Need web designer

Ok, so I know what I want..have it all written up. Just need someone to quote me and do the work. Am going to have DreamHost host it and do not want to be the middleman having to explain how to get in to the site etc. Anyone have any persons of reference? Website needs to have videos and pictures. I also need to be able to add videos and pictures. Paypal buyers page link type shop. Email set up. Blog section for me to add details only on a regular basis easily. Anyone?

Edited by *original* on 02/23/08 09:59 AM (server time).

not 1 reply? serious? that really hurts.

From your previous post:

In reply to:

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I know what I want..have it all written up. Just need someone to quote me and do the work.

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You would likely have more luck if you were to post your detailed specification.

Often, vague descriptions such as "Website needs to have videos and pictures. I also need to be able to add videos and pictures." are discouraging for developers, as is is difficult to know how proficient *you* are with such things (prepping media for the web, integrating into your site, etc.)

In particular, the type of video(s) you want and how they are to be served, and how you are envisioning preparing the media for web distribution (conversion?), can be significant issues.

How is the finished site to be maintained? DO you want a CMS (Content Management System) to facilitate you maintaining it yourself, or is ongoing maintenance of the site required? Will training be necessary to facilitate the use of a CMS?

Is the expected traffic and contents of the site such that is can be reasonably expected to run well and remain serviceable on a shared host such as a standard DreamHost account, or is it likely to require a VPS or a dedicated server?

You also have not described what assets (media, graphics, text) you already have and what will need to be prepared by the developer.

The paypal linking and email setup are not a big issues, and the blog is easily enough setup (though there are design considerations there also - does it's design match the main site and, if so, will custom templating be required?).

There are many developers that hang out here, but it is often hard to entice one into responding to "RFPs" from truly anonymous sources, as professionally and responsibly prepared quotes can be time-consuming and there is no knowledge of the proposed budget for the project, or the proposer's ability and willingness to pay.

While this is true everywhere, to a greater or lesser degree, you may have better luck on some of the many "freelance" or "scriptlancer" sites, where developers are more used to to dealing with "anonymous" potential clients (though you *will* need to state a budget on most of them ).

--rlparker

I have to agree with rlparker. There are no details or anything to base a quote on. Please post the details and I may be interested in completing this for you. I am based in the UK and host all my sites with DH and use Joomla!, both versions 1.0 and 1.5. Version 1.5 has a lot of flexibility with the right template based on the short spec that you have written.
Send me a PM if you would like to talk more.

My wife has done sites and is currently working on a new Drupal "infrastructure". When I see someone needs web work I think "I should pass this along". Then I remember the last time I did that. The client knew exactly what he wanted because he prototyped his pages in MS Word. He insisted on sending all pages in Word HTML for her to edit and post. The amount of time consumed was astounding, explaining that the Word HTML contained more crap than content and it all needed to be filtered out so that pages would fit with the rest of the site. His idea of providing content (the meat of any site) was to copy/paste text or code from other web pages, with all markup included, and sending that as the source data from which we needed to extract the actual content and attempt to integrate it into the rest of the site. The amount of work to produce the site was way more than the small business with the small site was willing to pay for as we racked up the hours - and we only billed about one hour for every five becase we felt sorry for the guy who originally said "all I want is a couple web pages...".

This has happened to one degree or another a few times and we had a few options. 1) simply don't do websites anymore because the complexity has increased while everyone including grandma's cat now wants a "nice" website for next to nothing. 2) get the rules straight up front and if the client deviates, point out the rules, get their OK to put in the hours, and bill frequently to ensure the unpaid hours don't rack up. 3) put up whatever crap people send us and just tidy it up. You can get anything done fast, cheap, or good - pick two out of the three. 4) (The current option) don't give people fish but teach them how to fish - build a CMS environment where the user can provide their own content. Give them a basic structure that suits their needs and then let them mess it up if they want and pay for support if they want. Account for every minute of time, and again, bill frequently.

Sorry for going off on this cathartic tangent - it seems like it's just not worth it anymore to respond to requests like this - especially the vague ones as mentioned by others. It's probably better to ask the kid next door if he wants to make some money, or check with your local high school to see if they have kids who want to maintain a website for extra cash. Get samples of their work and mentor them in the process of doing business.

Ahem - I'm sure the opinions of others differ. :)