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I'm creating a website to promote my sole tradership as a graphic designer (mainly for print). Any good recommendations on for a host?
Looking at building the site with Wordpress templates as I don't have any coding experience, or much money to pay one. Anyone got any experience of Wordpress? Any other very easy to use alternatives?
Ta muchly.
Wordpress Rocks.
I like aegishosting.co.uk
If you're running a graphic design business, don't use templates. It looks amateurish.
If you're running a graphic design business, don't use templates. It looks amateurish.
thats a very good point.
Wot Binners said. Keep it really simple to begin with; no Flash animations and all that, you're just asking for trouble. Just a kind of 'shop window', for your business. Brief bit about who you are, what you do, couple of examples, contact details, is all you need to start off.
And look to employ someone to run your site, as things take off a bit. Doesn't need to cost a fortune, and a good coder will be able to iron out the annoying glitches.
Don't get my mate who is sposed to do mine, to do it, though. He's ****ing useless.
Sorry Cakefest. That sounded very abrupt. Mail me (address in profile). I've got a design business and employ an IT guy to sort out our web hosting and consrtuction. It doesn't have to cost much at all. I'll get you some decent rates. Like Rudeboy says - Keep it simple
I use http://www.justhost.com great prices with free domain name registration included, unlimited emails, unlimited bandwith and PHP data bases and loads of software plugins ready to be installed.
Just out of (self) interest - any of you designers use copywriters? Drop us a line if you're ever looking for a freelancer and you're anywhere near Yorkshire. Email in profile. Good luck with your new business.
/waves at Will.
The Planet offer excellent deals and rock solid* service.
In terms of design, the tutorial offered by this website allows you to create a stunning, but individual, design. See below:
[img] 
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Link: http://psdtuts.com/tutorials/interface-tutorials/create-a-sleek-high-end-web-design-from-scratch/
* One of their data centres exploded last year. They gave me two months hosting free in compensation.
The only hassle with wordpress, is that a lot of things made with it look very wordpressy. Most things made with it look like a blog, rather than a website, which kind of implies that they will be full of off the cuff, low quality content, like most blogs are.
[url= http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~jqm/ ]My site[/url] uses wordpress, but I had to fiddle a lot with the templates to make it not look too much like wordpress, and that requires a certain level of programming experience (they're all written in PHP).
The other thing about wordpress, is that the way it is setup as default really only makes sense for pages that are updated regularly. If you just want a simple advert for your work, you might be better off looking at something less bloggy. There are lots of things that'll let you build a simple set of pages with some fancy background images that you provide.
Joe
Mrs JB is in the exact same position as you - never coded anything in her life before and she built a small website using
xhtml and css. She didn't use any templates, and took her about a month in between jobs.
Useful links are www.htmldog.com & www.css-tricks.com
The reality is that you're going to have to learn this sort of stuff one day, and there are plenty of online tutorials to help....
if you want to look at her handy work head to
www.draw-the-line.co.uk
Available for deisgn jobs large and small STW people!
Don't discount wordpress its a great bit of kit. Whilst using the stock templates off the shelf may not be a great idea, you could use one and customise it to how you want it to look by changing images, fonts, colours etc.
You'll still need to know how css etc works to do that, but at least you will have something to start with.
I use dreamhost.com - if you use the code G030 and pay up front for a year you can get it mega cheap too, $30 I think for ridiculous amounts of bandwith etc.
heart internet host my site and they've been very good. They even are able to answer some of my dumbarse coding questions, and why things wouldn't work.
Rated hosting company.
Don't get my mate who is sposed to do mine, to do it, though. He's ****ing useless.
LOL!
No, seriously, he is. Does everything in code, then thinks his sites look great. No, they look awful. I come along, to try and pep them up a bit, and he gets all funny. Can't handle decent looking graphics.
His sites do function very well, and are very secure, but he misses the part about the interwebs are a very visual media.
He can't explain why my lovely buttons won't work, though. 🙁
'Do it in HTML'. Ok then, how?
I'm still waiting for his answer...
No. Don't employ him. Bloody geek with no sense of aesthetics.
Up until recently I would have recommended Yahoo Smallbusiness, but now I would tell you to stay well away. All is fine until you have a problem. Poor customer service, that's a joke try non-existent customer sevrice.
They will be losing my business as soon as I check out some of the recommendations above.
Actually, you could ask Snigletrack! He's a very successful Graphic Designer, with a fabulous looking website! I'm sure he'd love to give you some tips!
Oh....