What is the best solution to build a website (fast) for a company?

You should probably buy the domain name, and build it correctly, since the site name will need to appear on various business communications. Having a business site built on a blogging site looks less credible. How many pages deep do you need to go? One or two?

Thanks for the repsond. The domain name is in progress, I will get a free webspace I guess for that, and I will forward the domain to that. I want to go down 1–2 pages deep maximum, yes you are right :))

The best solution? Pay a web designer.

PLEASE! Read the details for the question!

I did. You want it to look good, you can’t find any good, free templates, you want it built fast but you’re new to web design. If you can take your time on it, for sure, try to learn it all and do it yourself. Otherwise, a professional is going to be the best option, in my opinion, at least.

But, please I mentioned : I want to do it by myself, and I’m not going to pay for it. If I wouldn’t wrote the details under the question I would understand your answer, but in this case, your answers just keep goin on the bad way.

tilc: I just re-read the details and you never said that.

Maybe use something like Joomla ? Haven’t used it myself, but have heard many good things (easy to use, lots of themes).

You’re asking a question that’s impossible to answer in the way you want it to be answered. Pretty much you want a great website, but you are a newbie with little skills, and you don’t want to pay any money. This is unreasonable. Here’s why.

When it comes to making websites, you have a few options, depending on what resources you have of the following: time, money, skills.

1. Make it yourself 100%. This requires tons of coding knowledge, knowledge on how to host a website, skills in visual design, a graphic editing program and an HTML editing program, and of course lots of time. This also produces the best result possible, anything you can imagine you can create. I do this. It’s called being a professional web designer. You go to school for this, you practice a ton. It requires all three skills. You can’t learn it by reading one book quickly. This option is not for you.

2. Use a blog template. This means you don’t need to actually code, and you can add your content through a visual interface so it’s a bit easier for newbies to do. You still need some skills, to buy the web hosting and domain, and install the blog engine. You can buy hosting that will set it up for you with one button click, but this costs money. You could try using a free host, I mention one later on in this post, this means at least you don’t have to pay a monthly hosting fee. As well, you’re limited to the blog templates that you can find for free online, which seems to be where you’re stuck now. Now, you CAN pay a web designer to make you a custom blog design! It’s the best of two worlds for you! But… since you don’t want to spend money, this is not an option for you.

3. Try to do it yourself by looking for online tutorials and reading a stack of books, and use free web hosting. This requires a lot of time and dedication, cause you’ll basically be stabbing in the dark the entire time, trying code and seeing what happens. Your site will look awful since you haven’t practiced and developed your skills over years. That is, if it even looks the same in different browsers, which it will not. No offense meant, but I get the feeling you don’t know how hard true HTML web design really is. It’s not easy, otherwise the entire internet would look damn beautiful. Now the one thing about this, is it requires only time, no money or skills. Since you’ve said you want it built fast, well, that means even this one free option is NOT for you.

You get what you pay for with web design. It’s very important to have a decent looking webpage especially when it’s for your dad’s business, it will be the first thing people on the web see about the company and will make a big impression. People nowadays, and more in the future, want a pretty, easy-to-use website with the information laid out clean and nice. Putting it another way, having an awful website will actively discourage people from shopping at your store or taking you seriously. Making nice websites takes time, skills, and money. It’s simply a matter of resources.

Now, for an actual solution for you. I think the best thing you can do is find a web designer that will set up a blog and design a custom template for you. That way you pay him a set cost up front, depending on your needs (features, # of pages, how complex the blog design is, how many times you request changes, etc) between $300—$1000 should be appropriate (it may seem like a lot, but realize web designers need to pay bills as well as their own health insurance a lot of the time. These prices only amount to 10–30 hours of work. Designing a blog design from the grounds up, PLUS your revisions and changes you’ll want, then making that into HTML, then making THAT into a template, finally installing the blog, and making sure you know how to use it, would definitely take at least 20 hours, maybe even more than 30 if you were nitpicky). You will need to pay a monthly hosting fee if you purchase your hosting, however I did find this site Heliohost who apparently offer free hosting, and that’s the perfect setup for a Wordpress installation. This way, you pay one time and don’t pay at all to keep it online (unless you need some bigger changes, then you and the designer come to another agreement or work hourly), you can edit it without knowing all the HTML skills, and your site looks great and your business gains a valuable web presence.

If you really REALLY will NOT spend any money, then you just have to suck it up and make do with free templates you find online. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Do you want to do it yourself because you don’t want to pay for it, or because you want to do it yourself?

If it’s the former, hit me up. I’m looking for stuff to do just to fill my portfolio.

@tilc, coming at it from 20+ years in the world of ad agency and marketing work, there’s a tried-and-true saying: “Fast, cheap, good. Pick two.” That’s the above posters are trying to tell you—for a commercial business site, if you pick fast, then your other choice is either cheap or good. If you pick cheap, then it’s not going to be professional looking. If you want it professional looking, then you either have to pay if you don’t know what you’re doing, or compromise on fast, to take the time to do it well.

I’m mystified as to why it has to be fast? What’s the deadline? Why the deadline?

@AlfredaPrufrock Wow I love that saying now!

It seems to me that your question is more than answerable and that it is being looked at rather disjointed. (maybe a language / symantics thing?)

You want to build it yourself and learn along the way. The above people introduced money into it (damien) , not you. But if you don’t want to spend money then don’t Your still asking for the best way. There can still be a best way. Matter of opinion.

You couldn’t find any templets you liked. There are tons of them out there (I am gathering sources for you by the way). They may say “they will look like crap I am a professional”. Well I know professionals who’s work looks like crap. Matter of opinion. But there are also all different styles of sites and perhaps what your looking for isn’t the next stand the web world on its ear web wonder.

While dynamicduo brought up some awesome points I have known to many professional web designers to know how they themselves use low end, simple 1 and 2 page level templates they created to take care of the quickie jobs and charge a big price built off of the high end education he mentioned. It is hard to really believe that you can’t use a book or take a beginner’s class and come away with a nice looking site. I have known to many who do it. (Again I will find the sources for you. I just got out of the hospital yesterday after a week and a half for treatment on some head issues so I am a little slow)

I guess what I am saying is in the end it depends on who you ask and the person.

uh oh, Im in trouble.

Hee hee, no trouble at all, it’s all love and logic from Canada here and we sure do love other opinions. And also, I’m a girl, very proud to be a great one in my field :)

Oh, there sure are ways to build sites if you intend to give it time and dedication. I gave a thorough answer to that question, although a bit more advanced, in this thread here. And if the person would like to ask more question about learning how to make sites I will surely help as that’s my nature. However I was a bit put off by this comment of his: PLEASE! Read the details for the question! as well as his follow up comment. I’m also a believer in answering the summarized one-line question, and I felt the “cheap-fast-great: pick two” idea which I love so much needed to be elaborated on.

Sadly it’s too common for professional web designers to be treated as if their product is not worthy of the amount of money we may ask for (and a good note here is that there is no real talent to money ratio, you can easily find a new designer who makes great work who’s willing to work for the experience or for a hundred dollars, you can also get burned by having a newbie designer be a huge flake). I’ve heard this from prospective clients: “well I don’t have money, but it’ll be great experience and exposure for you!” To which I simply get up and walk away… once I called a pushy chef out by pointing out to him that I wouldn’t ask him to cater a huge dinner, pay for the food cost, and clean up, hours of work and slaving away just so that my friends would become aware of him and possibly use him in the future. Well, there’s a bit of truth to this, I can see a chef promoting himself maybe like this, but a website is not a consumable product that exists in finite quantities, and not everyone needs to have a website like people need catered parties.

If the post author is willing to give it time, and there’s no real reason why they can’t as AlfredaPrufrock mentions, I give good info and links in the thread linked above. There are a lot of in-betweens of the options I listed out, such as paying a designer to design the template, but you set Wordpress up and install the template (pretty easy and you’re now only paying for design, $300—$500 will get you a great design). You can also find a template you like and modify its HTML and images to become more as you want it, although some templates are licensed such to either not allow this, or you need to share your final template too. One thing’s for sure, designing pages nowadays is MUCH better than it was 10 years ago when HTML wasn’t interpreted correctly. And with the resources on the net, or going through a course, it’s very easy to make a good looking page. But to make a GREAT looking page, one that truly helps a business prosper, you tend to get more bang for your buck and get much faster results by paying someone who knows what they’re doing. Even having web design know-how is not enough to make a good website. You need graphic design, information design, knowledge of how people use and interpret websites to market your content accordingly, if you want to make the website that WINS you new business, even if it’s just a dry cleaning website.

I was so glad you did elaborate on the cheap fast great one. So few people get that.

I would like to ad one that every graphic artist / web artist comes up against.

“Can you make the logo bigger?” hehe.

It is truly amazing how much bad web design is out there. I similar to print. I don’t think we can ever avoid it. The tools are better in that you can at least start with templates and color pickers (you choose a color and it selects 2 or 3 others) but you can only do so much.

Also, you, someone who by your professional nature, seems to be of the true blue, are constantly battling the lowdowns who give the rest of the world the impression that “their product is not worthy of the amount of money we may ask for ”

I hope I never gave you the impression that there was no need for your services or that they had no value.

I was just trying to point out 2 things really, so far, it seemed, there was a lot of discouraging remarks, and I thought it might be do to a language thing. If you read the broken phrasing and his bio it might be possible there is a piecing of english together here.

At any rate, Thanks for not going of on me!!!!

I have a general theory (and this is not directed at you, tilc, so don’t take offense) based upon working the account service side of the business, that once upon a time, someone brought home a picture from school that was by accident, pretty good, given the age of the child. Their mom hung it on the refrigerator, and said, “My, what a gifted little artist you are!” Flash forward to adulthood, and the child,now grown, has a business need with graphics, be it a PowerPoint, flyers, etc.and they think, “I’m artistic! mom said so I can do this myself! Why pay for something I can do myself?” So they do it themselves, beam at the results, only, because they don’t really understand visualization and brand, the results are marginal.

As an extension of this, there are very fine commercial production artists out there who have the need to create, but. just. aren’t. designers. They, too, put out schlock. Well-executed schlock, but schlock nonetheless.

That being said, sometimes “homemade” is truly wonderful, albeit badly designed. I stumbled upon this example. It has a compelling honesty to it, that makes me wish Joe Lara would make housecalls in the Ohio Valley, because I would so call him to take care of my many household plumbing needs. I think it’s the family photos, the before and after shots, and the humor conveyed by the giant plungers that does it for me And there are people out there who are artistic, and have an innate sense of design, but they are far and few between.

As for me, I humbly acknowledge my creative limitations, and confine myself to giving great creative direction, and knowing “it” when I see it. And like I said, this is not about you, but a general rant that comes out periodically from frustration with either clients or designers. I’m heading back under my rock now…

@ AlfredaPrufrock – Great example of knowing and admitting ones limitations.

I like to use the phrase “that person would go to the surgeon, grab the scalpel from the doctor and say “here, let me show you how thats done!”.”

I recognize that page isn’t the greatest. I know I could do better. A lot better. I also know I could not do anywhere as good as dynamicduo could. I don’t have the web experience to know the pitfalls that environment brings with it. I would have to rely on templates and programs and help from people like you all.

Templates

It’s easy enough to modify templates if you know how to find the image names and possibly change the hex colors in the style sheet.

Then you will still feel like you did it yourself even through you used someone else’s framework.

I used Yahoo small business to download free templates to make my website. They also host the domain and do a search to see if the domain name is available. It only costs $11.95 a month for the hosting fee and the Sitebuilder software is really easy to use.

Thanks for the advice, I’ll definately try this one :)