only really give you my own experience here - I've been designing my own website (personal) for a while, and only recently went into making websites for companies. This isn't an advertisment - I can't design any sites for anyone at the moment - but I found that with patience and the right resources, it works.

First of all, invest in either some decent quality photos from photobanks online or take your own. Nice simple photography makes the site look clean and professional, I feel. If you look at https://www.hijean.co.uk which was the 1st site I designed, there's actually not a great deal there - but I think (hope) it looks good.

Secondly, ditch the flash, completely. It rarely looks good, unless it's being used for navigation. Special effects and fancy text doesn't do much good - but I do like the colours you've used at the top - maybe pull that through the site a bit more.

The obvious things - like only using one font throughout (maybe a different one for paragraph headers) and, as someone else said before me, making sure you resize your pictures well, can all be changed dead quickly.

Finally, the people I use for hosting - 1and1.co.uk - never had any problems with and can fully recommend their customer support. Conversely, I wouldn't touch godaddy with a bargepole.

Best of luck!

appreciate your comments thanks.