It's been a while since I've visited let alone posted in these forums. I'm curious who the directory designers on this forum are now? I'm asking as last time I checked it was mid 2007 and I"m sure much has changed. Looking for a cleanup change of face while staying true to current theme.
depends on how much you want to spend but Marko -balkanboy Serg - aspidov Zeb plus there is a list here http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/articlescript/phpLD_Template_Designer_List.php
I know that Marko -balkanboy charges $600 for psd and coding others it depends if you have a psd or what also you might want to check out this thread http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=898938
Aspidov has a great full time web design job now and I don't think he does freelance work any more. Zeb charges $800 for PSD and coding which is the most expensive of the lot. Hive charges around $600 I think - he did the wonderful directoryisland.com. Then theres Sharats team. He has a great designer who did my night-directory.com. Theres a few other guys that have done smaller jobs and often sell templates in the DP templates forum, but I don't know thier names as they don't post much around here.
Coolweb (Asim) also doing this work (directory design). Don't know how much he charge for that. And BTW mike you also doing this job as far as i know, is that true ?? DON.
If I remember about a year ago the going rate was $300 so moving to $600 in one year seems a bit excessive to me. It looks like now the work is being split into two parts - one of design and one of coding. Then double the prices accordingly. Pretty certain you can get it done for less. Go to the template section and get a template done for $100 and then hire a coder to code it for another $100 and your done. More of a pain that way, but at least your not paying $600 for what you can get for a fraction of that cost. If it is a phpld script you can probably go to their forum and get a much better price from them also. Though I have not done that for about a year so you would need to check into it.
Bruce, $600 is the price for a decent design. Just check Marko's portfolio, its incredible. Thats pretty much the recipe for a total crap design IMO. Paying $100 for a design won't get you very far. As for prices changing in the last year, I don't think they have. There is only aspidov who has changed his price for PSD creation.
I know where your coming from Mike, the only point I was trying to make is that I would look around long and hard prior to paying $600 for a design. Dubz has a point and there are alternatives to paying that much if one wants to explore them. I know Balkanboy said in a thread about a week or so ago that he whipped up a new design in an hour. Which you can see here and here No wonder there was this thread a while back.
To me that was a case of not wanting to pay someone professional to design a template, either that or someone wanting to be spoon fed rather than going out and learning like the rest of us.
I see comments on my services and prices here and I feel I should explain few things. First, price for creating full PHPLD template(design and coding) was $500 2 years ago. I raised price for $100 because dollar value went down very much. Not sure if this is noticed in US, but I am sure it is everywhere else. 1$ was 70 RSD 1 year ago and not it is 50 only. Basically, I am working cheaper now than before even I have much more experience and skills now than back than. Bruce, first thanks for flagging me as QBC member. That 1 hour work was made when I was inspired and in the mood to make something which is not the situation all the time. It was not ordered and it was made just as the version of already existing design. Creating something that should be established as a brand and creating it from scratch required much more time, mostly spent on brainstorming. Speaking of brainstorming... I know you paid $300 for your template which is what Asim(Coolweb) charges. When you get a obviously stolen ideas from Aviva and Alive to get Authority Directory $150 for design is a steal. I would do such a thing in 2 hours max. Coding is also not as good as it should be. HTML is not valid and even css is not too. You also said that you spend $200-$300 on advertising in few days in some tread. I don't see how $600 sounds that expensive to you considering it is one time, long term investment. I wanted to refrain from comments on this before, but accusing me I am charging too much after hiring someone to rip of my and Zeb's ideas is really too much.
JoJo who does phpLynx templates charges about $300. Not sure if she does any for other scripts you can always ask.
Balkanboy - You can claim any site design has some similarity to another in some way or another. Font's, color, gradient shading, boxes, two column, three column. There is something that you can say looks similar in any of them. I can say that AD has similarities to Zorg after all they both have two columns right, oh and lobolinks that one is so similar to AD too right as it also has two columns and even uses gradient color schemes. With the html and css valid thing. Go check google's page and see how much they care about css and html valid. The nanosecond it may or may not save in a load time can't even be noticed by humans. Lastly I never said that you were charging too much I think you did that when you said in that lobolinks thread you did the design you posted there in an hour. Trying to show up the new design they have at lobolinks. Up till that point I actually thought it took longer and may have been justified.
CSS / XHTML validation is not that really really big of a deal for SEO. I can back that up with cold hard facts, but it should be obvious why. If your going to weight validation for SEO, then lean more towards HTML/XHTML for sure. However, where they both play a big role is on the human side. Validation of both is important to help guarantee multi-browser functionality, including older versions and such. If your going to get kinky about validating a site, CSE HTML Validator is the prog to have. What an awesome application. I am not sure you can lump in AD with Aviva. I mean they both use decorative flowers lmao. Besides, you take any website and you will be able to find similar characteristics from others. Creating something new these days consist of taking one thing from a handful of websites and lumping them together. You can break that down all the way to a stylesheet reference. You think your the first to try something out of 8 gazillon internet users? LMAO. Such, a dumb topic. Digital Point - The more you read, the dumber you feel.