Help Needed on Web Design Course

chrissy21_2

Hi

I am thinking of starting my own business and want to create a website to support it.

Thing is I haven't got a clue where to start.

I'm not flush with money either but wondered if someone can recommend a cheap course or similar to get me going.

Thanks in advance
Christine

steve1980

No such thing as a cheap course!

It depends on what you want to do, Can you hand code websites? Or do you want something with a web builder?

If you don't know anything then to be honest you are better to get a web designer, especially as it's for your business.

takeiteasy77

chrissy21 wrote: »

Hi

I am thinking of starting my own business and want to create a website to support it.

Thing is I haven't got a clue where to start.

I'm not flush with money either but wondered if someone can recommend a cheap course or similar to get me going.

Thanks in advance
Christine

Your find it quicker and cheaper to pay someone who already knows what they are doing

chrissy21_2

Thanks all for the good advice so far!

texranger

there are also some good templates out their that are cheap or even free and something like dreamweaver can help with amending these or you have things like RVsitebuilder/trendy site builder and many more that will take you s tep by step in designing a website, but some forums have designers that can create sites from $30 (£18 approx.) then after that you need a domain and hosting which a .uk domaion is £7 for 2 yrs and hosting approx. £30 a yr

steve1980

texranger wrote: »

some forums have designers that can create sites from $30 (£18 approx.) then after that you need a domain and hosting which a .uk domaion is £7 for 2 yrs and hosting approx. £30 a yr

:eek:

I bet those sites are absolutely top drawer!

Hosting for £19.99 a year instead of £30

texranger

steve1980 wrote: »

:eek:

I bet those sites are absolutely top drawer!

Hosting for £19.99 a year instead of £30

hosting depends, look around you can get hosting for £5 a yr, but would you trust a provider offering such a deal.

forums

webhostingtalk.com
hostingdiscussion.com

EchoLocation

It really depends on the function and detail you envision your website having. A 'web design beginner' course will be a basic tutorial with a well known web design package and from my experience isn't really worth it. You'd need a series of courses to get what you need if you want to build and maintain the website yourself. I would certainly recommend learning html and the concepts behind web design - honestly it's not remotely as complicated as you might imagine.

If it's going to be a content heavy and frequently updated website, or if it needs to be very professional looking, then you might be better off finding a decent template builder and going with that.

flexrider

Going on the subject of Hosting Take these into the Hosting choosing

1.How much traffic is allowed (Bandwith allowed for visitor to your site)

Remember once you have your website up and running if your website becomes popular and gets heavy users your hosting may charge extra or simply place a 404 error meaning your visitors wont be able to see the page. (or page bandwith excedded) this can have a impact because if a user cannot access what you have to offer they will not return.

2. is the host you have in place a shared hosting.
This means you are allowed a amount of bandwith for website because other websites will be this on the hosting also. This normally applied to free website hosting such as moonfruit.com Going over the limit can stop your website from being seen or hard to find. Or make things really slow when you have a lot of users on your site.

3.Does your host have Cpanel or Ftp access,Ftp allows you from your home computer to upload a new page or new features using filezilla to your site form your computer , Cpanel is the control panel for updating your site, And other features most hosts now have cpanel which is the login for your website to update to the main website/renew/delete or add wordpress blogs or any other features to your pages.

4. does the host offer any seo help?
Most hosts these days as stated in 1 and two claim to be unlimited in many aspects yet its best to compare the seo means search engine optimisation meaning your site is ready for search engines to find it and rank it, Alot of hosts now say Godaddy have in place seo features which help when the site is running to be Google Friendly with reports of what,How,when, and why your site is not been visited by Google or the search engines with reccomendations on how to improve it. It's a additional cost but it sure helps to get better rankings with Mr Google.

5. when questioning a devoloper, Ask for some of his/her portfolio work if you go the route for hiring. This helps to weed out the devolopers who just make ramdom websites and not really a devoloper. A devoloper will be able to show his past projects for companies or personal customers to you to get the feel of what the devoloper can acheive, I normally take this route with new customers and always get good feedback also from doing so, Plus also ask if the devoloper will need additional charges for updating the site in the future or will this be included for free, Professional devolopers know support is always a avilabilty to the customers on their project work and know a site will need updating regulary (excuse my spelling) A non devoloper will see the pound signs and just charage excess amounts. also a devoloper will know from experience you will always need help maintenance(contracted support), and support with your site.






Test also the sites good and bad points like the following:

1. was the site easy to navigate or too confusing
2. was the design well structured and very consistant on the subject
3. Are the sites ready for rss feeds,Twitter and facebook and youtube ect,
4. did the pages you seek work very quickly and load up fast
5. did the site appeal for its purpose.

People have commentated about templates on the notice board, I agree with this but most templates are used also by many other sites which P*sses the search engines off when they find a site with the same templates, And there are many out there! making them unique can help by modifying but planning the site is key,

to be honest here what i would do firstly i would use microsoft frontpage or word and start to plan how you want your website to look, and the subject/Business contact infomation about the business ect, how the site will structure (how the pages will combined for example abouts us home page contact us ect) Build a storyboard of what the site is required
before approching a web designer, This is what i tell my clients when i am in discussion to do so i can implement and be on the same hymm sheet as the clients desire for the sites content and features. and get the infomation from generic questions asked and discussed on the project

Remember! Its your website you are the creativity and idealist to the site! Good planning and reserach using a pen and paper powerpoint adolbe photoshop, publisher, are good design tools to plan.prepare,analyst, and get the general idea to what you want and need from the site. the main purpose. As well as getting your message across to the user is key, take on board the users and what they are looking for if it was you searching your site! research the top websites for inspration an what makes them so popular, Can you provide this? Has your idea got better ways to do so? never be subjective to your own site, Dont try to copy other websites you want your site to be unique so never plagiarism another's content online.you could possibly get a cease and desist letter or copyright suit against you in some respects, just study what,how,why, makes your competition in your chosen subject online attractable to it's users.

You mentioned also about limited funds, Take in consideration domain names and hosting costs per year. and what the hosting can offer your site,

to learn how to do this read this site here
http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/wdc/readings/storybd.htm

Update: forgot to mention this also but would the site also need some security i would advise also considering this for credit card or debit card tranactions or sensitive infomation from the following providers, it is required for websites by law also you see for e ecoms sites and protects your infomation from thrid partys gettng there grubby hands on it because it is encrypted from the customers computers to your own computers. And give your users security and peace of mind regarding their infomation is safe. Some hosting can offer this route also if your site is a e-comms site

http://www.commoncraft.com/secure-websites-video
http://www.verisign.co.uk/
http://www.verisign.co.uk/case-studies/index.html

Hope this helps,
Flex

p.s some additional infomation for you
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/expertreviews.html

texranger

flexrider wrote: »

Going on the subject of Hosting Take these into the Hosting choosing

1.How much traffic is allowed (Bandwith allowed for visitor to your site)

Remember once you have your website up and running if your website becomes popular and gets heavy users your hosting may charge extra or simply place a 404 error meaning your visitors wont be able to see the page. (or page bandwith excedded) this can have a impact because if a user cannot access what you have to offer they will not return.

This is true, but as a hosting providerr of 10+ yrs and have been in the situation i never do this to my clients i set a small fee for over usage, so the site will remain online, but the site owner is charged for the excess usage. so some hosats may do this so ask first

2. is the host you have in place a shared hosting.
This means you are allowed a amount of bandwith for website because other websites will be this on the hosting also. This normally applied to free website hosting such as moonfruit.com Going over the limit can stop your website from being seen or hard to find. Or make things really slow when you have a lot of users on your site.

most hosting will be shared hosting, even if you take a reseller account you will be on a shared environment. to avoid this you need a VPS.

3.Does your host have Cpanel or Ftp access,Ftp allows you from your home computer to upload a new page or new features using filezilla to your site form your computer , Cpanel is the control panel for updating your site, And other features most hosts now have cpanel which is the login for your website to update to the main website/renew/delete or add wordpress blogs or any other features to your pages.

nost hosts use and offer cpanel . the amount of ftp accounts you have will depend on what is offered on the plan you chose.

Also if looking for a host i would look on their website for a live chat link, support ticket system.

if they have a live chat link, see if its online, if not check back several times a day to see if it ever goes online (some sites have these but they are always offline).
if they have one and its online, if they have a tech support button on iot, use this and ask a simple question that you know the answer too as see if they answer and how quick or if a good tech should inform you to contact sales. then contact sales and ask again a question you know the answer too and see how quick they respons and if they are correct in answer. then use their contact page if they have one and see how quick they answer this.
you are looking for support that can reply within hours most good support should reply within 1 hr. this wiull tell you how good their support is as the last think you want is to host with them have a problem and no support reply for several days.

centretap

How complicated does your site need to be? Is it just a few basic pages used to outline your services or something all singing and dancing?

If its all singing and dancing you would need to learn a hell of a lot and should probably get professional advice.

If it's just a simple site think about using Word Press, it's not just for blogs. Once you learn the basics of Word Press you will find it much easier maintaining you site than trying to hard code it.