This is a competition for the homepage design for a web hosting company. It is for the design only as we can carry out the necessary coding. We only know how to use Fireworks CS3 - we're not designers - so would prefer a layered .png file for Fireworks although Fireworks can sometimes deal with .psd files. Payment will be via Paypal only. Ultimately there will be 6-7 different internal page designs needed so I would like to get an idea of how much addtional page designs would cost, and we would need a commitment to carry out the additional page designs within a short period of time. We'll also be looking for a copywriter to help with some of the content. The design has to be unique to us and copyright of the design is to be passed over to us after payment has been made. The designer will need to be self-reliant, being able to work with the concepts we ask for without needing to have their hand held at every stage. We are extremely busy so we won't always have the time to provide detailed specification about what we're looking for. Our instructions might be "create us a page where we can display the hosting plan and it needs to be along these lines....". We don't expect people to work for nothing, so we expect to pay for any additional work required to tweak and change initial designs based on our vague instructions. There is no logo to work with and no restrictions on colors so feel free to be creative. The hosting offers will all be Windows-based and will include shared hosting and virtual hosting with Hyper-V 2008R2 only. The other "service" offering will be "Add ons" (for want of a better word) where VPS customers can add services like centralized MySQL & SQL Server databases using our managed DB servers, Email services, DNS, FTP services, Control Panels etc etc. The add on services are every bit as important (and more profitable) than the actual VPS plans on offer so require equal prominence to the hosting plans The VPS plans themselves will vary from simple VPS plans where a single piece of hardware is split up into VPSs, to clustered systems (multiple servers) operating from clustered SANs for high-performance and high-availability. One feature will be our flexilbilty to provide space and performance on demand depending upon requirements. A customer could start off with a low-cost VPS, add more space, add more performance (move to servers with faster CPUs or disks) to having their sites operate over multiple VPSs for guaranteed 100% uptime. We will have a number of off-the-shelf plans for both shared hosting and VPSs, but the whole point of our system is the flexibility to cater for almost any requirement or specific need. In terms of design, the site must reflect an image that is professional and competent, but we don't want to seem unapproachable or like a big impersonal corporation. It needs to be user-friendly, selling complex concepts in a way that makes it simple for non-technical users but helps them to understand - and make decisions about - what is being offered. I want the site to be fantastic to look at and draw people into it. There is an existing web site but it isn't relevant to what we are doing here. We've spent the last few months putting the hardware and software into place and we're now getting near completion and time for release and we've had no luck with local designers. I want to site to be along Web 2.0 design lines in the respect that there's lots of white space, easy to follow menus, great colours, and excellent graphics that complement the text or offers we provide. If its any help, I'm quite happy for people to be "inspired" by this template at themeforrest - http://themeforest.net/theme_previews/36438-iconic-a-bold-new-professional-web-layout - where there are some elements of the page designs that I like. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, or need more information, please PM me (I'll probably share my reply on a post) or post here and I'll do my best.
abandoned or not! i will have an entry for this... furthermore, do you have a logo on this? or could you just give the name of the site would help a lot..