General Info About Website Design

[Steve85]

We have an idea for a website. It's not e-tail or something that is supposed to be groundbreaking in nature. We want a site that can pull in related news events, provide links to resources and have some ad space. The only more complex idea would be to have a couple language options. That's where we'll start and let it evolve from there.

I have two experiences with this related to a website for my wife's side business. We won development services at a charity auction and the person sucked, she wasn't a professional so we couldn't really hold her feet to the fire. So, Aaron did a different, and much nicer one, but when he handed over the access and suggested the program (I think Adobe something) to allow us to edit we just couldn't get it to work (update pictures, prices and product offerings). The site looks good, and is a huge improvement over what was before but trying to work it sucked.

Can you guys suggest where to start to learn how do the type of site we want to do? An online template or something maybe? I could certainly Google and I'm sure get 1000 different options, so I'm looking for some guidance really. Should I just get Website Design for Dummies?

What is the going rate to have someone do it? We aren't expecting huge sums of money so we would have to see if this is worth it. My experience tells me I need someone I'm paying so I can hold thier feet to the fire.

[HAULN-SS]

at my company we try to stay away from a lot of open source/free shit you find on the internet, for the precise reason you can't hold anyone responsible. I suggest you get a WYSIWYG editor and go to town, it's pretty simple.

[G.Irish]

Try one of the open source content management systems and get a book to go along with it. Total investment: around $40.

Depending on your needs you could use something more lightweight like WordPress or Movable Type or you could go to a full-on Content Management System like Joomla, Drupal, or DotNetNuke. All of these systems have themes you can download to get a look somewhat close to what you want, and you can customize from there. In order of ease of use I would say WordPress, Movable Type, Joomla, Drupal, and DNN. There are some others two but these are the ones that come off the top of my head.

Honestly I don't think you'd need to pay someone to set things up at first. When you want to start customizing you might need some expertise but that depends on how much you want to get done. I'd recommend putting together a list of requirements and prioritizing so you can determine what your needs are with more precision. And once you draft some requirements it'll be easier to figure out what level of help you should hire (and how much you should pay).

[Evan]

You should first identify exactly what you want out of your website. Do you have relatively static content that will only be updated occasionally? Do you have dynamic content that would be best served from a backend database? Do you want a storefront with e-commerce?
Sketch out a rough 'wireframe' of every page on your site , its content, and how they hook together. This will help you identify what you need. It sounds to me like you need something dynamic (like a CMS) at the very least or even e-commerce if this is a business selling products.
From there you need to look at how you will host the website. Your hosting plays a big part in how you can implement the website. If you have a static website any cheap hosting will do. If you want some backend capability, all of the cheaper website hosting runs php as your only real option for backend languages. php has many CMS frameworks and ecommerce applications you can take advantage of. A decent php hosting plan will be under $20/ month. If you would like to run a java or .net backend which are more powerful , but hosting is more expensive and there may not be as many open source frameworks to use. Usually this hosting is $40 or so.

after you get your hosting, if youre willing to learn and do this stuff yourself then do what gerald said and get a book and stat reading tutorials on the web. Plan to spend a lot of time learning this stuff! Its actually really fun to learn and build things once you get past the first wave of being overwhelmed. If it turns out you hate it then its time to look at paying someone to do it. Plan to pay at least $75 - $100 / hr for a good developer.

most frameworks have lots of good looking themes that you can utilize so you wont have to do your own graphic design or layout. Just put your logo and text at the top and go.

[Steve85]

I was checking out WordPress, it seems to be really blog focused, I don't know if that matters. MovableType looks good.

But it looks like I really need to start at the beginning and start sketching out some pages and really start laying out the content. I have wanted to learn so I guess I need to start learning about the various capabilities as well so I can make the right choices. Some content will be static but we want to pull in related news releases, allow some content submission from users (like recipes, stories, events, etc.).

To store that type of user content and allow searches for it, is that part of the hosting or is that a seperate database that would need to be developed, maintained,...paid for?

This site won't be e-commerce, at least that is not the intent to begin with, but it would be nice to finally learn to use my wife's site if she starts up the business again.

[Apoc]

I was checking out WordPress, it seems to be really blog focused, I don't know if that matters.

FWIW, this is a Wordpress/PHP back end. It doesn't look anything like a blog.

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[Jake]

Steve -

I think some sort of CMS would be beneficial. The biggest benefit IMO is being able to update the site wherever you are. No special editing software is necessary, just a modern web browser. The current CMS's are pretty versatile. This new MM site runs on WordPress, which I chose because it's simple to use but fairly powerful.

Most systems will have some form of plug-in system to expand the functionality. Here on MM, the Calendar page is run by a plug-in. All I had to do was make a page called "Calendar" and insert a certain line of code, within the Wordpress back-end. Easy easy.

Would you want multiple users contributing or editing the site? Just a question to figure out which CMS could be the best choice. Another popular choice (but more complex) is called Joomla. Not sure if your site is robust enough to require that.

One of my good friends is a web designer and SMAD major at JMU. I can put you in touch with him if you'd like - he's got a site and portfolio you could check out, plus he can offer hosting if you don't have it already. Just let me know and I'll PM.

[stevegula]

If you want to program it yourself, start with a framework that has a database middle man and supports internationalization. For PHP programming I'd recommend Kohana.

Otherwise it just sounds like you want to use something like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla/Mambo.

If you end up using any PHP software or do your own PHP coding, I can answer most of the questions you'll probably have.