DSLRUsers.com

Help. I am pathetic at the technical part of web-design.

Our company, DEC designs, wants to see how willing people here are to create a basic web site for us. Please PM or reply to this thread with hourly/job rates and work done in the form of links if available.

We don't advertise at all, we are overrun already by word of mouth, so the site is merely something we feel we need in this day and age rather than something we need for survival.

It would require no complex back end, rather display only. Only around 20 photographs, and ability to download one PDF.

I have already purchased a dreamhost package and registered http://www.decdesigns.com

We can provide the design we require (thats our job) but instead of outsourcing to our usual web tech guy to put it into action, we would like to see what resources are at this site. I think it was Rokstar's and Wendell's page that made us sit up and pay attention to the skills here.

Does anyone know CSS backwards yet or is it all flash?

Here are a few other sites that we think are good:

http://marcschuhmann.visualnova.net - perhaps a little complicated.

http://www.alisterclarke.com/main.html

http://www.moravkova.com

So you would like someone to design something along the lines of that link ? he can do something similar along those lines

http://marcschuhmann.visualnova.net

My wifes, younger brother is into mutimedia design and specialise in flash he did his own flash site for his band his in. If your interested I can forward the site and stuff and you can be the judge yourself. He is a student but his works looks above average.

I have to get in contact with him, I post the info or send the stuff by tonight hopefully

Wake up Leigh - here's a job for you

Catcha wrote:So you would like someone to design something along the lines of that link ? he can do something similar along those lines

http://marcschuhmann.visualnova.net

My wifes, younger brother is into mutimedia design and specialise in flash he did his own flash site for his band his in. If your interested I can forward the site and stuff and you can be the judge yourself. He is a student but his works looks above average.

I have to get in contact with him, I post the info or send the stuff by tonight hopefully

Please do Catcha. I appreciate it.

yes agreed

those flash sites are complex, they aren't simple even for 20 images as you have to design and program a whole navigation system that not only works and lokks nice but is scalable

you would be paying more than 5K for a professional small site, and that's industry rates for a simple html site with minimal css and a few pages, flash is much more expensive

Leigh wake up thi scould be a job for you

Heath Bennett wrote:

Catcha wrote:So you would like someone to design something along the lines of that link ? he can do something similar along those lines

http://marcschuhmann.visualnova.net

My wifes, younger brother is into mutimedia design and specialise in flash he did his own flash site for his band his in. If your interested I can forward the site and stuff and you can be the judge yourself. He is a student but his works looks above average.

I have to get in contact with him, I post the info or send the stuff by tonight hopefully

Please do Catcha. I appreciate it.

Plus I don't think it will cost you 5g either

Personally, I'd be avoiding Flash.

From a client perspective, it's a total PITA to deal with - different versions, downloading plugins, all manner of bullshit like that.

It's a really great way to piss your clients off before you even start to communicate with them.

From what I've seen, the only people who like it are marketing dickheads, who think that everything that's bright and shiny is cool, but thenyu've never had any grasp on how the real world works.

The basic rule here is KISS.

gstark wrote:Personally, I'd be avoiding Flash.

From a client perspective, it's a total PITA to deal with - different versions, downloading plugins, all manner of bullshit like that.

It's a really great way to piss your clients off before you even start to communicate with them.

From what I've seen, the only people who like it are marketing dickheads, who think that everything that's bright and shiny is cool, but thenyu've never had any grasp on how the real world works.

The basic rule here is KISS.

Good point. I'm interested to hear what everyone here thinks about this! Please no flaming - this seems like a hot topic!

wendellt wrote:yes agreed

those flash sites are complex, they aren't simple even for 20 images as you have to design and program a whole navigation system that not only works and lokks nice but is scalable

you would be paying more than 5K for a professional small site, and that's industry rates for a simple html site with minimal css and a few pages, flash is much more expensive

Leigh wake up thi scould be a job for you

Wake up indeed. I am interested in his take and pricing

gstark wrote:Personally, I'd be avoiding Flash.

From a client perspective, it's a total PITA to deal with - different versions, downloading plugins, all manner of bullshit like that.

It's a really great way to piss your clients off before you even start to communicate with them.

From what I've seen, the only people who like it are marketing dickheads, who think that everything that's bright and shiny is cool, but thenyu've never had any grasp on how the real world works.

The basic rule here is KISS.

DOES THAT STAND FOR KEEP IT SIMPLE SWEETY?

i agree, after workign in the advertising industry for years flash was big, but it soon came down to the simple fact people hated learnign new interfaces and most flash interfaces are hard to navigate or learn, unless your totally into the design.multimedia scene

clients hate waiting or learnign how to navigate a new site, most just give up

the best sites now are just nicely designed static sites with good information architecture design and efficient programing to gell the site together.

Catcha wrote:

Heath Bennett wrote:

Catcha wrote:So you would like someone to design something along the lines of that link ? he can do something similar along those lines

http://marcschuhmann.visualnova.net

My wifes, younger brother is into mutimedia design and specialise in flash he did his own flash site for his band his in. If your interested I can forward the site and stuff and you can be the judge yourself. He is a student but his works looks above average.

I have to get in contact with him, I post the info or send the stuff by tonight hopefully

Please do Catcha. I appreciate it.

Plus I don't think it will cost you 5g either

Great, but still, if you are paying peanuts you'll get monkeys.

gstark wrote:From a client perspective, it's a total PITA to deal with - different versions, downloading plugins, all manner of bullshit like that.

It's a really great way to piss your clients off before you even start to communicate with them.

Agreed. Will also forward this to my brother for you Heath!

yup you get what you pay for

you might as well pay for a professional job and get professional results and service
rather than go budget and get something that will be a pain the arse to maintain in the future

I'd definitely consider going for a simple static site, not flash. Flash is great from a design POV, but the temptation is ever present to go overboard with cool funky moving things that are a real pain to navigate.

IMO, a simple flat HTML page, styled up nicely with CSS, can be just as attractive to look at with the added bonus of being much easier to set up initially AND maintain.

I generally hate browsing websites for photographers, designers etc because normally the content is lousy and hidden under a pile of annoying flash. Remember, content is king. Unless your business IS making websites, no one is going to hire you because you have a stylish website completely devoid of useful content.

wendellt wrote:clients hate waiting or learnign how to navigate a new site, most just give up

Exactly.

Which is kind of counter productive for a website.

Leigh will be up soon, I expect.

Im assuming you want a website where content can be updated and images added in the future...

unless you want to *phaf* around yourself editing the provided HTML template, or overwriting existing images with the same filename, you will have to have some sort of a backend (be it PHP/MySQL, XML etc)

I personally enjoy a good flash ( ) if its done properly.

when are you hoping to have this website live by?

Jonathan

 btw your site over at http://www.decdesigns.com lists the directories and brings up the gallery 2.0 installer when you move into 'photos' (i resisted running it)

Jonathan

jdear wrote:btw your site over at http://www.decdesigns.com lists the directories and brings up the gallery 2.0 installer when you move into 'photos' (i resisted running it)

Jonathan

As per my pathetic attempt, hoping that I could manipulate gallery 2 to not look like gallery 2! I did not get far

jdear wrote:Im assuming you want a website where content can be updated and images added in the future...

unless you want to *phaf* around yourself editing the provided HTML template, or overwriting existing images with the same filename, you will have to have some sort of a backend (be it PHP/MySQL, XML etc)

I personally enjoy a good flash ( ) if its done properly.

when are you hoping to have this website live by?

Jonathan

Good points, images would get a little stale. I wish gallery 2 could be manipulated so that it would look different but have a backend that doesn't need to be built!

We have a meeting in mid-February with a big client, thought it may be something extra to impress them with.

Flash is funky & sexy however you need to take into consideration the access speed your audience has. Even with a high speed ADSL link, if I come across a flash site that takes more than 10 seconds to load, unless they have an alternate HTML/TEXT entry option I would generally close the window & move on. The stats on my web site indicate that a small percentage of people are still using dial up to access the internet.

Another important thing to consider is if you want your website to be indexed by search engines. Flash is useless in this respect and unless you have content that the crawlers can read & understand you will never be indexed.

Just another option for you Heath, but have you considered a Pro account at Smugmug? I believe that if you have a pro account, you can customise it to your heart's content and you can associate it with your own domain name. I believe a few people here have done it - BBJ & killakoala amongst others.

Uploading and organising your galleries is a breeze and you can use things like password protected galleries for your clients.

This would give you a simple yearly expense item without any capital outlay in the beginning.

Just a thought...

If you do so, use one of the discount codes in this thread.

Flash is useless in this respect and unless you have content that the crawlers can read & understand you will never be indexed.

 AFAIK, there are many workarounds for this.

Heath,
Even if you get up a simple one page portfolio website which just has some contact details, and some of your tastiest images on it, in a clean beautiful design that will do nicely! - can always expand on it from the future.

Jonathan

I completely agree with Gary on this one. Flash looks fancy but isn't necessary. Keep the site simple and as long as it looks good, and more importantly, the content is fantastic, that will always beat a great looking site with half-decent images.

As for Leek's suggestion, I have a pro account & I played around with the CSS on SmugMug and completely changed the look so it doesn't even look like SmugMug (which took ALOT of learning and playing around - I had to learn "on the fly" as I went), but it is possible.

However, by reading your post, you have already commited to DreamHost, so that's probably a moot option anyway.

leek wrote:Just another option for you Heath, but have you considered a Pro account at Smugmug? I believe that if you have a pro account, you can customise it to your heart's content and you can associate it with your own domain name. I believe a few people here have done it - BBJ & killakoala amongst others.

Uploading and organising your galleries is a breeze and you can use things like password protected galleries for your clients.

This would give you a simple yearly expense item without any capital outlay in the beginning.

Just a thought...

If you do so, use one of the discount codes in this thread.

Nice idea. I wouldn't really want to do too much CSS learning though - too much time. Perhaps I should see what dotmac can do as I am already a member there. I heard somewhere that Apple's Aperture program can use it to creat online galleries, with mac style interface...

Flash has its advantages, but a lot of the time it forces the user to re-learn a basica principle like "navigation" which is never a good thing.

If the user has to sit there for a few minutes trying to understand how a site works, the design has done a horrible job.

It's also a bitch in relation to changing things where if you have no Flash experience and someone has just made this really nice Actionscript based site for you, good luck changing one minor thing without the entire codebase falling apart on you.

I'm still an advocate of CSS1 + Tables (I can't stand CSS2's replacement of them and find it a waste of time) as well as HTML and PHP, but I'll still develop in Flash if it needs be...

I was too lazy to wait for that first site's pop-up window for Flash... the second one, the Alistair-thingy one, that's quite simple Flash (roll-over image, edit in place for working on it, followed by container file images) and the last one I looked at briefly.

Good morning Nnnnsic.

Here is a graphic describing how aperture creates web pages:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/print/web.html

Flash-based or HTML, because that looks like HTML but it could easily be Flash.

Looks quite simple, too.

Nnnnsic wrote:Flash-based or HTML, because that looks like HTML but it could easily be Flash.

Looks quite simple, too.

If anyone has an opinion on this I would like to hear it.

EDIT - more here:

http://www.apple.com/aperture/print/

You know, Photoshop makes web-pages too.

However a site like that can be done in both Flash and HTML, the question becomes however:

1. Do you like flashy little fades while your images are loading at the risk of not being able to update it yourself? (Flash)

2. Do you like a quicker to load system without needing a plugin but it might not look as good visually with things that blink and go bump in the night? (HTML / raw code bases)

Nnnnsic wrote:You know, Photoshop makes web-pages too.

However a site like that can be done in both Flash and HTML, the question becomes however:

1. Do you like flashy little fades while your images are loading at the risk of not being able to update it yourself? (Flash)

2. Do you like a quicker to load system without needing a plugin but it might not look as good visually with things that blink and go bump in the night? (HTML / raw code bases)

I think this is going to take a fair bit of thought. Perhaps I need to work on my decision making skills!

Heath, what is your target audience for the website?

shutterbug wrote:Heath, what is your target audience for the website?

I guess our target audience is our current clients - middle aged professionals. Just a show off piece for them to see our work.

Professionals in what disciplines?

Accountants are different from lawyers but basically similar, but a professional marketing person mighht prefer more bells and whistles while an accountant just wants to see your balance sheet.

Heath Bennett wrote:

shutterbug wrote:Heath, what is your target audience for the website?

I guess our target audience is our current clients - middle aged professionals. Just a show off piece for them to see our work.

I mean what kind of photography work do you do?

Heath Bennett wrote:

shutterbug wrote:Heath, what is your target audience for the website?

I guess our target audience is our current clients - middle aged professionals. Just a show off piece for them to see our work.

Would these people have high speed internet? This all comes back to html or flash website.

For me if a flash site takes over 10 sec to load I just close it

gstark wrote:Professionals in what disciplines?

Accountants are different from lawyers but basically similar, but a professional marketing person mighht prefer more bells and whistles while an accountant just wants to see your balance sheet.

True...A bride would want to see images and price.

shutterbug wrote:For me if a flash site takes over 10 sec to load I just close it

Which is actually one of the reasons I still make Flash sites targetted in filesize for dial-up users.

All kinds of photography. Some things we have done in the past year include: food, commercial, executive portraiture, architectural, industrial, resort, transportation... It is something that we are being asked more and more frequently for. Previously we were graphic designers/marketers only. It is hard to narrow down a specific target market because of the range of clientele, but generally it would be a more conservative, middle aged managerial type people that we work with.

I'm quite excited at the moment because the Susie O'Neill So Good Cookbook that we did the food photography for is being delivered to the client today. 18,000 copies with a re-print scheduled in for about two months from now. You can see it at the Sydney Easter Show or by buying So Good to collect coupons.

Hi Heath,

Heath Bennett wrote:I'm quite excited at the moment because the Susie O'Neill So Good Cookbook that we did the food photography for is being delivered to the client today. 18,000 copies with a re-print scheduled in for about two months from now. You can see it at the Sydney Easter Show or by buying So Good to collect coupons.

Do you get a cut on the number of books sold ?

Do not discount using a good content management system, something like joomla, plone, typo3, [insert your fav one here]. There are all kinds of commercial ones you can use as well. They can be fully customised for look and feel. It is then pretty easy to add/modify your content as needed.

If you get a custom html/css site or flash site, a lot of times, you will need to get the original developper to do the work for you. If that's what you want fine, but think about it.

HTH,

André

radar wrote:Do not discount using a good content management system, something like joomla, plone,

Joomla is good.

Plone isn't worth spitting on. When a CMS gets in the way of installing itself, it goes into the bit bucket very bloody quickly.

And Microshaft's Sharepoint portal should not be be discounted. In fact, it should be free, it's such an overblown piece of unmanageable crap.

Even for free, it's overpriced.

does this website have to fit into the corporate image of your company? ie, same colours, logo etc etc...

Jonathan

radar wrote:Do you get a cut on the number of books sold ?

Do not discount using a good content management system, something like joomla, plone, typo3, [insert your fav one here]. There are all kinds of commercial ones you can use as well. They can be fully customised for look and feel. It is then pretty easy to add/modify your content as needed.

André

I wish I could get a cut, but it won't really be 'selling' as it is more like a gift thing to spur on more purchases of So Good. If only I could get a cut of the international sales of So Good - that would be fantastic

Please explain Joomla. Does it work on a Mac? Does it require much netspeak know how? Is it something that I will need to buy 'Joomla for Dummies'?

jdear wrote:does this website have to fit into the corporate image of your company? ie, same colours, logo etc etc...

Jonathan

No, we are always wanting a 'different look' on our business cards, so we never really work with corporate colours.

Heath Bennett wrote:Please explain Joomla. Does it work on a Mac? Does it require much netspeak know how? Is it something that I will need to buy 'Joomla for Dummies'?

It'll work on any server that speaks php.

Heath Bennett wrote:Please explain Joomla. Does it work on a Mac? Does it require much netspeak know how? Is it something that I will need to buy 'Joomla for Dummies'?

I'm sure there is a "Mambo/Joomla for Dummies". Joomla was initially known as Mambo, but the developpers had a falling out with the commercial developers of Mambo, so branched out as Joomla. Have a look at their site.
http://www.joomla.org/

It is an easy component to add to your site on Dreamhost, much the same as gallery. Gallery integrates nicely in joomla as well.

There is all kinds of skins you can get to customise joomla, some free some you have to pay for.

The hardest part is to get the site looking the way you want it to. Once you are there, add/modifying/removing content is dead simple. Any user can do this if they have use a web browser and a text editor.

Have a look at the url below to give you an idea as to what you can do with joomla

http://www.joomla.org/content/blogcategory/35/69/

HTH,

André

Thanks for that Radar/Gstark

Two minutes on aperture created this, very very easy:

http://homepage.mac.com/decdsgns/New%20Album/index.html

Would be cool if I could get the dreamhost's http://www.decdesigns.com to redirect here. Is that possible?

Heath Bennett wrote:Two minutes on aperture created this, very very easy:

http://homepage.mac.com/decdsgns/New%20Album/index.html

Would be cool if I could get the dreamhost's http://www.decdesigns.com to redirect here. Is that possible?

I wouldn't if I were you... it seems to be very slow to load for me...

Can you not divert the output of Aperture to your own webspace? Creating the index.html and linked images on decdesigns.com.

Well... not very impressive... ... however...

Two options:

1. Make a redirect index page for your Dreamhost page.

or

2. Copy the directory for that page over to your Dreamhost account.

Yes you can. How would I go about uploading onto dreamhost? I am pathetic with the tech stuff remember.