Web Developer

Steve

Steve

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Staff member
How do you go about finding a good one? How do I go about finding one in general?

Is it the type of thing you should use locally, like find one in the yellow pages? That way you are able to meet with the developer face to face.

Or would you find a better one via the web?

Better to go with a large company or a small time company?

General costs?

Any other comments on information?

I am very ignorant when it comes to this. Is it something we could do on our own even? I want it done right, so I'd think not.
 
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Small company you'll probably get more individual service... and won't nickle and dime like a larger company would.

You might try advertising on Craig's List for a web developer - or I'm sure there's a central site where you can find webdevelopers that advertise their services.

Most tend to charge an hourly rate, or just ask them to bid on the job... having a fairly clear idea of what you want. (Please dear god, limit the flash stuff -flash is so myspace junior high and way too annoying)

Check other sites in your market and see what they're doing and you can usually email the web developer of that site for some more ideas.
 
If you google on "Find a web developer" it returns a bunch of hits for web developer resource sites - some i'm sure are better than others..

Flash - Macromedia's product that adds flashy stuff to web pages - and is incredibly annoying - think a 15 year old's my space page... They tend to be really artsy stuff and just bug the ever loving crap out of people...

is one example
 
Oh yea, none of that LOL. It will be far from flashy. Straight to the point but hopefully easy on the eyes too.
 
Here's a few more general questions I have on the subject in no random order:

1. Should I expect the developer to also be the designer. Someone said to me that the developer creates the backbone and the designer creates the graphics and whatnot. I thought I'd be sitting down with someone and they create my freaking website.... not sitting down with a team of people to do it!

2. Suppose the website is up and running beautifully. How do I make changes to it? We have a lot of ideas. Certain sections of the website would probably be updated changed weekly, if not daily. I don't want to have to pay some guy to do that for me. Actually, it's not a matter paying him. It's a matter of I like writing on the fly. If I want to write a new article for the site, I want to be able to simply log into the administrator access to my site and create a new article. Is this wishful thinking?

3. Someone also asked me if I'm going to hire an administrator? Won't I be the admin? Or is that a technically involved position?

Wow, I feel like I'm getting myself into something I shouldn't be here.

I understand that I should simply sit down with a professional and ask these questions.... I'm just trying to educate myself a bit more. I hate being the incompetent/ignorant one in a discussion.
 
just a random thought popped into my head... your alma mater has a school of media communications and technology as an undergraduate program it looks like... if you are friendly with anyone in a career services type of program (whatever it's called there0 you might be able to get a junior or senior to do the work looking to add to thier portfolio...
 
maleficent said:
just a random thought popped into my head... your alma mater has a school of media communications and technology as an undergraduate program it looks like... if you are friendly with anyone in a career services type of program (whatever it's called there0 you might be able to get a junior or senior to do the work looking to add to thier portfolio...
Click to expand...

Oh really. That's a very interesting/clever idea Mal. I'll certainly look into that as well!
 
Steve said:
\1. Should I expect the developer to also be the designer. Someone said to me that the developer creates the backbone and the designer creates the graphics and whatnot. I thought I'd be sitting down with someone and they create my freaking website.... not sitting down with a team of people to do it!
Click to expand...

depends on the scope of the project, i don't think you're going to be ginormous at the get go, so i would expect the web developer to be the designer... you will be acting as the web designer to some degree by telling the developer your vision - it's up to them to make it happen..

Steve said:
2. Suppose the website is up and running beautifully. How do I make changes to it? We have a lot of ideas. Certain sections of the website would probably be updated changed weekly, if not daily. I don't want to have to pay some guy to do that for me. Actually, it's not a matter paying him. It's a matter of I like writing on the fly. If I want to write a new article for the site, I want to be able to simply log into the administrator access to my site and create a new article. Is this wishful thinking?
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Dreamweaver is a design package that has a little bit of a learning curve to use at first, but if web monkeys can use it - then surely you can - you are pretty smart... it doesn't require a lot of technical savvy.. especially onc the site is done.

you'd want to have the ability to add articles to your site thru some sort of feed - that you can do from email, or a crackberry or youor computer and just be able to upload it - without a lot of fuss -that can be done pretty easily - and all you really do is upload the article and it fits into the space...

Steve said:
3. Someone also asked me if I'm going to hire an administrator? Won't I be the admin? Or is that a technically involved position?
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the admin takes the day to day stuff off your shoulders, like how do you want to deal with membership stuff - do you want to do that yourself or is an admin going to do that - it's really not all that involved it's how much of yur time you want to devote to it.

Steve said:
Wow, I feel like I'm getting myself into something I shouldn't be here.
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Not even.... your site is going to be awesome and i'm looking forward to seeing it...


Steve said:
I understand that I should simply sit down with a professional and ask these questions.... I'm just trying to educate myself a bit more. I hate being the incompetent/ignorant one in a discussion.
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these are definitely questions to ask of the person you'll be working with - and if they treat you like you are ignorant or incompetant say thanks very much and drop a 25lb dumbbell on thier head because that's not how a customer should be treated... a web developer is hired because you don't know how to, and on't have the time to do the work yourself - doesn't mean you can't learn but your time is best spent on content - not on how it looks... these are all good questions and things to consider when putting together your list of site requirements.. .one fo them clearly being the ability to add content on the fly.
 
Thanks Mal!!!! You rock! :jump:

I've heard of dreamweaver.

So that program would come into play after the developer creates the site?
 
for my company, i'm listed as the admin on the site and while i didn't design the site, i will occassionally go in and tweak pages, maybe add in some new content, if people change i will add or subtract those people fromt he contacts page... all i do is edit the pages in dreamweaver and reupload them...

So if that's the role you'd be taking - dreamweaver seems to be the tool of choice -- there are others out there too, some better than others - some that really suck...
 
maleficent said:
for my company, i'm listed as the admin on the site and while i didn't design the site, i will occassionally go in and tweak pages, maybe add in some new content, if people change i will add or subtract those people fromt he contacts page... all i do is edit the pages in dreamweaver and reupload them...

So if that's the role you'd be taking - dreamweaver seems to be the tool of choice -- there are others out there too, some better than others - some that really suck...
Click to expand...

Okay, very good to know. I'm generating a list of questions and concerns to take to our meeting, once it's set up.

I appreciate all your help Mal.

If anyone else has anything else to add, I'm all ears.
 
because you can find anything on the internet...



gives a list of questions when interviewing a potential web developer
 
mal answered most of those on the button

one other thing to add to the UPDATING...

you can ask your designer to create your site with either XML content which stores the content in one FILE and you can update it on the fly, or have them create a developer aspect to the site with PHP where you can log in and manually adjust all the content.. the cost will raise with either of these..

A couple q's

whats your budget?
What are you looking to have done?
How many pages?

with that info I can tell you if the price is fair or not
 
JeremyRice said:
mal answered most of those on the button

one other thing to add to the UPDATING...

you can ask your designer to create your site with either XML content which stores the content in one FILE and you can update it on the fly, or have them create a developer aspect to the site with PHP where you can log in and manually adjust all the content.. the cost will raise with either of these..
Click to expand...

Thanks very much.

A couple q's

whats your budget?
Click to expand...

It hasn't really been discussed. I'm not looking to cut corners though. I did a search for online trainers and the vast majority of sites were VERY subpar relative to my vision.

Certainly my funds are no limited, especially seeing as how I just through a huge wedding and spent 2 weeks in Hawaii. But again, I won't do it if I can't do it right.

I've never had anything like this done so I completely ignorant on the subject. But I'm sure it will be in the thousands of dollars, no?

What are you looking to have done?
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Right now all we have is a lot of ideas. And that's about it. We know what we want in a site, but the outlay of it has not been decided yet.

This is very premature... however, we are both very motivated people and as soon as we start meeting I'm sure the content will be decided relatively quickly.

How many pages?
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Haha, a bunch.

I don't know.

10 maybe, but I'm guessing.

We've thought of a bunch of sections we'd like to have... which I really don't want to state here in public for obvious reasons.

with that info I can tell you if the price is fair or not
Click to expand...

I'll be able to give you more concrete answers soon, hopefully.

And I certainly appreciate your willingness to look at the price quotes I obtain.
 
We've thought of a bunch of sections we'd like to have... which I really don't want to state here in public for obvious reasons.
Click to expand...

one of the suggestions I'm not sure I made or not... check out other sites in your market and even really just other websites and find layouts or functionality that you like - you think is cool and maybe would want to have - and especially stuff you hate... communicating with some tech people (like me) it's a lot easier to use visuals than trying to explain what you are after...
 
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