Building a web site

KC Scott · Post by **KC Scott** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 3:23 am

Anyone here do it?

My wife has a small recruiting business, and we're looking to build a website.

Played around with trying t do frontpage and it isn't tuening out worth a shit.

Any idea on what the going rate should be to hire someone to build it?

It's going to be around 5 pages, and should be easy enough for her to update the new job orders she's working on without needing any additional IT help.

Hobbes · Post by **Hobbes** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 3:40 pm

The problem you're having is that Frontpage is teh suck.

Two options. First, if you want to lay out the jack for it, get Dreamweaver. The best web development tool out their, IMO. Second, if you want to do something a little cheaper (free) check out one of the open source tools out there. I use Nvu myself, but I've heard good things about Amaya as well.

ElTaco · Post by **ElTaco** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 4:42 pm

I just built my own little site for my fundraising. Its not very spectecular in terms of design but it works.

You do have multiple options and frontpage shouldn't be one of them. Frontpage does suck, although as a newbie, you shouldn't be having too many problems with it. The biggest compaint about frontpage is when you edit a site that you designed in something else and you open it in Frontpage to make a quick edit and it moves everything around and rewrites the html code.

If you want to build your own site, I would start with reading one of the many HTML books. Thats how I started and if you are even a little technically inclined, you can pick up the very basics in less then a week. If you just want a webpage on the web that tells people who you are, where you are, what you do and what you sell, that would probably be enough knowledge to get started. On the other hand if you want something flashy and interactive, you'll need to put a month or two of learning and practicing in and on top of it, you'll have to brush up on your artistic skills as well.

Dreamweaver is an expensive tool but it is the best out there. I also like the CoffeeCup products. They have some of the intuitive features of Dreamweaver and they also have a lot of common scripts built in ready to be added to any webpage. If you haven't purchased a host provider yet, some of them offer free web editing software with a year of service.

As far as hiring someone to do it, if you go with a professional, expect to pay a few hundred per page designed. An organization I help with hired a pro and ended up paying about $2+K for re-designing a website with about 10 to 15 pages.

Also if you need them to design graphics, such as logos and banners and such, the price goes up. You can search for some prices on the web, but don't expect it to be cheap. You may be better off if you want something simple and for a decent price and time is not of the essence to either talk to some friends to see if they know someone who is in school or college who can do it as a summer project or stop by your local Community college who has webdesign courses and talk to the teacher to see if she can ask around and recommend a good student who might do it for cheap and experiance.

I don't build websites often but I have done it for friends for about $500 or a little more for some basic stuff.

Anyway, those are my suggestions. I knwo there are a few web designers on here who might be able to give you better price estimates since they work in the industry or even give you their prices for doing it.

Headhunter · Post by **Headhunter** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 5:59 pm

I don't build websites from scratch. I maintain already designed sites, and add functionality to them for a large corporation, so I know a thing or two. I'm also our corporate support for FrontPage. Don't listen to Hobbes. While Dreamweaver is a vastly superior tool to use, it's learning curve is much steaper. If you're struggling with FrontPage, DW will kick your fucking ass.

I am aslo our corporate trainer/SME on Windows SharePoint Services, and I think that might be a solid avenue for you to look at. I'm assuming you won't be hosting you're own site. You can get a WSS host Here, for as little as $39.99 a month. WSS won't require any development tools, will give you the navigation structure and common look and feel for all pages. It's user friendly, and with v.3.0 has workfolw built in. Not a catch all program, but it'll sure meet your needs. And also, you have me as a resource if you need it. I support this day in, and day out for a global company. I've got lot's of resources on the product.

If you're interested in that avenue, PM me and I'll be happy to help.

PSUFAN · Post by **PSUFAN** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 9:24 pm

The company that hosts this website, lunarpages, offers cheap reliable hosting. They'll give you coffeecup software for free, and there are sitebuilders.

Basically, you're looking at about $100 a year with Lunarpages. They register the domain name for free, and they renew it free for the duration of your stay with them.

All Macromedia products are available as free 30 day trials (fully functional). They all have excellent tutorials that you can go through during that period. While Studio 8 might be expensive, you will at least have learned a lot about the web-building process.

By all means, post here or PM some of us about products that you're considering. Most folks end up overpaying for certain aspects of web-building, we can try to help you avoid that.

ElTaco · Post by **ElTaco** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:04 pm

I'm not sure that Share point is the best way to build a simple website for a business. I don't think sharepoint is hard, but if you've never in your life made a website, its probably not the best place to start. I could be wrong and if I am, please let me know cause I've actually be interested in Sharepoint's capabilities for work. That is more of a backend/collaboration site type tool unless I am completely wrong about what Sharepoint is.

Anyway, Lunarpages is fairly good. I also recently signed up for HostMonster which is also a very cheap and very feature rich hosting solution.

One recommendation for anyone who is looking at hosting, you may want to check out Google's Gmail for apps/domains solution. Basically it allows you to use gmail for your domain. So for example my domain that I built is www.daveintraining.com for my fundraising stuff. (talk about a great self promotion opportunity). Being a geek and all, I of course wanted to have my own email to go with that domain so I signed up for Google's gmail apps for your domain solution which is free and with a few dns mods at my registry, gmail was now acting as my email server. They also provide Calendaring, groups and some other solutions for your domain included with it. There are some small limitation, such as instead of having 500 emails as offered by some hosting solution, I only registered myself for 50 with gmail but you can increase that. google does give you 2gb per email box and even if the hosting solution is not as solid, your emails will still be getting delivered. Check that option out here: http://www.google.com/a/org/ (its just for the backend of your website, not the main website itself).

Now that some of the web folks have gotten involved, I would just like tobe the first one to say that the best web editor is notepad or VI.

Hobbes · Post by **Hobbes** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 10:44 pm

ElTaco wrote:the best web editor is ... VI.

IN!

Headhunter · Post by **Headhunter** » Fri Apr 06, 2007 11:14 pm

The reason I mentioned SharePoint v3 is because of a few tools that will make KCScott's wife's life pretty easy. In another lifetime, I was a recruiter... Headhunter, if you will. I know what kind of stuff she is needing, and a nice part of the WSS colaboration tool is document management, and the workflow you can attach to it. For example, candidate A applies for a job, and submits their resume, WSS will send an Email denoting such. If they are hired, you can have the job drop off the site, and into archives. It's easy to build that type of stuff. I do it for a living, and I'd be happy to help. I've got all the development tools you'd ever need, and years of experience doing it as well.

If anyone ever wants WSS info, holler. Hell, I spent the entire month of January in the Middle Fucking East training end users and site designers. A simple 5 page site, with work flow and document libraries would only take a few hours to set up.

KC Scott · Post by **KC Scott** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:44 am

Hobbes wrote: I use Nvu myself,

Dude, you have a friend for life.

RACK NVU

It took me a couple hours, but already have the first 2 pages up.

Nothing fancy, but the wife says it's better than she thought it would be.

Still a couple little glitches (like it doesn't always look like the preview) - but easy enough to fix.
The layering (text over pictures) could be a lot easier, but for free - what the hell.

The only editing we'll ever do once I'm done is just posting the new job descriptions for whatever assignment the wife is searching for.

Damn... my $71 finally bearing results (Charge was $71 for domain name and a year of hosting)

Thanks for the help All

KC Scott · Post by **KC Scott** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 12:54 am

PSUFAN wrote:
By all means, post here or PM some of us about products that you're considering. Most folks end up overpaying for certain aspects of web-building, we can try to help you avoid that.

Dave - our host is startlogic - registered with them last year, Lynn needed a web site then, for a couple new companes she was trying to get signed on. I found startlogic by just searching and read some comparisons on em.

We already had the frontpage - at the time had a buddy that was going to do it, but he got busy and it never got done.

Like I said in the earlier thread - total was $71 for a year of hosting and that included the domain name registration

KC Scott · Post by **KC Scott** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 9:31 pm

Finished the Website today; I'm impressed - turned out much better than I thought.

I noticed something weird - when you look at in Firefox Browser it's perfect, but wife (who uses IE) noticed several of the pages had flaws (overlaps of images over data) so had to go adjust all of those so they look ok on either browser.

Also figured out how to put the Meta Tags in to the header - From what I read that's important if you want any of the bots to find you.

Also submitted the URL to all the search engines listed on startlogic - about half took it - the other half (including Google) didn't. Not sure why that happened.

Anyway - about 9 total hours (over 2 days) to do the whole thing.

It's not picasso, but it definetly works for what we're going after.

Mister Bushice · Post by **Mister Bushice** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 12:15 am

Scott,

be careful with the meta tags on secondary pages. you don't want the bots to take people to page 5 when they need to be on page one.

and test it on all browsers. some uniform coding accepted by the W3 is not recognized by well, mostly microsoft. they always want their shit to be used.

KC Scott · Post by **KC Scott** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 3:40 am

Mister Bushice wrote:Scott,

be careful with the meta tags on secondary pages. you don't want the bots to take people to page 5 when they need to be on page one.

and test it on all browsers. some uniform coding accepted by the W3 is not recognized by well, mostly microsoft. they always want their shit to be used.

yea, I read that and only put the metagas on the home page.

Tonight I figured out the code for the little Favicon on the tabs - though I can't get it when you save the page as a Fav.
My wife is already sick of me talking about it - I was doing the superiority dance after I got the little icon to actually show up

Considering I started yesterday with a blank sheet, it didn't turn out too bad.

patsy stone · Post by **patsy stone** » Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:18 pm

KC, I can take a look at your page if you need assistance. Just PM me. I have built a few sites. I enjoy being more of a web page designer rather than a techy person, but if it's just a simple informative site, I can handle it. :)

PSUFAN · Post by **PSUFAN** » Mon Apr 09, 2007 4:28 am

I do a lot of work with browser compatibility issues and coding standards. If you're still having trouble with things behaving differently, feel free to drop a pm.