# Website design and hosting?



## Cornhusker (Mar 20, 2003)

The company I work for wants a new website and a new host.
I need to come up with a few different ones to look at.
As usual, if you Google it, there's a million different places that can handle it, but I'd really like to get some recommendations from people who have websites or are involved in the design/hosting end.


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## Gary in ohio (May 11, 2002)

First thing you need to know is host a site and web site design are two very separate items. Find someone to host a web site for you then find someone who can build you a web site. Before you do either know your budget, what uptime do you need on the web site, How much downtime can you live with, do you need multi site for redundancy? How many hits to you anticipate? How much data will be sent. 


Find the correct people for the correct job.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Sounds like an opportunity for you to design the website yourself. There's a lot to know, but it's not rocket science. 

Web page authoring a valuable skill to have. You never know when you might need to have web authoring skills to start your own e-commerce business so you can support yourself. In the meantime, you'll be indispensable to your boss as someone who can make necessary changes to the company web site.


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## How Do I (Feb 11, 2008)

Most designers I have seen charge initially by the page and then a certain amount monthly for "upkeep", defined by demand of what would be involved. I'd follow Nevada's advice and maybe look at it as an opportunity. There are a slew of free templates to start out with and then customize to your liking. As far as hosting, we have only used one hosting company over the last 6 years and we're happy enough with them to have several websites hosted on their servers. Actually, once you get the hang of it, creating web pages takes hardly no time at all, especially if its template-based. If you do it right, you just paste in the text and pics, upload, and link and everything else is already in place. We still do mostly hand-coding, but its whatever works best for you or your company. PHP includes made our web-building life so much easier. Our hosting also includes Fantastico, which is basically one-click install of a portal site, blog and/or other needed scripts to run your site. It would still help to know minimal html even if your run a blog or portal site. If you decide its not for you, I wouldn't look at the same company for doing both the design and hosting. As Gary said, I'd find a reasonable host first and then find a designer. That way you take less chance of getting gouged on price. A web host for a small company shouldn't cost more than a few bucks a month. If Quantcast has HomesteadingToday.com even anywhere close by unique visitors, it shouldn't take more than a $5.00 hosting plan, just depending on what the bandwidth limits of your hosting company are. Even so, an extra Gig of bandwidth per month would only cost us an extra $1.00 per month if it were actually needed. We get over 100,000 uniques per month on one of our sites in peak period and we still don't even get close to half our bandwidth limit. One last thing as to the designing consideration...your best bet would be to dig through those designer's portfolios that you find through Google and find something that would fit your company's interests. Just remember that the best website designers aren't necessarily on the first few pages of Google.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

Hey Cornhusker, Lee from Maine Here.

Design: Before starting out on a project like this, you would want to write down what it is exactly that your boss wants your site to do, to look like, to target and many other thing.

Writing this all up in a plan puts all of the designers, you may have bid on this project, on the same field giving you a more accurate idea of what it would cost.

Hosting: Biggest thing with hosting is comparing apples to apples. Remember the cheapest plan is not always the best. It's what's running on the back end and technical support that makes all the difference in the world. Redundant Backups, extra features and the like are worth paying a few extra dollars for. Again, Make a list and compare everybody with the same requirements. Sometimes your $5.00 a month hosting will cost you 10 times that if they are not reliable or there is an extra cost for features you may need.

Lee


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## OntarioMan (Feb 11, 2007)

Yup - you really need to sit down and decide what it is you'd like the website to accomplish. For many companies, a glorified "yellow pages ad" is all that is really required. There are lots of folks out there who think that a website is some guarantee of success - lots of sales, lots of business, whatever - and it just isn't that easy.

Be extra careful of the ultra-cheap web hosts - because for many companies, that web host will be handling your email as well - and for many companies, email is actually more important than their website. Some folks are now using seperate web hosts and email hosts - with companies like mailstreet.com with a hosted Microsoft Exchange server.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

lharvey said:


> Sometimes your $5.00 a month hosting will cost you 10 times that if they are not reliable or there is an extra cost for features you may need.


You can get a lot for $5.00/month. Heck, I'll commit to hosting it for $5.00/month without even asking what his needs are.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

Nice plug Nevada..


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

lharvey said:


> Nice plug Nevada..


Oh yeah, lharvey & Ladycat are also web hosts. They'll treat you right.


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## Cornhusker (Mar 20, 2003)

I knew Lee hosted, I didn't know ladycat did.
Nevada, you host too?
What I'd like is someone who can help me with both.
I built our old website several years ago, but had no idea what I was doing. It worked ok, but it's wore out and dated now.
I really don't know what they are wanting in a website, I'm not sure they know what they want.
They want it better than what we have, better loooking, more interactive content, like applications/resumes, contact and more visibility.
Any of you guys design as well as host?


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## OntarioMan (Feb 11, 2007)

Well, to get you started - look at other websites. If, for example, yours is a tool business, look at other tool business websites. No sense re-inventing the wheel.

Lots of the "templates" currently available are industry specific, so you basically fill in the blanks and upload some of your own images, such as logos, location shots, etc. Nice thing about templates and "web based design software" is that you can easily create the site and perform updates, from anywhere. Many of these "template web based" design tools are free with your hosting package. 



Cornhusker said:


> I knew Lee hosted, I didn't know ladycat did.
> Nevada, you host too?
> What I'd like is someone who can help me with both.
> I built our old website several years ago, but had no idea what I was doing. It worked ok, but it's wore out and dated now.
> ...


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

OntarioMan said:


> Lots of the "templates" currently available are industry specific, so you basically fill in the blanks and upload some of your own images, such as logos, location shots, etc. Nice thing about templates and "web based design software" is that you can easily create the site and perform updates, from anywhere. Many of these "template web based" design tools are free with your hosting package.


Yes, templates are the only way to go. Let someone else do the basic design and layout, then customize the template to your liking. As an example, I did a web site for a local western folk singer recently.

The first thing I did was to look for a template. I didn't find anything free that was appropriate for his particular application, but I did find one for $2.95 that I liked. Here is the basic design I started with.

http://www.countrymanordesigns.com/lonesomecowboy.htm

Then I customized the template for his unique information.

http://desertbreezenv.com/

He is impressed with the dignified look of the site in general, and the template saved me a mountain of work. It was well worth the $2.95.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

I normally have the customers give me 5 site addresses that they like and why they like them.

Then I have them give me 5 site address they Don't like and why they don't like them.

I try to incorporate all the likes and stay away from the dislikes.

The first thing to do though is the look and feel, Your company must have a 'brand' or company colors, logo etc. That's called branding. Your site should keep with the branding.

There is a lot of work involved in really designing a website and keeping with the theme ( look and feel ) that the customer wants.

I totally agree with Gary. Have a budget in mind, target audience, applications you want to to and also a wish list of things you can build in at a later date by leaving the design as an open architecture.


Sample look and feel.. http://ski-race-coach.com/index.php
Good Luck.

Lee


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

lharvey said:


> The first thing to do though is the look and feel, Your company must have a 'brand' or company colors, logo etc. That's called branding. Your site should keep with the branding.
> 
> There is a lot of work involved in really designing a website and keeping with the theme ( look and feel ) that the customer wants.
> 
> I totally agree with Gary. Have a budget in mind, target audience, applications you want to to and also a wish list of things you can build in at a later date by leaving the design as an open architecture.


While I don't know what the point would be in shifting themes on various pages in the site, I think you're assuming a lot. There are informational corporate web sites that exist mainly for brand recognition, but that's not always the case. Some corporate web sites exist mainly to provide support to customers, while others provide a virtual store for product sales. I've even been to a few that seem to only act as a place to provide contact information for the various departments. It depends on what the purpose of the web site is, and what kind of company it is.

Corny must have some idea of why his boss wants a web site. There's no purpose in our speculating, and we certainly shouldn't be developing preconceived ideas.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

I guess I don't understand what you are saying Nevada.

Shifting themes?

I'm just giving 'Corny' another way to look at design.

Every customer has their own tastes. If they want canned pea greens and orange, they get canned pea green and orange.

If they want spinning raisin guys, they get spinning raisin guys.

I've built sites for the past 10 years. Some of the originals are still in use today. Do I like them? Not always, but the customers do and that is all that matters. My skills, as well as yours have evolved and your tastes in what you think looks good have too. What I thought looked good before looks dated now but some are still very tasteful and informative.

I have one customer that I built a site for about 4 years ago who went and had a complete redesign by another designer. It looks very nice but the customer doesn't like its functionality, or ease of navigation or the hassle of updating it. The original site cost them just over $1000.00 and the new one cost them over $6000.00 and they can't update it themselves.

Go figure.

I guess all I'm saying is if you want the viewing public thinking you are a nickel and dime outfit, build and nickel and dime website. To some customers, this may be their first and last impression.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

lharvey said:


> I guess I don't understand what you are saying Nevada.
> 
> Shifting themes?


I was only relying to what you said.

_The first thing to do though is the look and feel, Your company must have a 'brand' or company colors, logo etc. That's called branding. Your site should keep with the branding._

"Shifting themes" was intended to mean not staying with branding throughout the site. I suppose someone could deviate from branded company colors and logos, but why would they? Do you really see a lot if websites like that? I can't say I do.

I think you were warning Corny about something that's unlikely to occur. There's no reason to worry the poor guy into anemia over a web site.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

Ahhhhh gotcha.

No worries Corny.

:L


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