Websites cost?

[Guest freedomfighter]

What's the going rate to design a website?

I want to design a portfolio / store website for myself.

How much is coding? / and then programming?

[mr fluffernutter]

if you have to ask then you can't afford.

jk

but ask someone for a quote. you aren't going to get any usable information from random suggestions here.

[mr fluffernutter]

that's a tricky question and i personally can't answer it... but there are affordable ways to get a portfolio/webshop (usually with premade plugins or content management systems)... If you were looking for a full custom solution I think you would be looking to spend a lot a lot. find someone who will be able to use what is available to give you a fair price. a lot of simple webshops can use wordpress (which can be used for a portfolio CMS) and plugins (some cost a little extra $$). i think i remember hearing that indexhibit (http://www.indexhibit.org/) was working on a webshop plugin or something for their sites.

[Guest freedomfighter]

I have some referals, but want to know what you people say too.

Does it generally cost more if you hire a designer and programmer separately?

[DüM]

probably^

For the most part, they're going to use a CMS. Building a custom cms is dope, unnecessary for you I'm sure.

If the storefront doesn't need to be robust you can just use embedded paypal buttons which will use a paypal cart. I think it's simple and easy to use. Otherwise there are good shopping cart cms' like Shopify.

I build almost all of my client's websites on Wordpress (diamonds does as well). It's a beast. You can check my portfolio for examples (plus the portfolio itself is Wordpress)

http://andnoneshallsurvive.com

Check out other portfolio cms shits too though. I like Indexhibit. Cargo is really good if you want something simple and nearish to a theme they have available (coding to customize cargo is annoying, have to hack shit around). Stacey is really cool to me, but I dont think most people want an ftp-based cms. There are tooons more.

[Pavlov's Bell]

A lot of people I work with primarily use Drupal and Wordpress. Most of NBC's sites (BravoTV, iVillage) are all built on Drupal and it's picking up huge amounts of steam in the industry. Wordpress is a little easier to use b/c it's based on a publishing platform, but Drupal offers a lot more options.

[DüM]

Admittedly I haven't messed with drupal much, but I think it's mostly useful for more intense, robust sites where you really need database shit.

Would be overkill for a portfolio unless you're a coder and you're doing it for yourself because you like it or out of nerdery.

but like I said I honestly have not played with it.

[joelz]

Like what a ton of people have said here, you may not need a full on website built out. There's enough services out there for ready made sites (squarespace, wordpress, movabletype, tumblr even, carbonmade) and shops (shopify, etsy, bigcartel) that you probably don't want to go through the hassle of building something out like that.

Basically, there's a lot of free(ish) stuff out there that you could cobble together with a reasonable amount of research. Otherwise I'd guess someone would give you an estimate of like 500-800 for something easy, probably more as it gets more complex

[DüM]

Also, if you design the whole site yourself and then just have someone code it up for you, you're not looking at too much more than likely.

and coding = programming as far as any work here is concerned. If you give them specific mocks of all the pages within the limitations of the cms you're working in. This is the important part to understand though, I really do whatever I want with wordpress seeing as it's kiiiiinda just a language you can build with once you understand how it all works. Another example though, like I said with Cargo, some things can't be done or atleast require a good understanding of the cms.

Then they'll be able to just code it up pretty simply.

[Desaturated]

damn, maybe I should learn how to do this shit myself. I'm pretty particular about how I want shit to look so I guess I could kill 2 birds with one stone if I could code myself. 600-800 is mad $$ to me.

[percy]

i have a slightly different website question...

i am the admin on a site for a local soccer team, which is based on wordpress. a friend of ours set it all up and told us he would put it on his server as we didnt know what we were doing. the situation now is that we have fallen out with this guy and i am just worried he may pull the plug on our site should he feel strongly enough.

my wordpress skills are now such that i can maintain and look after what we already have but what i would liek to know, is it possible to transfer our site on to a different server? will we lose data? will we be able to keep the domain name?

thanks for any help

[mr fluffernutter]

damn, maybe I should learn how to do this shit myself. I'm pretty particular about how I want shit to look so I guess I could kill 2 birds with one stone if I could code myself. 600-800 is mad $$ to me.

todl u couldnt afford it haw haw

[mr fluffernutter]

i have a slightly different website question...

i am the admin on a site for a local soccer team, which is based on wordpress. a friend of ours set it all up and told us he would put it on his server as we didnt know what we were doing. the situation now is that we have fallen out with this guy and i am just worried he may pull the plug on our site should he feel strongly enough.

my wordpress skills are now such that i can maintain and look after what we already have but what i would liek to know, is it possible to transfer our site on to a different server? will we lose data? will we be able to keep the domain name?

thanks for any help

codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database

[percy]

thank you diamonds.

ok just had a quick look and i will try to work out what i need to do. is this for backing up to a pc or for storing data on a different server? thanks anyway

[DüM]

you can backup your wordpress shit as an .xml I believe and then the sql data and you've got everything. I've done this 5-6 times and it's pretty easy.

but remember any posts containing images will need to be fixed bevause of the url. you can run a search & replace in phpmyadmin. there are lots of tutorials for moving wordpress from server to server. google it and you'll be fine.

[blm14]

damn, maybe I should learn how to do this shit myself. I'm pretty particular about how I want shit to look so I guess I could kill 2 birds with one stone if I could code myself. 600-800 is mad $$ to me.

You wont get shit for $800. When I build sites I usually don't bother charging less than $3000, unless it's like literally a handful of pages. If people want real database interactivity, mailing lists, hosting, DNS entries, analytics, all that crap then it's like $8k and up.

What does this website need to do? How often will it change?

(for the record - I do web PROGRAMMING not design. I can build shopping carts and interact with MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL via PHP, JSP, coldfusion etc but ask me to build logos and CSS type crap and I'd need to hire a designer)...

my wordpress skills are now such that i can maintain and look after what we already have but what i would liek to know, is it possible to transfer our site on to a different server? will we lose data? will we be able to keep the domain name?

Shouldn't be hard. You'll have to find out who your domain name registrar is, obtain a new site host, copy all the code into your new host, test it by going directly to the IP or maybe some temporary hostname, and then just switch the DNS entry when you're ready. Obviously you'll have to check for relative versus absolute links in your navigation and stuff. I assume you'll want to keep the old domain name?

[DüM]

As a designer for much smaller scale stuff than blm, $1000-2000 is to be expected.

I mostly do portfolios, blogs, etc. where I am using a CMS to control everything. I'll often do a lot of modifying shit especially with Wordpress, I often create custom taxonomies and shit for sites where the blog-formatted backend isn't the best for the site.

but like blm said, he's a programmer. I am a designer. My strengths are layouts, logos, css type shit. I do mysql and php though, but nothing crazy. I'm pretty interested in user-interfaces and shit, but don't know if I'll ever get into delving into real real programmer shit.

But yeah, from scratch there's lots of work put into making a site and it's not cheap.

[blm14]

^ I will keep you in mind for future business.