Advice on designing a Website

gwynnington

I am a samll business and wish to get a website up and running fairly quicky.
I have artistic flair but not much 'technical' knowledge. I have got dreamweaver and have tried taking the tutorial but my brain hurts and im getting nowhere fast.

I have purchased Mr Site software (£24.99) in the hope that it was going to be a simple and fast solution - what it doesnt tell you when you buy it that if you already have a domain name you have to transfer that webspace AND all your emails to their server and pay monthly on top of that! Im happy with my service provider and pay above the average for their service - i have asked for my website to be hosted by mr site's server and my email accounts to stay with my current provider - mr sites technical team will not compromise, so its probably going back for a refund!

SO... what do I do. I need a slightly flashier website that normal as my business is art based and needs to show many images, maybe by a fading or scrolling image window on the home page, but its no more technical than that. I want those images when clicked on to open up into a larger view window. Ive seen a lot of websites that do this so im sure its not too impossible.

My question is can anyone with any web design experience, or anyone in a similar position advise me? Should I just pay for a design, bearing in mind that Im a new business and dont have £200+ plus regular update and hosting fee cash to hand? Or is there a simple way that doesnt involve making me try to understand html alien programming language that I could do it myself?

may thanks for any advice!

gordonstights

gwynnington wrote: »

SO... what do I do. I need a slightly flashier website that normal as my business is art based and needs to show many images, maybe by a fading or scrolling image window on the home page, but its no more technical than that. I want those images when clicked on to open up into a larger view window. Ive seen a lot of websites that do this so im sure its not too impossible.

It sounds to me like you would be better off paying someone to do this. If you said you wanted nothing fancy and didn't rely heavily on images, then I'd say go ahead and use a free template that you can find online, however you are going to need to have some experience with html and style sheets if you are going to attempt to make a website that represents your art business professionally online.

Ring round local web designers and get quotes. Find a website that looks like what you need and send them the link and ask for a costing.

[Deleted User]

Why don't you look into small business grants that are available in your area? Usually, for small and justifiable amounts they are easily awarded.

Do you live in a University town at all? Maybe approach the University to see if you can advertise for a web design student to help you out for their portfolio and a small amount of money too?

shimmershelly

This site has some good coding to use for fancy text and picture effects etc
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

However, its quite simple to have a thumnail image clickable to a larger view window. You need to upload the large picture to your hosting first so it gets it's own URL. You can find out this URL by going into your control panel in file management. I keep a folder in public.html titled "large images" for this.
Then you insert a hyperlink on the thumbnail picture to this URL (setting it to "blank" if you wish the large picture to open as a new page).

I have dreamweaver too, so on dreamweaver, insert your small image, using the drop down menu on the the "Insert" tab, on the properties tab at the bottom SRC will be your small image, add the URL for the large image where it says "Link" on the properties tab, then below this where it says "Target" set this as blank. Also where it says "ALT" you can add text to come up when someone hovers over the small image i.e. "click for bigger preview" or something along those lines.

I'm not really explaining this well, sorry! Hope you followed that

AdrianHi

Have a look at this, it is free and allows you to host your web site where ever you like:
http://www.barelyfitz.com/projects/slideshow/
At a glance it seems to be suitable and might be worth going with until you know your business is earning and can afford to pay for professional help for a better design.
I am in the IT and web business though I do not do the sort of thing you are looking for. A past "associate" of mine might be able to do something like what you are looking for in a day charging £450 inc. VAT - gives you an idea of a starting price for future reference.

big.z

have you looked at clikpic.com?

chunter

Yeh, you should be able to get a decent looking, simple website for 500 quid.
How much do you charge an hour for your artistic flair?

By the time you count the pennies by learning all the different aspects to web design,
your website could be up and running and bringing in business.


Unless you've time on your hands...

richt71

gwynnington wrote: »

I am a samll business and wish to get a website up and running fairly quicky.
I have artistic flair but not much 'technical' knowledge. I have got dreamweaver and have tried taking the tutorial but my brain hurts and im getting nowhere fast.

I have purchased Mr Site software (£24.99) in the hope that it was going to be a simple and fast solution - what it doesnt tell you when you buy it that if you already have a domain name you have to transfer that webspace AND all your emails to their server and pay monthly on top of that! Im happy with my service provider and pay above the average for their service - i have asked for my website to be hosted by mr site's server and my email accounts to stay with my current provider - mr sites technical team will not compromise, so its probably going back for a refund!

SO... what do I do. I need a slightly flashier website that normal as my business is art based and needs to show many images, maybe by a fading or scrolling image window on the home page, but its no more technical than that. I want those images when clicked on to open up into a larger view window. Ive seen a lot of websites that do this so im sure its not too impossible.

My question is can anyone with any web design experience, or anyone in a similar position advise me? Should I just pay for a design, bearing in mind that Im a new business and dont have £200+ plus regular update and hosting fee cash to hand? Or is there a simple way that doesnt involve making me try to understand html alien programming language that I could do it myself?

may thanks for any advice!

I'd suggest you post what you want on elance.com. It's like ebay but for computer people like web designers. You post a project in the relevant section and designers bid for the work. You can check their ratings other people that have used them have left. You can then pick someone to do your website.

scrungebucket

Simon at www.tobyhost.co.uk he is good at building sites.

Ta

smileyjohn

Hi,

You could use Wordpress which is free at www.wordpress.org there are plenty of books available from amazon on how to get the best out of it, and there are free plugins available to give you content management.

Bottom line is you will have to learn some HTML or pay somebody to do it for you

bingo_bango

Have a look at https://www.oswd.org

Lots of free templates there, and lots of them quite professional looking. At least good enough for most small businesses.