legit web designers?

[MooNiNite]

i'm looking for a legit website designer to make something like http://www.wwoof.net/

 

anyone have any like leads?

 

i might just try one of these web designer bid sites, but i wanted to try here, everyone aware of energy must be decently intelligent

 

thanks for the consideration

[dust]

Be careful of bid sites for web design.. I don't think they're useful in the long run. You probably want a nice design, help with marketing/analytics/SEO/social media etc, help with uploading/implementing code, and future help with updates/redesigns. I don't know if bid designers are useful on all these points. Perhaps, also, it's nice to know who you're dealing with (someone local).

 

Then again, sites like 99designs are praised for sending business to poor areas all over the world..

 

Just some thoughts.

[soaring crane]

Do You mean a simple informative page? Or something more complicated?

[BaguaKicksAss]

Or do what many webdesigners, very unfortunately, do these days: install wordpress and use one of their templates.

[Bearded Dragon]

Anyone can make a webpage from a template. Just give it a go. It's a good start anyway.

 

Building stuff from scratch is always going to be the most flexible with the most amount of control, but it's also expensive. Generally devs just go on to make their own template system anyway and in the long run it ends up the same thing as if you did it with wordpress to begin with. You get the dev for a while the they get busy and move on. Then you just have another template system.

[MooNiNite]

Or do what many webdesigners, very unfortunately, do these days: install wordpress and use one of their templates.

 

That wont work i think, but it is usually a good idea haha.

 

 

Anyways.

 

I'm making a website like WOOFing.

 

So its like a main page with a big map that connects people around the country to places on the map and they all make profiles, which can connect to one another and message. It's like a larger scale operation than what i have seen with most templates.

 

Be careful of bid sites for web design.. I don't think they're useful in the long run. You probably want a nice design, help with marketing/analytics/SEO/social media etc, help with uploading/implementing code, and future help with updates/redesigns. I don't know if bid designers are useful on all these points. Perhaps, also, it's nice to know who you're dealing with (someone local).

 

Then again, sites like 99designs are praised for sending business to poor areas all over the world..

 

Just some thoughts.

 

This is very true, thanks for the input

.

Edited November 4, 2014 by MooNiNite

[Spotless]

Or do what many webdesigners, very unfortunately, do these days: install wordpress and use one of their templates.

 

Do you find thier is a problem with Wordpress?

[soaring crane]

Do you find thier is a problem with Wordpress?

 

I tried it for our website and found it very clumsy. You can select to have it display and fuction as website but it's still blogging software at the core. Editing text was a disaster, always fighting with the formatting. I think you have to spend a LOT of time with WP to get good results. It can be done, though, here's the showcase of WP websites:

 

https://wordpress.org/showcase/

[Anoesjka]

I've been a webdesigner for 12 years. I've worked with a couple of CMS es, but WP is by far the easiest to install, adapt and maintain.

[soaring crane]

I've been a webdesigner for 12 years. I've worked with a couple of CMS es, but WP is by far the easiest to install, adapt and maintain.

 

what about creating a site like this:

 

https://amalafoundation.org/

 

I think you gotta be prett high up on the learning curve to do that. Or is there an easy way? I'd be willing to go back to WP if I could be show a relatively simple way to set it up so it can be edited simply, and look like a normal website (not a blog). It would be good for our club because then other people could update content.

 

One thing that left me cold with WP was the immense amount of information in the forums and all plugins available. There's just too much. When searching for an answer to a problem, or just a question of how to do this or that, it was very difficult to sift through all the possibilities and get the correct answer anywhere.

 

Kind of like Daoism, lol.

[BaguaKicksAss]

It's all about the plugins, templates and addons, to get fancy pages like that with wordpress.

 

Just don't change anything ever! lol Or you will get the whole this new thing you are trying to do is not compatible with your theme, or plugin, or addon. Well that or one of them has stopped updating.....

 

Oh and also don't add your own html, or shtml or php in there or things might break.

 

My wordpress rant. When I volunteer to do sites for non profits it's always wordpress. They stick with wordpress so someone who doesn't know html etc. can keep it updated.

[soaring crane]

well, would you be willing to a short summary of the main points necessary to make a really decent wesite with WP? Which plug-ins, for example? And maybe more importantly, which NOT? :-)

[Anoesjka]

Make your own template with css after you made the design first in Photoshop. You can do a lot with css (and updating is never a real problem).You can learn it here, together with other useful coding languages. And use web fonts, Google provides the fonts and the code here.

 

There's a plugin that can turn off the comments in WP (I forgot what it's called). Also you can use static pages instead of posts in WP, no plugin required for that. If you do that, it's just a regular CMS and no blog as such.

 

I used to work with Typo3, which was really complex, more the thing for big companies. It even uses it's own coding script. So for me WP was really, really simple.

[mYTHmAKER]

I built my site and mYHTISmAKERS site using Freeway- it's fairly easy to use.

You can email them with problems and they will help you.

There are templates or you can do your own design from scratch.

This gives you the leeway to change things as you go.

 

our sites:

http://starkarma9.com/index.html

http://barryfishman.com/

[MooNiNite]

It's all about the plugins, templates and addons, to get fancy pages like that with wordpress.

 

Just don't change anything ever! lol Or you will get the whole this new thing you are trying to do is not compatible with your theme, or plugin, or addon. Well that or one of them has stopped updating.....

 

Oh and also don't add your own html, or shtml or php in there or things might break.

 

My wordpress rant. When I volunteer to do sites for non profits it's always wordpress. They stick with wordpress so someone who doesn't know html etc. can keep it updated.

 

Hi Bagua,

 

Do you think it is possible to make a simplified version of WWOOF.net using Wordpress templates?

[Leif]

simplified version of WWOOF.net using Wordpress templates?

 

Template is only important once the project is technically working. Template = design. For non-standard type of website, last step in the process, only after you got the functionality in place.

 

If I understand it correctly, more than wwoof.net homepage you need this: https://wwoofusa.org/our-farms/ ie. the map.

Wwoofusa site btw. is based on wordpress.

Anyway first you need to solve the functionality - map, and social networking (at minimum signup/profile/messaging, if not something more - friendships, ratings, gamification, whatever....).

Once you know what exactly you are looking for in terms of (minimum) functionality, go and find whether Wordpress has plugins for that.

Install and test all the plugins, select what fits.

Only then find webdesigner, or test some of the freely available templates to see whether they suffice.

 

If the social networking (messaging) plugins will not suffice your needs, you'll need to find php programmer specialized in Wordpress.

If the Google maps plugins will not suffice, you'll need javascript+php programmer.

 

If all you need is couple static webpages and then the map and profiles with messaging, maybe you could also consider skipping wordpress altogether and just getting a custom javascript based solution.

 

Or look into Wordpress competitors, maybe Drupal, and you'll find couple others, if you have time, could be one of them has better plugins for what you are looking for. Wordpress has likely largest ecosystem, but Drupal on the other hand is more targetted at websites with more complex needs so it could as well theoretically might have more suitable plugins for certain tasks.

[MooNiNite]

Template is only important once the project is technically working. Template = design. For non-standard type of website, last step in the process, only after you got the functionality in place.

 

If I understand it correctly, more than wwoof.net homepage you need this: https://wwoofusa.org/our-farms/ ie. the map.

Wwoofusa site btw. is based on wordpress.

Anyway first you need to solve the functionality - map, and social networking (at minimum signup/profile/messaging, if not something more - friendships, ratings, gamification, whatever....).

Once you know what exactly you are looking for in terms of (minimum) functionality, go and find whether Wordpress has plugins for that.

Install and test all the plugins, select what fits.

Only then find webdesigner, or test some of the freely available templates to see whether they suffice.

 

If the social networking (messaging) plugins will not suffice your needs, you'll need to find php programmer specialized in Wordpress.

If the Google maps plugins will not suffice, you'll need javascript+php programmer.

 

If all you need is couple static webpages and then the map and profiles with messaging, maybe you could also consider skipping wordpress altogether and just getting a custom javascript based solution.

 

Or look into Wordpress competitors, maybe Drupal, and you'll find couple others, if you have time, could be one of them has better plugins for what you are looking for. Wordpress has likely largest ecosystem, but Drupal on the other hand is more targetted at websites with more complex needs so it could as well theoretically might have more suitable plugins for certain tasks.

 

Thanks for the great advice!