Hey all, new guy here. Anyway, here's the thing. I want to start a website and truthfully, I'm VERY ambitious about it so I want everything to be perfect. Therefore, of course, I need a very professional look so that premise leads us to my question. Should I pay someone to do it? Or are certain scripts sufficient, if of course they meet my criteria of what exactly is that I want. The irony is that I'm actually starting a web design course tomorrow so in a few months I hope I will be able to create something good myself but that's beside the point. Anyway, for a good profitable website, what's the best way to go, pay a designer or use a script? I want it to look professional but user friendly and fast at the same time. Best mix. What do you recommend?
what do you want the site to do? that is the first question - once you've answered that one - post again and I'll happily give you some pointers. Depending on the nature of your site, there are a lot of free themes and templates out there that look professional. There are also a lot of free scripts. If something you want is unavailable through these sources, then you will need to pay someone. It all depends on what you are looking for the site to do really.
#1 - Create a folder called "templates" on your desktop #2 - Think of an idea for your site . . . -k- now you got one ? #3 - Type in free website templates in to google . . . #4 - Upload ALL the ones you even think look cool to your "templates" folder cause you never know when they'll be gone #5 - Spend days surfing the internet for websites like www.HotScripts.com finding "open source" scripts you can mod #6 - Learn SEO ( too many steps to list. It's its own thread LOL ) #7 - Market your site those are pretty much the steps i wish i new when i was just starting off . . .
It all depends how complex you want your website. If you are just going to have a landing page with just some text maybe a few buttons, even a paypal buy it now integration you can do on your own. Learning the basics isn't very hard. You should look up Macromedia Dreamweaver. It will help you make your website as you don't really need knowledge in programming to get started with that. As for a professional look, take a look at websites that resemble what you want your website to look. And then, you can either pay someone to make something similar or just get a free template online, add some of your own changes and you would have a good looking template to start out with. Now, if you are gonna make a complex site with membership and complex programming then you should probably pay someone because it will take you a very long time to learn all the stuff and implement it to your website. Hope this helps, and good luck.
If you are serious about starting a project and have money to invest in it, I would recommend spending a few thousand on a top notch professionally designed site. When you pay good money for good web design, you're not just getting good web designers (if you hire the right ones) you're getting true graphics designers, artists. Then you can build on your skills through your web design course and use them to keep your site updated, to make additions, modifications or test out projects. From your post, it sounded like you wanted great attention to detail, and the highest standards of quality. If you want the best of the best, you basically have 2 options, pay for it, or learn it all for yourself. Learning it all for yourself, itsn't really possible, considering even us professionals still don't always know what we're doing. Design, and web development is about experiments and trial and error. The secret to being an innovative web designer, is accepting that you don't know everything, so try new things all the time. Just my 2 cents anyways, what I'd tell myself if I could send a message back to myself before I finished school.
I would say do it yourself, it's always a good challenge and a great learning technique. However, you can always pay someone else.
if you do pay someone to do it for you, do research before spending your money as there are tons of scammers in the world today. spend your money safely like escrow or something and not use paypal as paypal doesn't cover digital goods.