Looking for someone to help with website development.

RimBlock

RimBlock

RimBlock

Associate
Joined
10 Nov 2004
Posts
2,237
Location
Expat in Singapore
I have a small home business and am trying to find someone who would be able to build a website for me. I have a number of ideas but am finding it hard to find anyone reliable. I do have some budget to throw at this but not a great deal.

The fact is that I am old, there, said it, and what with two jobs and three kids I am finding it very difficult to acquire the skills needed to put a site together myself which pains a bit as 20 years ago I would have probably done it quite easily (leaps in technology not withstanding).

This project can always be done on a phased approach and added to later as funds become more readily available if there is no way to do it on the limited funds available.

Hopefully this will not cause any issues as my target market is in Singapore.

Basics;
Website (Main brand - IT orientated)
|
- - Business user brand.
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- - Home user brand.
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- - Second hand item exchange.
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- - Forums.

A CMS systems should be good enough to start with, I would have thought, and forums. Each brand main page would need the ability to showcase / feature items / solutions.

Business brand (Hardware, Software, solutions, contact us)
Home Brand (Hardware, Software, solutions, contact us)
Second hand exchange (Main page with featured items, Categories for hardware, get a quote for my stuff)
Forums (can organise myself)

Need to maintain the same look and feel throughout for consistency.

I have the main brand logo. I need this logo colour changed and a word changed for each sub-brand.
I have vBulletin CMS.
I have hosting (TSO Clustered Hosting).

Nice to have / future add-ons.
Home Brand -> On-Line shop (currently I have this, although not live, with opencart but would need it skinned for the same look and feel)
Some sort of coupon or credit system between the Home/Server brand and the exchange brand.

Websites over here are pretty poor so I would like to get something good up there before the rest of Singapore catches up. Also a lot of business here is through word of mouth and business cards. I have not got mine printed (design is ready to go) as the website is not ready. This is currently a major source of frustration.

Oh the reason I have not sourced locally is due to some of my competitors also running web design businesses and I have no idea which ones.

Anyone interested can let me know here or via my email in trust.

Suggestions / ideas also welcome but please note this is not designed for the UK market and different rules apply where I am.

If any Mods have an issue then please let me know.

Thanks
RB
 
I'd be up for helping works a little slow at the moment Im more of a front end person you'd need to get someone to help with the function/backend part.

But Ill throw my name in the hat
 
Have you looked at Wordpress?
Could easily grab a decent business theme from themeforest.net or woothemes.com and within a day/weekend you could have something half decent. Only cost would be the theme and time.
 
@ Spils

Hi, thanks for the offer. I shall contact you via trust and we can see where to go from here.

@ VisiableMan

I have looked at Joomla, joined Rocketbox or whatever it is and downloaded a theme I like. I have deployed Joomla via my hosting companies package management system and then installed the theme and all the rocketxxxx extensions. I have then gone and found I am unable to change the logo. Any logo I try does not work even if the size and file type match those in the default setup. I then created a menu structure and created an article. The article had all the creation details etc so I went to the article manager and turned all the option to display these off but it seemed to have no effect at all. I have been banging my head on the desk with frustration over this for weeks now and I can only think that it may be a PHP version issue or an issue with the hosts Joomla package and the way it interacts with the theme I have chosen.

Oh the other thing is that my design skills are sadly lacking. I really need design help to make this look professional and then help translating the design to an actual website.

I build servers, IT solutions and software stacks or adhoc programs for people but I have never really invested much time on the web side of things and now do not have the time to do so.

I suspect I may be able to do the whole thing with the vBulletin CMS and Forums system but I am spending hours doing things others would probably take a fraction of the time doing.

Any database side of things I can quite happily do myself from design to sql coding but the skinning / theming of the sites and the unified look and feel over more than one system is not my strongest skill.

Whilst there is currently a three figure budget, there may be some other incentives (Family friendly ones :)) I can throw in which may appeal to people but it would be against the rules to say any more.

If anyone else is interested then please let me know. My E-Mail is in trust or just reply here.

Thanks
RB
 
visibleman said:
Haven't used Joomla but it's fairly straight forward with Wordpress.
Let me know what the theme was (i assume it was off http://www.rockettheme.com?) and i'll see what i can do with Wordpress. Like Spils, i've got a fair amount of free time at the moment :p
Click to expand...

Thanks VM.

You are absolutely correct, the theme was from Rocket Theme and is called Ximenia.

I have the original site which is showing all the issues and a test site with a completely clean install of Joomla and the theme (with associated Rocket plugins and Gantry framework). I can provide access to anyone willing to help so they can take a look. I will provide the links to people via trust for the time being.

I really need to get the logo graphics colour changed and matched to the Theme background (either light or dark) or changed to have a transparent background (best solution if possible).

If anyone i able to help with that then I can pass on the graphics via trust but obviously would rather not post directly here.

One other note, anyone who is willing to help out I would most probably be very happy if they wanted to put a link / snapshot etc of the finished product in their portfolio or 'jobs done' type area of their web design website if it would help them and would most probably be happy to link to their site for design credit. For multiple people then maybe multiple links... sort of like film credits :D.

Thanks again
RB
 
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