A question for you web designers :)

[SealBeard]

I'm just wondering how easily put together a website like this is, nice and simple looking, functional, but with style:

LINKY

EDIT: Some images may be NSFW

What kind of price would I be looking to pay for similar?

Cheers

 

[Harvey_nikon]

To be fair, you could probably knock that up yourself in a day.

It looks like they just use 3 DIV's to organise the main areas of the website and then add more in depending on the page.

Looks like a simple PHP gallery.

Price wise, well where my bro-in-law works they would charge a shocking £800+ for that.

 

[classixuk]

Hi Rob,
That's a pretty basic static website, however it's simplicity works really well.
Something like that could be put together over a weekend (as long as you supply the pictures and text) and should cost no more than a few hundred quid (£300-£400 including domain registration and hosting).
I don't do websites for cash, otherwise I'd offer to do it, but some kind fellow might do you one for free if you buy the domain name and hosting separately.
Good luck!

 

[Andy]

Thats just one big table, depending on the content you could make it in a few hours. £300-£400 is way to much. I wouldn't pay more than £50 for the design. Hosting for £40, domain for £6. So £100 for the lot.

 

[Harvey_nikon]

Thats just one big table, depending on the content you could make it in a few hours. £300-£400 is way to much. I wouldn't pay more than £50 for the design. Hosting for £40, domain for £6. So £100 for the lot.

You might not pay it but pro web design companies can charge £300+ for 1 static page.

There is also, from what I can see, no tables on the site. Even the galleries are constructed of lots of divs.

One thing I haven't been able to look at is the gallery software and how that operates, but there are lots of free options out there that can be used and modified.

 

[SealBeard]

To be fair, you could probably knock that up yourself in a day.

It looks like they just use 3 DIV's to organise the main areas of the website and then add more in depending on the page.

Looks like a simple PHP gallery.

Price wise, well where my bro-in-law works they would charge a shocking £800+ for that.

£800+ now that sounds like a real money earner! Maybe I'm in the wrong business I'm afraid the chances of me being able to knock one out over a few days is doubtfull though

Hi Rob,
That's a pretty basic static website, however it's simplicity works really well.
Something like that could be put together over a weekend (as long as you supply the pictures and text) and should cost no more than a few hundred quid (£300-£400 including domain registration and hosting).
I don't do websites for cash, otherwise I'd offer to do it, but some kind fellow might do you one for free if you buy the domain name and hosting separately.
Good luck!

Thanks for the info luckily I have domain and hosting sorted, so that should save me some fuss when I get around to it. I'll keep my eyes open for one of those fellows, wont hold my breath though

 

[Andy]

You might not pay it but pro web design companies can charge £300+ for 1 static page.

There is also, from what I can see, no tables on the site. Even the galleries are constructed of lots of divs.

One thing I haven't been able to look at is the gallery software and how that operates, but there are lots of free options out there that can be used and modified.

Im no web designer but it would be easier to do it in a table.

 

[SealBeard]

Thats just one big table, depending on the content you could make it in a few hours. £300-£400 is way to much. I wouldn't pay more than £50 for the design. Hosting for £40, domain for £6. So £100 for the lot.

Thanks for that Andy, sounds like nothing to hardcore then, might be able to save myself some cash

 

[Harvey_nikon]

Im no web designer but it would be easier to do it in a table.

The Gallery might be doable in a table, although modern day practice says not too. Tables are purely used for things like showing league tables for footie games and other spreadsheet style data.

Style it with CSS and fill it with HTML

And yes Rob, £800+ for a site like that, and some of the ones they make are awful, but people keep paying them. What's more annoying is that I taught the bro-in-law everything he knows AND I still have to help code and QA his personal sites :bang:

 

[King_Boru]

Thats just one big table, depending on the content you could make it in a few hours. £300-£400 is way to much. I wouldn't pay more than £50 for the design. Hosting for £40, domain for £6. So £100 for the lot.

Can you pop over and photograph my wedding for 100 squids and give me a CD of edited images and a photo book while your at it?

Web designers are skilled professionals. Expect to pay a professional rate.

 

[photon]

Plenty of validation errors for the linked site in the OP.

 

[Marcos James]

Pretty much a simple site to do, as long as the content was there could get that sorted pretty quickly.


Could do with a bit of a tidy up though don't like the idea of the one frame scrolling top to bottom and the next left to right.

 

[Adeyb]

Can you pop over and photograph my wedding for 100 squids and give me a CD of edited images and a photo book while your at it?

Web designers are skilled professionals. Expect to pay a professional rate.

indeed, after all photography is just aiming and pressing the round button on the top of the camera, I cant believe people charge for that.

A few years back I would have charged about a grand for that site, it would have been well promoted and looked after. you might call that PP.

Its price is whatever the market will bear, there are some of you out there charging a tenth of what you would pay at somewhere like 'venture' perhaps for better images. I've seen hoards of you jump down the throats of someone on here charging too little for the work they do for fear of undercutting your prices.

 

[awp]

There's quite a lot of work in producing as website like the one linked to. Certainly more than a days work - I would expect to pay £1+ for that. It seems web designers are treated with the same disdain as photographers these days. Anyone who is running a business wouldn't do that site for £300 - £400 and be in business for long.

Very interesting that all those saying 'this is really simple' - 'pay pennies for it' don't have a link to a website of their own!

 

[SealBeard]

Thanks for all your inputs - just to push the point however, I'm not looking for a 'cheap deal' or to belittle anyones proffesion. I'm just simply trying to get an idea of how much work is involved and how that would reflect upon the price

 

[Kaouthia]

Im no web designer but it would be easier to do it in a table.

Which is why you're no web designer.

 

[TheTimeChamber]

Shouldn't be too hard, although when you come to coding it, code it in a way that allows for future design changes to be easily implemented with a few CSS changes. I did not do this when I first built my site, and a rebuild two years later was a paaaaaaaaaaaain!

 

[flicker]

I can't believe how common it is on this forum to hear people really degrading web design professionals with the "you can do it yourself...you don't need to pay them ridiculous rates" type of comments. It really is the same as us saying "Don't hire a wedding photographer...I have a camera and a computer. Professionals are a rip off!"

When I need photographs done properly I gladly pay a photographer for them. I am learning photography myself but know I am years away from being able to do a great job of it. I may never be able to do a good job!

Owning a computer and dreamweaver drag and drop doesn't mean you know what you are doing and certainly doesn't qualify you as a web designer or developer. Web designers charge their rates for the time they put in and the rate is set relative to their expertise, not only in design (not art...design), but marketing, seo (not ill-informed redundant seo myths), standards, accessibility etc...

If I charge £5000 for a website I certainly don't reel it off in a weekend and then put my feet up - the figure isn't pulled out of thin air, it is calculated by a detailed breakdown of hours spent on design, consulting, coding, programming, brainstorming, research etc... and it really does take that long (although sometimes longer than quoted for). A simple fact is, if you spend £100 on a site for your business, it may not even bring you your £100 back over a couple of years - if you spend £2000 you will probably get that back within a few months. You get what you pay for.

</rant>

 

[johnsy]

Would you be wanting a shopping cart or way of purchasing / viewing clients images?

If so that will bump up the cost, if not give me a shout!

 

[Harvey_nikon]

Very interesting that all those saying 'this is really simple' - 'pay pennies for it' don't have a link to a website of their own!

It is really simply, and it's not just talk. Other than the gallery software this site isn't really that hard to code, I have done more complex ones myself for our works intranet site.

As for a link to my own, both sites are coming along, however, I have many more things that are taking up my time.

Oh, and it is just a days work there.

I can't believe how common it is on this forum to hear people really degrading web design professionals with the "you can do it yourself...you don't need to pay them ridiculous rates" type of comments. It really is the same as us saying "Don't hire a wedding photographer...I have a camera and a computer. Professionals are a rip off!"

When I need photographs done properly I gladly pay a photographer for them. I am learning photography myself but know I am years away from being able to do a great job of it. I may never be able to do a good job!

Owning a computer and dreamweaver drag and drop doesn't mean you know what you are doing and certainly doesn't qualify you as a web designer or developer. Web designers charge their rates for the time they put in and the rate is set relative to their expertise, not only in design (not art...design), but marketing, seo (not ill-informed redundant seo myths), standards, accessibility etc...

If I charge £5000 for a website I certainly don't reel it off in a weekend and then put my feet up - the figure isn't pulled out of thin air, it is calculated by a detailed breakdown of hours spent on design, consulting, coding, programming, brainstorming, research etc... and it really does take that long (although sometimes longer than quoted for). A simple fact is, if you spend £100 on a site for your business, it may not even bring you your £100 back over a couple of years - if you spend £2000 you will probably get that back within a few months. You get what you pay for.

</rant>

If you charged £5k for the linked site then you'd be massively over charging and you would deserve a slap, for £5k you are talking about a bespoke CMS site, custom designs and probably focused around sales which is not what we are talking about here.

As for dreamweaver, I don't know how anyone can use that overbloated piece of poo and it seems you are the only one that has even mentioned it in this thread.

You seem to be having a real rant because you feel web design in undervalued, we aren't talking about a £5k site, you know as well as me that something like the one linked in the OP could be knocked up by an amateur in a weekend using photoshop and notepad++

 

[flicker]

I wasn't talking about that site - if my services were required, a site like that wouldn't come into thought at all. My rant wasn't about this particular site, but more about the responses that are becoming ever so common on this forum. And £5k doesn't have to be a CMS

 

[Harvey_nikon]

I wasn't talking about that site - if my services were required, a site like that wouldn't come into thought at all. My rant wasn't about this particular site, but more about the responses that are becoming ever so common on this forum. And £5k doesn't have to be a CMS

But the problem is, you seem to be under the impression that people shouldn't have a go themselves.

I've been building sites on and off now for 10 years and I wouldn't dream of paying someone to do it for me. I might pay for a specific piece of software such as a gallery if I feel it's beyond my current skill level but that is it.

using your own example, wedding photography. Your rant is no different than those pro wedding togs that we had ranting and raving at people even thinking of trying it out themselves.

By all means, we are all aware that pro web design is important and worth every penny, with SEO jobs going for £40K+ it is a highly skilled job. But you guys have your place, as do the amateurs, but the site in the OP can be built by an amateur.

As you said, your rant had nothing to do with the OP so maybe it would be worth you starting a new thread on photographers and web design? I would be very interested in reading it, seeing what you think is acceptable for the amateurs like myself to be doing and why you feel that paying a pro in some cases would be more beneficial. I am sure others would like to benefit from your experience too You come here looking for advice on photography but you can also provide advice

 

[flicker]

I am not against people having a go themselves - of course it depends on the importance and purpose of the site. My rant was triggered by a couple of responses in this post along with a few from several other threads. And tbh, I love the forum for photography, but I am noticing a general view of web design from forum members to be a DIY-only thing and sort of feel like I would be p@$$ing into the wind if I tried to preach otherwise. Maybe the view from members comes from the fact that a lot of togs only want a site for the sake of having a site and it isn't really vital to bring in business. If a site isn't going to bring in £thousands profit, you wouldn't want to spend £thousands on it.

I'm probably being a bit sensitive...it's one of them things though. When you know what you put into something and you see people giving ill-informed advice all over the place, it can be annoying. Just like a pro tog would feel if hundreds of people on a web design forum were preaching that people shouldn't bother paying silly rates for a pro photographer when you can buy a happysnaps camera and a torch.

But as for the original question, it would be a tiny job to code a site like that - but surely you would want a unique design and wouldn't want to steal someone elses? But as for it being a good design, I would disagree! It does absolutely nothing to say what it is about or what the purpose of the site is.

 

[markrichardson]

I'm just wondering how easily put together a website like this is, nice and simple looking, functional, but with style:

LINKY

EDIT: Some images may be NSFW

What kind of price would I be looking to pay for similar?

Cheers

I agree with the dominant view above - creating a site on this kind of level would be pretty straight-forward. I'd expect to be able to get something like this working in a weekend comfortably - probably in a day (assuming the images and text were provided).

In practice I'd probably do a basic CMS set-up using Joomla or the like in order to make the site a little more future proof/easier to maintain - even then I think I could probably do something like that in a weekend.

In contrast to some comments above, I built my own site which is linked in my signature - the aesthetics may not be to everyone's taste (and the site, although in use, isn't yet complete) but I'd say it was more complex than the site referred to in the OP.

I haven't done paid web work (though done a few small things for people I know) but I'd probably ask for about £300 for the work on this.

 

[Harvey_nikon]

I'm probably being a bit sensitive...it's one of them things though. When you know what you put into something and you see people giving ill-informed advice all over the place, it can be annoying. Just like a pro tog would feel if hundreds of people on a web design forum were preaching that people shouldn't bother paying silly rates for a pro photographer when you can buy a happysnaps camera and a torch.

But as for the original question, it would be a tiny job to code a site like that - but surely you would want a unique design and wouldn't want to steal someone elses? But as for it being a good design, I would disagree! It does absolutely nothing to say what it is about or what the purpose of the site is.

I understand where you are coming from and think a lot of togs on here would

I find coding easy, design I can do on paper but I am beyond **** at creating it in photoshop. This is where the brother in law comes in If I find myself struggling with my pro site you may get a PM

And I was serious about you posting a new thread on web development, I am sure others would enjoy reading it too. Share the knowledge and all that

 

[trvo]

Well said flicker. I work for a professional web design company as the lead web developer - we don't get unsatisfied customers, they all get great value for their money. A lot of background work goes into a web site or web application, the design work alone can take a solid week or two to get right.

I am building myself a personal site at the moment and have invested 36 hours in the design and logo so far and haven't even got out of photoshop yet! It is very offensive to see someone try to belittle your work when you aren't actually making the millions you are being accused of making, exactly like people do to the pro tog's.

FYI. I've offered my advice to people attempting the DIY approach on these forums and it's been well received in the past so you can't accuse me of discouraging those that wish to try it for themselves

Anyhow, back on topic, your best bet is to go with Joomla IMO, you will have a lot of templates you can choose from and you will be able to get it up and running quickly, the site you want seems to be all within Joomla's capabilities.

Trev

 

[TheTimeChamber]

There's quite a lot of work in producing as website like the one linked to. Certainly more than a days work - I would expect to pay £1+ for that. It seems web designers are treated with the same disdain as photographers these days. Anyone who is running a business wouldn't do that site for £300 - £400 and be in business for long.

Very interesting that all those saying 'this is really simple' - 'pay pennies for it' don't have a link to a website of their own!

Ok, www.thetimechamber.co.uk

All my work, it took some time, but once the coding was figured it was simple

 

[noneforit]

Thought I would weigh in on this one.....

The website the OP linked too is very very basic, as already mentioned its a few DIVs

Price wise, it depends on who you ask to do it...
Most Pro website designers have minimum charges for this sort of thing, generally around the £300-£500 mark!!

If you know a mate who can code in HTML and CSS then he mite charge you mates rates.

I could do something like that in a couple of hours and would charge a mate say £100 for my troubles.

The disadvantage with a pro designer is that they will charge you for any modifications or additions to the site, a mate will probably do it for a beer

 

[trvo]

Thought I would weigh in on this one.....

The website the OP linked too is very very basic, as already mentioned its a few DIVs

Price wise, it depends on who you ask to do it...
Most Pro website designers have minimum charges for this sort of thing, generally around the £300-£500 mark!!

If you know a mate who can code in HTML and CSS then he mite charge you mates rates.

I could do something like that in a couple of hours and would charge a mate say £100 for my troubles.

The disadvantage with a pro designer is that they will charge you for any modifications or additions to the site, a mate will probably do it for a beer

I'm building my mate a website for free outside of the office, never charge a mate for anything - in business however, you have overheads to pay.

Trev

 

[noneforit]

I'm building my mate a website for free outside of the office, never charge a mate for anything - in business however, you have overheads to pay.

Trev

Thats very good of you Trev and im sure they appreciate it.
If it were family then I would of course do it for free, but in my opinion mates shouldnt expect things for nothing just because you are good at something.
I think 80% off normal prices is a fair deal for mates rates

 

[EdinburghGary]

I'm not a web designer, but I have built LOTS of web sites for money (in the region of 70 or so). I also built www.inspirephoto.co.uk and I have paid for three EXTREMELY large web sites, one which cost £30K to build and £50K to market, and another which cost overall £22K....and the biggy which cost well over £100K.

I could do ALL those sites with my current knowledge, but it would literally take me months and months and months.

For a site like my INSPIRE site, I would charge about £2,000. There is a lot happening under the hood though which isn't obvious.

Gary.

 

[awp]

For a site like my INSPIRE site, I would charge about £2,000. There is a lot happening under the hood though which isn't obvious.

Gary.

At last - someone talking sense. If web designers were churning out sites at £50 a time - how many do you think they'd have to do in a week to stay afloat? For professional work of any description you have to charge professional fees.

 

[ed_o_brain]

If you go to a pro for a website you will get consideration for:

Design - something unique that has been created from scratch (as mentioned before)
Speed - the site will be optimised to load quickly
SEO - the site will be search engine optimised
CSS - will be correctly applied thus making it easy to change the look and feel of the whole site in future
Analytics - implementation of scripting to track the number of unique visitors and what how they use the site, if you are selling things then you will get information on converted sales
Testing - ensure functionality is comprehensively tested and any bugs are fixed prior to publication
Variants - content and appearance tailored to suit visitors, variants tested to see which are the most successful in eliciting enquiries and sales
Multi-browser/multi-platform testing and support
Stringent version control - ensures the hosted product is exactly what was signed off, future changes correctly versioned to ensure there's no regression
Translation - are you intending to sell your product in different markets?
Proof reading - it's surprising how many people don't get their content proof read to iron out basic spelling and grammatical errors.

Like with Photography, you get what you pay for. All of the above maybe OTT for some hobbyists website, but a high profile website like a high profile event does demand the skill set of someone at least aspiring to be professional.

 

[flicker]

Nice post Ed...to add to that though:
Research - research of market, competitors, and keywords
User testing - what it says on the tin
Consultation - includes advice from a web specialists view of what will and won't be successful online and how to make it successful
Solid programming - open source doesn't always fulfill your needs and things have to be built specifically for the client and it has to work, include training and a manual + tech support

We could go on....

 

[evilonion]

Only a days work? Well i do this as part of my living and i can assure you this is more than a days work... any website is... even a simple one page site is... why?

Answer is simple... the client.
In the past 14 years since i started making sites at the age of 16 have i ever had a client not want to make at least 1 change to the site after it has been built... either a font size change, or could we just change this image... or could this colour be changed quickly.

Your looking at a day just coming up with a draft and getting the client to sign it off.

The only time i would build a site for £100 hosted is if it was a simple one page templated site with general information about the company with contact.

Anything more than that and your looking at coming up with designs for the client to agree on, general site branding, and agreement to charges of changes if they are needed and so on.

As mentioned yes there are companies which charge the earth, but you get what you pay for.

I get it in all three businesses i run though, in the building trade everyone i do work for wants extras or a cheaper deal, with vinyls and printed clothing people want a cheaper rate... they ask for a quote for 100 tshirts, i give them a quote based on that quantity, then they say great price i want 10... then wonder why the price goes up!
And in webdesign people seem to want a site built for £50 hosted for free and still expect 24/7 customer support.


anyways, back to the op on the question about what that site would cost, your easily looking at the region of £500-£800... Simply for the fact that i would assume your not after a replication but something 'similar' in which case various designs would have to be drafted before its signed off and built.

The gallery looks bespoke so you'd need to add that into the cost unless you wanted something opensource added into the site.

Then allow for the cost of any alterations you may want done after the site has been signed off (like you want extra images added etc)

Please ignore all the comments saying this should cost you £150 or so... its simply not the case... £150 would get you a basic template hosted with an opensource gallery for you to upload your own content into.

If there is anyone on this forum that would do this much work for £100-£150 then i will have some work for you!

 

[evilonion]

also, just to add, a friend of mine charged a company £850 to build an ecommerce site. They were on page 6 of google for the chosen keywords and turnover was less than £500 per month.

They came to me (as i know the owner) and asked for help. I charged £2k and revamped the site, did quite a bit of work behind the scenes and the site is now position six on page one of google and turnover has increased to just over 3k per month.

So in one month they have already made back what the site cost.

 

[SealBeard]

Thanks for all the responses, I would comment individually but there are to many

A lot of info, and opinions mixed in there - but its certainly answered my original questions. I think a little more reading around and organising on my part before I make a decision on which route to venture down

Thanks again.

 

[Harvey_nikon]

Only a days work? Well i do this as part of my living and i can assure you this is more than a days work... any website is... even a simple one page site is... why?

Answer is simple... the client.....

If there is anyone on this forum that would do this much work for £100-£150 then i will have some work for you!

I am very well aware that clients can be a royal pain in the ass, making demands that may sound cool to them but you know that it won't work and no matter how much to you tell them you can't get it through their thick skulls, however, in this case you are wrong.

The client is the OP, who has already found a site he likes, therefore the annoying task of sitting with a client and doing 10+ revamps isn't needed. You have the design, all that is left is to code it and test/tweak it.

Personally, I don't like the site, it's far too basic and just looks meh, however, if the OP wants a 'copy' of the site it would be possible to bang it out in a day. The colour scheme is so simple that 2 seconds in CSS would change the entire site and if the OP decides they want to start making changes then the time & cost will start going up.

 

[evilonion]

Sure if you want to break someones copyright and steal the design then i could bash it out in a day...

 

[Kaouthia]

He's found a site SIMILAR to what he might like visually (or perhaps not even that much, just the general simple overall layout). He didn't say he was looking for somebody to rip off somebody else's site and recode under the hood to make it more appealing to search engines.