Professional website - 2k - worth it?

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Maryb50

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Hi! I'm thinking of getting a new website - had one of those off the shelf ones before - is it worth paying for professional web designer - it's 2k???
 
All depends on what you are getting for your €2k ... are you selling goods through the site or is it just a site advertising your business?
 
Too much just for a static website.

And I'll bet you'd be paying an annual maintenance fee for that.

You need to shop around for prices. The cost will depend on the number of pages on your site, SEOing the site (as in getting google to like it).

To consider:
Cost of site set up
Cost of a domain name .com etc. .ie will cost you more (annual cost)
Cost of hosting the site somewhere (annual cost)
Company may want to charge you for maintaining your site even though they'll be doing very little with it after it's set up.

I set up sites with WordPress. It doesn't take me long (I'm not a web design person in my day job) and I'm not touting for business.

WordPress is free. All you need is someone with a little knowledge to get you going at a reasonable price.

You could try fiverr. Fill in the brief. Choose a designer (carefully) and see what happens. I've used fiverr to get logos designed for small money.

See here:

Biggets difficulty I've had with fiverr is trying to root out the beginners and trying to understand those with little English. You can gt good work done if you find the right person. Read reviews and look at ratings etc.

You could pay for your own hosting. Pay and control your own domain name (some companies register them in their own name and the client/customer is stuck with them then.

I use for registering domain names but there are others out there.

I use greengeeks for hosting.

I see godaddy have a facility where you can build a site through them. Annual fee involved here. Have a look =>

wix is worth looking at too => http://www.wix.com/

It's free to build a site using wix but the website address will have wix.com in it in the free version. The paid version means that you can direct a .com etc. to your site. The site is built using drag and drop.

€2k is an awful lot to pay .... look at alternatives ... research options before you commit to anything.
 
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Thanks. That's what I thought - basically I think it is a static website I want - don't know too much about websites. I'm hoping for home page with info about what I do, another page with archives of articles I have written, a blog page, and just being able to provide links to other useful information in relation to the services I provide. Roughly how much should I be paying?
 
What you're doing sounds ideal using WordPress.

Ho much? Hard to say ....how long is a piece of string?

Are you willing to try anything yourself. Do you want a domain name i.e. www.mybusiness.com or work on a free name like mybusiness.wordpress.com?

Hosting will cost you roughly €100 per year depending on where you go, domain roughly €20 per year ... the rest will be based on what you get someone to set up your site for.

Do you need logos on your site?

Via fiverr .... a couple of hundred euro will go a long way. But the person you hire must be credible ... ask to see work etc.
 
Why not sign up for a free website on wordpress.com and play around with it? You can always delete the site later.
 
Do you know any student studying graphic design or similar in college, ask around. Remember Michael O'Leary hired students to design his website and see how popular that turned out to be. :)
 
PaddyBloggit said:
Hosting will cost you roughly €100 per year depending on where you go, domain roughly €20 per year ... the rest will be based on what you get someone to set up your site for..
Click to expand...

You should be able to get better value than that: I use Irish Domains - see https://www.irishdomains.com/soho-web-hosting/ which costs €55/year and includes Web hosting and email. Domain registration is on top of that (about €10/year if memory serves for a .com; .ie used to be more expensive, but I think it's down to roughly the same price now). It's handy to host email and Web site together, and really handy to actually own the domain: you can always move it. If you use gmail or similar, you have literally no control over what happens.

Personally, I'd hire someone to actually put the Web site together, as it can be hard to get a professional looking site doing it yourself. I'd ask whoever does it to use something like Wordpress: most important thing is that you have complete access to it so you (or someone you hire) can change it. Best advice here is to shop around & look for recommendations and when you find someone check out references. €2k could be considered either very cheap or very expensive: it all depends on what you're looking for.

Disclaimer: I've no connection with Irish Domains, other than as a (satisfied) customer for a number of years.
 
That price is good for an Irish host but I see they have a limit on disk space and traffic (which may be ok for OP).

I have both unlimited (disk space & traffic) with a company for €166 for 3 years. It's a US based hosting. Hasn't given me any trouble since I signed up over 5 years ago. I was previously with 2 different Irish hosting companies and I couldn't stay with them ... they were more expensive, had limits and their customer service was dire.
 
You can build your own website on Wordpress pretty easily. Squarespace advertise on almost every podcast going but I don't know how good they are.

If you want a professional look, you will pay for it. If you aren't selling anything and just giving information, €2k is expensive. I paid €1,000 for my site. Traffic increased significantly with the better site. It's worth spending a few quid on a site, it's your shop window.


Steven
http://www.bluewaterfp.ie (www.bluewaterfp.ie)
 
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