Advice/Reality check of webdesign.

ChroniC

ChroniC

ChroniC

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I want to start up my own business and thus I need a very professional looking site, which money handling and file upload handling capabilities.
Let's for instance take www.photobox.com as an example of what I need.

What I'm curious about is having a site like this made or making it myself.
This in my mind involves two scenarios which I hope someone could clarify.

1- If I started learning HTML5 now, at a fast pace (imagine I'm a quick learner) how long would it take to come up with something similar (Months? Years?)

2- Having it made. How much would something like that cost, and who could do it. Could I rope in a underworked genius or is it down to spending thousands from a reputable company?

Thank you for your help.
 
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Its easy enough to learn programming, however, its the design part of it which would be the problem! Can you design? Photoedit, create graphics and know what works together and what does not? It would take you time and trial and error if not.
 
Yes and No, mostly yes. I am fulltime freelance retoucher and do design work on the side so it's not out of the realms of possibility. All I do all day long is work in photoshop so I know what I'm doing. I hope weblayout would take only a little research to adapt my current work style too.
I have in the past played with HTML back in the notepad days, and a tiny bit of flash coding, but very little.

Do you know how much it would cost either way, as in a sense I have to work out if my time is worth the money!
 
1 has no answer, either you are an artistic and IT genius, with uber energy focus and skill, the project with take weeks and cost nothing

or you are stupid and lazy it will take years and look rubbish...

I know I could do the behing the scenes stuff thats easy anyone could do it...

the making it look good I know for a fact I could NEVER do... i am not artistic it will look pants if I defigned it..
 
ChroniC said:
1- If I started learning HTML5 now, at a fast pace (imagine I'm a quick learner) how long would it take to come up with something similar (Months? Years?)
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Don't forget the server side programming as well to allow your application to actually function. Not to mention the database design to store your data and developing a wide enough knowledge of security issues and practices that you'll have to put in place to work with money. A fast learner, full time, couldn't do it all under a year if they'd had no previous experience (in my opinion).

ChroniC said:
2- Having it made. How much would something like that cost, and who could do it.
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£20K/£30K - Any reputable web development company. PM me if you're interested in a company I used to work for based in Edinburgh that do this kind of thing.

ChroniC said:
Could I rope in a underworked genius or is it down to spending thousands from a reputable company?
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Also an option. You could tout for the business with your friends but be prepared for a friendship to get strained or even lost. Alternative is using a freelancing site.
 
Front end design is easy enough. It's the back end where most of the functionality of the site is created.

It isn't a case of just learning HTML/CSS you need PHP, MySQL, Probably some JavaScript too.

You're also likely reinventing the wheel. If you wan't a custom bespoke service then you're looking at a good chunk to invest. Otherwise there are likely pre-made cheaper solutions & scripts already available that do what you wan for a license fee. Then pay someone for a custom redesign etc.
 
RoyMi6 said:
Don't forget the server side programming as well to allow your application to actually function. Not to mention the database design to store your data and developing a wide enough knowledge of security issues and practices that you'll have to put in place to work with money. A fast learner, full time, couldn't do it all under a year if they'd had no previous experience (in my opinion).



£20K/£30K - Any reputable web development company. PM me if you're interested in a company I used to work for based in Edinburgh that do this kind of thing.



Also an option. You could tout for the business with your friends but be prepared for a friendship to get strained or even lost. Alternative is using a freelancing site.
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Thanks very much! You seem to know what your talking about, and you have outlined the very problem I now face,
Go big and face a huge loss if it doesn't come off, or start small and work up to it. The second obviously makes more sense.

What I am trying to establish is how best to achieve a good looking site without risking a lot of money in the process.
Let for argument sake say I can design a site that looks good and I can learn intermediate/advanced html5 skills in say 6 months. Would be possible to cut and shut my stuff with say Paypal/card facility, and a upload/download storage facility.

If something of this magnitude is just to far out of reach even at a basic level, I will have to have a very long think about investment, or small business loans.

//Ps I hate you google for making the web seems so easy, hey a few tabs here and website made in minutes. I'm rich. wooo//
 
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If you really want to go down the cheap route you should look at working with something like WordPress.org that will allow you to easily set up a good looking website with freely available themes.

By the sounds of your basic requirements you're not reinventing the wheel here and you may well find the plugins that can be had for free (or at a push, bought) will fulfill your needs.

This would allow you to grow you business and build some capital before redeveloping with grander ideas.

Spunkey said:
What kind of storage would you be needing? Bearing in mind that for any kind of site with decent disk space requirements (~20Gb+) and the associated bandwidth costs, you'd probably require a dedicated server.
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The above approach would also negate this kind of concern as you'll likely grow from few users rather than having to make any kind of upfront investment in hardware to support imaginary traffic.

EDIT: FYI, evening supporting the transfer of large files over the web is quite a development task in itself if you plan on doing it with any kind of 100% customer satisfaction.
 
RoyMi6 said:
If you really want to go down the cheap route you should look at working with something like WordPress.org that will allow you to easily set up a good looking website with freely available themes.

By the sounds of your basic requirements you're not reinventing the wheel here and you may well find the plugins that can be had for free (or at a push, bought) will fulfill your needs.

This would allow you to grow you business and build some capital before redeveloping with grander ideas.



The above approach would also negate this kind of concern as you'll likely grow from few users rather than having to make any kind of upfront investment in hardware to support imaginary traffic.

EDIT: FYI, evening supporting the transfer of large files over the web is quite a development task in itself if you plan on doing it with any kind of 100% customer satisfaction.
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My only issue with this is I have never seen a Wordpress website that had the capability for login, upload, download, pay, etc. They always to me seem to be portfolio/blog looking sites that are nice to look at but not great for the functionality that I would require. Can you link me to any that have such capabilities as I would love to see any option.

I have considered the likes of themeforest, as I know I could learn and simply re-code a prebuilt html site if it met most of my needs. This is probably the route I will end up heading down, but I won't lie I am not 100% versed on everything I need yet. I have a goal and this is me in step by step process of working out how to get there..
I would/could be talking about handling gigs of image files and will need to look into file transfer costs and storage. I doubt webspace alone would constitute enough.
 
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Don't be blinded by the shortcomings of others in their use of WordPress.

WordPress is a brilliant CMS with unlimited flexibility. Starting with WordPress would give you a lot of options of developing your own plugins with the help of a large community.

A quick search brings up this demo site that is completely powered by WordPress:
http://demo.jigoshop.com/

EDIT: Obviously finding websites with the keywords "wordpress shop" isn't going to bring about to many actual examples of live shops as it's not something they'll have on their homepage :)

EDIT2: Found some though!
http://upthemes.com/ - Selling WordPress themes from a WordPress powered site!
http://chocotemplates.com/ - Another site selling website templates
http://freepsdfiles.net/ - Same guys selling email templates
http://pinupgirlproducts.com/ - Selling Girly stuff
 
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Ok that is an option. I had not seen anything remotely close to that type of ability.
Thankyou very much Roy that is something I will look into this evening.

Does anyone know what I would need to look for with webhosting something like this that would need a decent bandwith and storage with a very good security and payment handling (if that is handled that way). Can you just get business option packages from hosts?

The the next thing I need to work out is legal issues, not sure how I am going to do that.
 
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ChroniC said:
Ok that is an option. I had not seen anything remotely close to that type of ability.
Thankyou very much Roy that is something I will look into this evening.

Does anyone know what I would need to look for with webhosting something like this that would need a decent bandwith and storage with a very good security and payment handling (if that is handled that way). Can you just get business option packages from hosts?
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Vidahost and TSOHost come highly recommended here.

I can personally recommend Vidahost (https://www.vidahost.com/) as they've been great over the years.

You can pretty much consider all hosting packages as "business" packages from either of these companies.

I'd buy the cheapest then upgrade as you need it. Vidahost can do it all for you.

Cloud hosting from Vidahost is also an option but start out costs will be higher (£120 a year rather than ~£40 a year)
 
To get a decent answer on the costs, your best bet would be to put together a design in Photoshop along with a description of the functionality you require and send it out to multiple web design companies for quotes.

The web design company could also help out with site maintenance after the site goes live which would let you concentrate on running the business.
 
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