I'm not sure if this really belongs here, since it's kind of to do with gaming, but not really. I'm starting a business in South Australia repairing video game consoles and such. It's called "Raven Game Repairs". I actually need help setting up a website for it, although I have a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. I don't really know anyone down here, so I just wanted to know if any of you would be interested in helping me create a super cool page. I've got the basics of it down but there's a lot more that needs to be done. Currently I'm using WordPress but I feel like such a noob. www.ravengames.net So, I've bought hosting and a domain. Obviously that means whoever wants to take the cake is going to have access to it all. I really trust this community, and I think you're all very honest but I need to have a bit of a talk with whoever is interested before I go ahead and share the details with you, naturally. I'm happy to talk through forum PM or Skype, whichever is easier. My Skype name is falloutkidz. Another reason I've decided to turn to you guys, is because it would simply be different. We don't have any kind of history, it's just a new kind of team working on a website with no prior details. That seems a bit appealing to me for some reason. Anyway, reply if you're interested and we'll have a chat.
From what I've been told the average pay for a web designer is $60 per hour. I'm not sure how much you need or what you want exactly. I'd probably just charge as much as work as you need me to do. I could also do some business cards etc as well. So if you like, my contact details are on my blog. If you want to chat to me on Skype that can be done also.
I don't have $60.00 an hour to pay. Oh well, I guess I'll just keep looking for someone who wants to just help out and have fun. Sorry, I would, but I'm not rich. EDIT: I didn't see that you were talking about how much work needs to be done. Well, short answer is, a lot. I guess if you take into account the designs and CSS it adds up. I don't think I have the kind of money that you're looking for. I'd probably only pay about $50.00 for an absolutely stunning website when it came to something like this.
I wasn't looking at being paid $60 an hour.... Anyway I'm only talking about graphics, no coding what so ever. You won't get a stunning website for $50. It's just too much messing around and time put into it. If you want some kind of "stunning" site, get a template and fill it out with your own info (make sure it's a free to customize one). Which isn't hard to do. A lot still doesn't tell me what you need done. Is it a logo? Formatting?
I'm looking for a template, essentially. This thread was initially something I was making because I wanted to work WITH someone in making the template and completing the website together, not asking someone to do all the work for me. I want to make my own template, and just have a friend or two doing it with me. I guess a forum seemed appropriate, as a new way to get to know people, so I asked here if anyone wanted to help out just for fun and do it with me. That's why I started going on about how I wasn't dead set on paying people, because essentially I want it to be more of an "our" thing rather than just a commission for someone to do it all for me. Having said that, my intentions (in response to your question) were simply to get a nice template that fitted. My idea, ironically, was to have a plaid red background and a lacey kind of layout. I've been attempting to make it all myself in photoshop, but that hasn't been going too well as Dreamweaver doesn't seem to be letting me align it the way that I want it to. Once I got that I was going to build on it to make it more interesting with different kinds of patterns and fabrics in the background. Here's an image of what I've been "attempting".
For a decent business website to be designed, the absolute minimum you should be looking at is £300.... and that's not with eCommerce. I'd guess that's about $500 in Australia. eCommerce, you're probably looking into the thousands as it's a LOT to do. Sorry, but if you're doing this as a business, you have to look at your website as a marketing tool and spend out accordingly. If you can't afford it, write up a business plan and go to the bank. It's easy, really - "I charge $x flat rate for repairs. I can do y repairs a day. I need $2,000 for marketing, tools etc." (and to be honest, that's probably not enough. If you're doing console repairs, you're going to need to have a decent soldering iron, maybe a hot air station, perhaps even an IRDA station, a nice set of screwdrivers, a good stock of common parts - lasers aren't cheap!) And keep it simple to start with. All you need is a website that says "I DO REPAIRS - $50". No, you don't NEED anything more complex than that to start off with. Your starter website has to say I'm here, I do repairs, here are my qualifications, here's my price list. If you want to start cheap, then download a CMS - Drupal, Wordpress etc. Get a free theme that looks OK... or go somewhere like Themeforest and pay for a nice theme. They're usually around $30-50 US. I assume your hosting has a MySQL database with it, otherwise it's pretty useless. As I said, look at your website as a marketing tool - and marketing is everything. Get some business cards made up, get some flyers printed. Go door to door posting them through people's letterboxes. Take out an ad in the local paper. Put a listing in the Yellow Pages. Find directories online that will list you cheaply. To be honest with you, the website is the least important factor to start off with. Get your name out there, get some jobs coming in, get your reputation up.
To be honest, if you were to do your website like your screenshot - I would recommend not using as bright a red or a more neutral colour palette that you could pick particular colours that stand out against the key colours of your website and also use their polar opposite and/or inverted opposite colour to try and make certain things "pop" out a bit more because going with a solid white, solid red and solid black is honestly going to cause some screen glare and I'd have to recommend using off-white, less intensive red and so-on if you are intending to continue with that template. However, if you were to blend the lace part of the layout with the backing fabric pattern with say stitches around the outside of the lace - unless you're going to make the website look more vintage and/or retro (which in turn would also need some slightly sepia colour tinting or some other certain colours layered onto the images, depending on the colours used for the rest of the layout being a key factor) as it could confuse possible customers until a reputation is built up and that it's essentially "confirmed" as your repair website. Though, looking at your current temp layout on your website - you should also want to pick a font that is completely readable, yes that font does look nice but unless either the spacing per letter is changed, or it's changed from bold to standard (or there was an outline, gradient or other effects added to it to make the text a bit more readable instead of being a more solid gradient), it's a tad difficult to read the entire title without having to actually re-read it which is a bad thing for a business. Though given that you've been able to get a layout completed to that extent within Dreamweaver, you should be able to complete it easily enough once you decide and get all of your colour swatches together to see how they look together for you to choose your final colour palette, textures and/or patterns for your website in how you feel it will best represent your business. Using Dreamweaver, it shouldn't take too long. I recently made a site dedicated to a survival horror series (I would upload an example image, but my internet connection is being really unstable at the moment) and the layout was overall inspired by the general environment feel of the games and I sampled my colour palette from a few particular images to get a general colour set for it. So, if you're mainly specializing in a particular console type then perhaps you could take some inspiration from that console itself or even particular titles you enjoy and could even recommend via your website (like, "Once I've fixed your Xbox 360 - you can get back to playing [game]!) or even set up a randomized banner to feature a couple of extra things. But I wouldn't go overboard if going down that path as an alternative to your design, because a lot of general electronics repair websites are ridiculous in the amount of crap they've crammed around the sides of the page or how many colours they've shoved onto it. Of course, that is purely my opinion in terms of site design. >_<;
