I have no training in website development. I have designed (in Photoshop) a Flash website for my business. It is based on the overall concept of a Vineyard website: trincheronapavalley.com. The Trinchero site has 10 “buttons†on the left (sorry if I get the lingo wrong). The first 5 buttons have about 30 “pages†which one can access. The site also has 4 key photos which rotate though and become highlighted when one hits the site and which one can also use to access 3 of the main sections and a separate video. The last 5 “buttons†I think are just one page each, with one of the buttons linking to sales section. My site will be arranged somewhat differently, but will also have 10 “buttonsâ€. The first 5 buttons will have 5 pages each. The last 5 will each be one page. My site is just informational and will have no sales section. So now I am at the stage of hiring someone to put this website there. Dang, this is hard for me! The website development field seems to be wide open and I suppose that can be a good thing, but the pricing is all over the place. There seems to be the techies who are working out of their home (and some seemed very competent) and there are some “storefront†developers who feel that their Flash expertise warrants heart surgeon/trial lawyer pricing. And if they can get it, more power to them, but I can’t afford it. And there are some sharks and those with pretended expertise who are oh so willing to exploit my ignorance. When I hire someone I usually like to get at least some idea of how many hours would be required for the work. Is that a fair question in the website development field, if one states exactly what is wanted and provides all the material? I do know exactly what I want for each page - size, width, font, placement, etc.. Can anyone give me a rough idea of how much time would be required to develop such a site as outlined above? Appreciate any comments. David
Is there any real reason you want to go with Flash? There are better ways to execute exactly what you want but in Javascript. The benefits of using Javascript and PHP/HTML is the website will look better to search engines, you will have greater control over the content, and it will not cost you nearly as much to make and maintain. To give you an example, we would charge you something like $1100 for a website like the one you mentioned, but it would include a CMS, so you can make changes to it however, whenever you want for free, and it would be ina language anyone could understand. Yes that is a completely fair question. Every developer should know what it is going to take to achieve what you want, and they should include the costing and hourly rate/total rate for achieving that. DO NOT go with someone who will not give you a full spec document outlining exactly what the website will cost/take. As for how much time it would take, in Flash, from start to finish, launched tested etc, the website you pointed to should be about 20 hours.
Thanks very much createdevelop. Well, I had just gotten the idea in talking with others that the Trinchero site was a Flash site and that if I wanted something like that then it had to be Flash. Just my ignorance. I don't care what software is used. I just like the look and the feel and movement and flow of the Trinchero site. I want to get away from "wow, look at how many buttons and icons and photos I can click on this page - and each one takes me to a NEW page with even more buttons and icons and photos!!!" I like how Trinchero has a simple "home" background with the buttons and address that doesn't change from section to section, the simplicity of each section, the way the site handles photos - how the photos slide across and one becomes "backlit" as appropriate to the text. I love the "storybook" style of the Winery page, where one clicks through short pages of text, and the old photo slides off and the new photo slides in and becomes backlit as one moves from one page to the next. Or in the Vineyard section where the "shadow" photo on the right slides left "under" the text and emerges as a backlit image on the left. So let me ask you this a particular way: Could two designers - one using Flash and one using Javascript - create identical Trinchero websites? Is that basically what you are saying? Or would there be some subtle differences - and how subtle? Certainly if I could do the site with Javascript and have the advantages you describe I would want to do that. Thanks again for the response. David
I would say you could get a website designed with AJAX (Javascript + XML) to look virtually identical to the one you have listed. Below are just two random examples of websites designed with AJAX. http://themeforest.net/item/lightbo...log/full_screen_preview/105008?=createdevelop http://themeforest.net/item/art-gal...ign/full_screen_preview/106643?=createdevelop I don't think you could claim they would look identical, but they would look pretty close to the same.
Well... Flash can be just awesome and expensive at the same time!!! Pros: very attractive and eye-catchy graphical and aesthetic quality. every event complemented by a transit behaviour, eg loading time of a page can be used as fillers for promotion!!! most importantly animation can be used more strikingly in comparison with other scripts... Cons: Loading time... your client might be waiting long for the page to load. the content in your page wont (well almost wont) be read by the search engines - ie dont expect your site to rank on google search pages for some specific phrase (keyword)... and also done expect traffic on your site coming in from any search engines! Alternates: as said earlier, use AJAX!! the effects can be attractive, not always a match up to a flash work. But all that you seek (as in trincheronapavalley) can be satisfactorily achieved using ajax and javascript. Plus, you open up the gateway for Search Engine Optimization, a very good option for future expansion. Time and money: Time varies from designer to designer... But the rates should almost be the same... for a standard quality of work... By a standard quality of work, I mean that you will have a proper file classification and organization (basically orderly maintained stuff) and you will have ftp etc configured... also some sort of wysiwyg support for you to edit and test your content online. And for exact pricing i would recommend you to visit the marketplace Also you can personally contact me, in case, you want a quote.
if you have very basic understading for web design do not start from flash - its to hard think about SEO as well - flash is not the best idea for SEO
Hello Flash is hard to optimize for search engine,the text content embedded in Flash inside an (X)HTML page with the correct “parent†URL as a single entity.Flash files can accrue PageRank independent of their own parent URLs. Thanks
Thanks to all. This is very helpful. Just so I understand one point regarding what can be accomplished with Ajax and javascript, let me point specifically to the “WINERY†section of trincheronapavalley.com: When you click on that there is a “photo bar†consisting of several photos. This bar of photos slides right when you open the WINERY section and makes room for a text image. The first image in the line of photos becomes backlit. As you click through the “pages†of text, the photo bar slides left and the next photo, which goes with the next page of text, becomes backlit. Trinchero uses this technique in several ways on their website. Bvraghav mentioned the “eye-catchy graphical and aesthetic quality†of Flash. I don’t mean to be a pain, but I’m really trying to understand the subtle differences. (Ravel’s Bolero could no doubt be played perfectly on a piano with a Midi drum track, but if you’re making out with your girlfriend/boyfriend, I really don’t think that’s what you want.) To be specific - could that particular effect in the WINERY section - photos actually moving/sliding left or right, and then one of them becoming backlit - be accomplished with Ajax? Or would it be more of a slideshow type of thing with the photos fading in and out in one location? Or something else? Thanks.
http://themeforest.net/item/photo-n...in-1/full_screen_preview/38530?=createdevelop As far as having a menu, some photos and text that is moveable, AJAX just as good a job and will create virtually an identical website. A competant web designer would be able to create the Trinchero website in AJAX. Above is an example of a jquery (AJAX) photo slider that does something similar to what you are looking at. FLASH really shines when it comes to animations, moving graphics and text etc. Flash is great for creating games, or controlling videos etc.
dont use flash for your business, if anything, make your top banner or logo in flash, keep the rest simple, look at google, they own the web for their simple but effective website
Hey friends.... Nice discussion on this topic.... But I want to tell u that flash content is now readable by search engine robots. This is possible with the help of SWFObject..... You can use some swf files in your website with this function.
A web site solely based on Flash should be avoided. I feel that a Flash based site is great if you are trying to win a web design competition but in the real world are not good. If the average user is like me, when they encounter things like a Flash splash page, they click the Skip Flash button. So why pay the big bucks to have that fancy stuff done when no one will see it? Flash based navigation? Never!
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