Website creation advice needed

[RandyD]

I need to create a website for my law practice. In the past, I have hired people who were recommended to me but twice they took my money and ran. I have advertised through Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis, but when they raised their advertising prices to a point that I decided not to stay with them, the websites that they created went away.

I believe what I want is a website that I can control. I have lost trust in allowing a third party have control over my website. The primary purpose of the website is to attract good quality clients and to provide enough information about myself and services to attract new clients.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[ocabj]

Squarespace.

[Little Willy]

Try wordpress.

It has treated me well.

You can learn as much as you want, and control every variable through code if you want to, or you can just learn the general user interface and use it about like Facebook. Post, upload pictures, etc...

The basic process goes like this:

Register a domain name
Sign up for hosting (most supply Wordpress files upon new account creation)
Configure Wordpress account info, site name, login, etc...
Start posting.

So wordpress is free and awesome, but ultimately it's no more than a content managements system. The 'Looks' of your website will be determined by your Wordpress Theme. There are a lot of free themes out there, but an amazing super-premium one that has all the bells, whistles, plugins, features, etc, is only going to run you about $60 bucks.

You can see some here:

http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/corporate

My advice is if you want to go that route, pick a theme you are happy with as-is, as far as layouts go, so you can have your site up and running without too much tinkering.

The learning curve is not very steep either.

hope this helps

[kcjr1125]

a good company that does amazing work is Jacob Tyler

http://www.jacobtyler.com/

these guys do everything from website to logo design to whatever you want. they can be a little but pricey if you want top notch but thats the thing they can do top notch.

[SMR510]

I 2nd Wordpress. I did our work website on it by selecting a nice theme and inputting all our stuff. It really was quite easy to do but I did manually change some things in the code (I spent a few hours on google to figure out how to do what I wanted) just to customize it to our uses. Depending on who made the Theme the author may be available to make customizations for you for free or for a small price. Its really easy to use, its about as complex as using this forum to be honest.

You can also have a custom theme developed for you but a web developer customized to your needs but IMO that is unnecessary.

Check out http://themeforest.net/ we bought a theme from this author and he has been really helpful http://themeforest.net/user/Veented?...author=Veented and the documentation on how to load in the content was excellent.

Do you have an example of a website that you like or a list of features that you would like to have? I will say it has been great to be able to edit/manage it ourselves.

[freonr22]

Madwire.com.

Keep spending time doing it yourself or get results

[Eric Mayer]

I also recommend WordPress and ThemeForest.net (make sure it is compatible with the most recent WP release and make sure to read the comments to get an idea if the developer is readily available if you run into issues).

Our most recent site was built using a WP theme:

http://www.ar15hunter.com

Eric

[skunkbad]

I'm a freelance web developer. As other's have suggested, WordPress is a great way to go. There are two WordPresses though. One is .com and one is .org. You want the .org.

I use WordPress and am a custom theme developer, plugin author, and have a love/hate relationship with WordPress. On a basic level, for a low tech individual, WordPress is great. When you go past that level though, WordPress needs somebody like me to do major tweaking. WordPress is poorly optimized, suffers from code that is the definition of spaghetti code, can be slow as molasses on the wrong hosting environment, has a plethora of bad plugins available, has a database whose designer had never heard of normalization, etc, etc, etc.

Id say if you want an awesome website, you need to find somebody you trust. Yes, web designers can be like pretty flaky, and I guess in your case they have ripped you off, but you shouldn't consider them all bad.

If you need help setting up WordPress, and/or would like some one-on-one training on how to use it, I do that for people. I charge $75 an hour, and you are able to sit with me and work on your website, learn what you need, etc. Im in Temecula, so about an hour North of you if there is no traffic.

[spamsucker]

Don't pay up front! Don't do hourly jobs. That's my advice. Nothing against skunkbad at all there, just a disagreement on how pricing for this sort of thing should work and used to.

I used to do this sort of thing in a previous life. You want a decent site you could go wordpress but you'll end up with something that looks wordpress which I can spot a mile away and which looks exceedingly unprofessional. If you want a proper purely custom site then you find a web developer that will code it on a flat job rate and who only gets paid when it's done and there are no remaining bugs or defects. You register the domain yourself and get yourself an Amazon AWS account and a micro instance. If you need help with that, first set up your AWS account (it's easy and free to set up the account), then call your domain registrar and they'll help you register the domain and park it for you while you get your developer.

There are endless numbers of developers out there. They're all looking for your money. They then have their short hairs in your grasp. Don't pretend you're on the down side of the bargaining table. Maintain your terms and demand proper service. Include a drop dead clause in the contract in case the developer lags, you can sever the contract and find another.

[skunkbad]

Don't pay up front! Don't do hourly jobs. That's my advice. Nothing against skunkbad at all there, just a disagreement on how pricing for this sort of thing should work and used to.

I used to do this sort of thing in a previous life. You want a decent site you could go wordpress but you'll end up with something that looks wordpress which I can spot a mile away and which looks exceedingly unprofessional. If you want a proper purely custom site then you find a web developer that will code it on a flat job rate and who only gets paid when it's done and there are no remaining bugs or defects. You register the domain yourself and get yourself an Amazon AWS account and a micro instance. If you need help with that, first set up your AWS account (it's easy and free to set up the account), then call your domain registrar and they'll help you register the domain and park it for you while you get your developer.

There are endless numbers of developers out there. They're all looking for your money. They then have their short hairs in your grasp. Don't pretend you're on the down side of the bargaining table. Maintain your terms and demand proper service. Include a drop dead clause in the contract in case the developer lags, you can sever the contract and find another.

First, good luck finding somebody that doesnt require a deposit. Unless youre willing to have them run a credit check and sign a contract, you never going to find somebody that doesnt want at least some kind of deposit.

Secondly, I dont really give a crap, and was just trying to help a fellow forum member. I have work coming out of my ears, so not helping this guy is probably better for me (but I offered). Part of my suggestion was just to help with training, because learning WP is a lot easier with a private tour.

Lastly, although you can spot most WP sites a mile away, this guy really wants to try to create and manage his own website. WP really is his best option. It's his easiest option. If he buys a premium theme like Enfold, he can probably make his entire website without ever looking at a single line of code. Yes Enfold is a little bloated, but it's pretty kick-***. Check it out.

[Subotai]

There are a lot of sites where you can build his own website and pay the monthly fee. I've built about five sites and could do this too. If the OP is interested, he can PM any of you or myself to see our work. OP, never give money up front, pay as you go. For instance, pay a percentage to get a mockup, then when you approve it, the designer can make a preliminary site and you can pay for that. Then you ask for any mods. Once it looks good, pay for the final site. But! I would get all the source code on a CD as a part of the deal.

P.S. I've used Genesis before. Something to peruse: http://www.studiopress.com/

[snareman1]

Weebly.com is free, easy to use and looks professional. I've designed many sites using weebly. It's very "drag and drop" friendly too!

[deebix]

Weebly is the best if you are in a pinch and need something to get a point across.