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Need to make a professional quality site without spending a fortune

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  • bargain - I use to make sites 'on the side' of my 9-5 job and i'd typically charge 400 pounds upwards for a site. The work itself doesn't actually take a whole lot of time (maybe a week, although i've done them over a weekend before) but anyone worth their salt will have lots of chats with you about what work you'd like, will take time finding a design/colour scheme you like and photography ( i tend to by mine from istockphoto.com - v. cheap and good ).

    Also, a site is never 'finished' once you've done all the pages; i've had to go back and remake buttons/layouts because of the vague whim of clients.
  • Does anyone know if there is a design service that specialises in website design for driving schools? Also, what is the approx price for paying someone to do a decent site?

    Many thanks

    It depends what you mean by 'decent' and what you need. If you need online ordering you're going to be adding a bit more for that, if you just need a 4/5page static site that's not updated that often then it will be cheaper.

    Also whether it is a design from scratch or a template, and if there's flash animation, or special scripting in PHP for example will increase the cost because of the additional skills involved.

    I do sites in my spare time, as to reflect the longer time it takes I set my prices lower. Plus I only have one professional site in my portfolio, so I can't show lots of good examples of my work and the prices reflect that too.

    Generaly when researching competition I've seen anyting form £99 to £500 for a fairly basic site. Personally I'd be wary of the £99 end of the scale - this would indicate a lack of quality time being spent consulting with the client, as £99 is not that many hours for a professional's rate!

    My last site was around the £200 mark and I included up to 2 hours per month for the first year to do minor changes to design and content. However, a professional site should include basic content management (I didn't in this case as the client knew basic HTML and was happy to do their own content updating) to allow you to update content fairly easily.

    I woudl recommend if you're oging down the route of hiring a pro to look at their portfolio and talk to them to get an idea of whether you get on well with them, as good communication between designer and client is the most important thing. Don't just judge on the price alone.

    Hope that helps.
  • spurs1234 wrote:

    There is another site similar to this one - http://www.webmasterprojects.com :)
  • ormus
    ormus Posts: 42,714 Forumite
    as been said there really is no way to make a real pro site (from scratch) without paying a pro. expensive.
    but you can cheat a bit.
    all web pages have a code, so find one you really like, and save the code.
    (just click on view at the top of your IE browser, then click on source).
    then use a prog such as dreamweaver to modify it for your needs. simple.

    ps, beware of fancy/flashy webpage design, a lot of peeps will switch off rather than wait a few seconds for the loading.
    a really good web site/page is not the same as a flashing bells and whistles site.
    what you think is a great site, maybe awful to others. do some basic market research/testing.
    Get some gorm.
  • ivavoucher
    ivavoucher Posts: 529 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts
    Take a look at this online builder

    It is easy to use and lots of features.
  • jezza1O1
    jezza1O1 Posts: 126 Forumite
    seriously, the free open source CMS systems are the way to go! For example joomla, xoops, etc. I use https://www.e107.org for my personal projects. Your only outgoing is the cost of a host, say about £30 for a cheap starter package from uk2.net!

    These systems are easy to setup, you just upload to server, (your host will help - infact uk2 will install if you ask nicely) and then there is a nice web admin panel that you will use to upload all of your content. Its actually quite fun chosing which functionality to include - want a forum? No probs its 2 clicks away. Links page? Blog? Downloads? News? Standard Pages? Full user management? Chat box? Its all there.

    You can theme your site by downloading a style you like and a few clicks later you have a top looking site. Of course you may wish to design your own theme, which is pretty easy on the better designed CMS systems!

    I really dont see why anyone would go any other route, these systems make producing content a complete doddle and the rest of the site runs itself - all you have to worry about is content, which is the way it should be! Free software with a good value host and your starter site will be up in no time.

    Id link to a few examples but I dont want to be accused of promoting commercial sites ;)! So i'll just give you a link to my test e107 site, this is where I try out new code developments: https://www.jezza101.co.uk. This probably took me 30mins to setup initially! It really is that easy!

    One of the contributions Ive made to the e107 system is a forum thanks plugin - so you can thank user posts, just like in another popular commercial forum package that we might be familiar with ;)! I'm also working on a "tagcloud" plugin that will help e107 keep on top of the pack.

    Im biased towards e107 as thats the one I found worked best for me, but the others are also great and tbh the competitions keeps all of the top packages moving along :). I trialled 4 that covered the functionality required, Id suggest doing the same and using the one that feels best for you.

    Not bad for free software, why pay a web dev when you can do it all yourself!! :D

    Let us know how you get on! Need any help, just drop me a line in my forum or I may pick up a pm here next time I pass through.

    Cheers.
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