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weasello
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« on: January 06, 2010, 05:06:41 PM » |
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I need a website done up for myself; blog, games showcase, bio, etc.; nothing too fancy technically. I was thinking about doing it up with Wordpress as a backend.
I have no artistic ability though and need someone to style-it-up for me. Anyone have a recommendation for a good webdesign studio?
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IndieElite4Eva
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nikki
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« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2010, 09:33:38 AM » |
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not really the answer but:
Why don't you use one of the 1000'nds of wordpress themes , and maybe change it a little bit ? (that route took me (no webdesigner) a couple of days and on the way i picked up a little css and php.)
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tim-bo-jay
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« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2010, 11:05:39 AM » |
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nikki is right, doing up an already established Wordpress theme is probably your best bet. I have no real understanding of PHP or CSS but managed to do up countless themes before, also with Widgets and plugins you can customize your theme pretty easy :-)
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weasello
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« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2010, 11:25:57 AM » |
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Well let's put it this way: I don't wanna.  I have a sack of cash I want to hand someone so I don't have to deal with it, and if they use wordpress themes to attain my vision, who am I to stop them? I find the prospect of "simply" browsing through thousands of wordpress skins then customizing them a really painful task and I don't look forward to it at all.  Rather be  |
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IndieElite4Eva
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starsrift
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« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2010, 05:47:36 AM » |
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If you want to hand someone a sack of cash to do your site, I'd recommend going local. Check out your local newspapers or put an ad in the paper. Ask at a local computer store for recommendations - no, not Best Buy, one of the smaller ones.
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"Vigorous writing is concise." - William Strunk, Jr.
As is coding.
I take life with a grain of salt.
And a slice of lime, plus a shot of tequila.
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tim-bo-jay
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« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2010, 08:58:11 AM » |
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hell if a sack of cash is involved I'll build it for you...so long as the sacks a fair size and filled with more than pennies...or yen.
I would agree with Starsrift thought (I seem to be making a good echo in this thread), going local is your best bet cause that way there's less chance of getting screwed over by someone, plus face to face it's much easier to get your thoughts across on how you want it to look (cause no web builder likes to finish something and then be told it doesn't look right and have to start over)
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Quicksand-S
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« Reply #7 on: January 10, 2010, 01:31:27 PM » |
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Hi. I'll design a site for a good price (I'll even give you the "Indie Game Developer Discount"). I've only had three clients, so there isn't much to show you, but you can check out my work at http://www.nitronium.com. PM me if you're interested, or if you have any questions about what I have to offer. |
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Skofo
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« Reply #8 on: January 10, 2010, 01:42:44 PM » |
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A popular (and awesome) choice among indie game developers is Fully Illustrated. He designed the very pretty sites of Toribash, Cortex Command, Natural Selection 2, thatgamecompany (developer of fl0w and Flower), among others. I have no clue how much he costs, but he claims to be very affordable. |
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« Last Edit: January 10, 2010, 01:50:34 PM by Skofo »
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If you wish to make a video game from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
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weasello
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« Reply #9 on: January 12, 2010, 11:38:49 AM » |
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Yeah, I was pretty heart-set on FullyIllustrated but he's booked solid for the next 6 months. I suppose I'm wondering if he has any competitors that are of equal calibre? The local businesses seem to be geared towards bigger clients; they send me $5-10K quotes "to start". I suppose that's the danger when working in a big town. Maybe I just have to find the right place. |
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IndieElite4Eva
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tim-bo-jay
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« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2010, 01:38:40 PM » |
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The local businesses seem to be geared towards bigger clients; they send me $5-10K quotes "to start".
Jesus dude  $5-10k?! I'm in the wrong line of work! |
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Skofo
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« Reply #11 on: January 12, 2010, 02:06:56 PM » |
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I suppose I'm wondering if he has any competitors that are of equal calibre? Haven't found anyone, myself. However, a nice trick is to google 'web design trends' or something to that effect and look through the results, since those links usually have lots of great examples of modern designs, which you can typically find/ask for the designer of if it's not already the home page of a designer. From about five minutes of searching, this designer was the most impressive I've found. He might not be your style, though, so you should go look for others yourself to see if you can find someone you like more. |
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If you wish to make a video game from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
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jotapeh
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« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2010, 08:02:37 PM » |
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Yeah, I was pretty heart-set on FullyIllustrated but he's booked solid for the next 6 months. I suppose I'm wondering if he has any competitors that are of equal calibre? The local businesses seem to be geared towards bigger clients; they send me $5-10K quotes "to start". I suppose that's the danger when working in a big town. Maybe I just have to find the right place. He is quite good! I'm impressed. Web design is my day job - I've been the lead frontend dev for a very well known car company website for a year and half now... $5-10k "to start" is the sort of quote that might not even be considered by the company that employs me sadly  That said, my freelance stuff on the side is $5-10k tops, and I'm about to start on a fairly large redesign project in that range soon. In my opinion, with 'the right person' it shouldn't cost you anything more than $1000 to get a nicely designed site with solid code behind it. But finding that person will be tough, much like finding a skilled entrepreneurial mechanic you trust for your car |
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PlayMeTape
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« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2010, 05:54:07 AM » |
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Not sure how nice of a site you want but if you want to keep it simple it's really not that hard to set up with some basic .html templates.
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Ooghijmiqtxxa
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« Reply #14 on: January 14, 2010, 03:23:11 PM » |
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A popular (and awesome) choice among indie game developers is Fully Illustrated. He designed the very pretty sites of Toribash, Cortex Command, Natural Selection 2, thatgamecompany (developer of fl0w and Flower), among others. I have no clue how much he costs, but he claims to be very affordable. Michael from Fully Illustrated is amazing. He did some work with us for Natural Selection 2. I really couldn't recommended him enough. Plus he has a cool accent so that makes him seem even better at his job. |
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Akari
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« Reply #15 on: January 19, 2010, 03:01:16 AM » |
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Personally I hate WordPress because it's a huge bother to style yourself. I ended up making coding the site completely myself using PHP+MySQL, and I think it turned out quite nice. Of course this option is not for everyone, but I find building a site template and the CSS fun. I've also used the same code on another site of mine. The biggest problem is that I haven't bothered to write any kind of comment spam protection. I really should do that soon, since my other site is especially suffering from it so it's only a matter of time before this site gets hit by it too (though I guess it'd have to get some regular visitors first to be caught in the eyes of spambots, heh). |
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Richard Kain
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« Reply #16 on: January 19, 2010, 08:00:27 AM » |
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Jesus dude $5-10k?! I'm in the wrong line of work! This is actually quite common, especially for larger firms, designing larger sites. Modern web design involves numerous disciplines, and these days most clients don't want to bother with any of the technical aspects themselves. It is quite normal for them to just cut a check to the web design company, and the design firm handles everything from hosting to domain registration themselves. For a full-solution approach like this, $5-10k is considered perfectly reasonable. Most professional web developers can charge upwards of $75-100 per hour for their services. When a company's website is broken, those purse strings loosen up. Of course, the truly web-savvy know that modern web design can also be very, very cheap. I'm in the process of re-designing my personal folio site. I'm scripting it with PHP, with a MySQL back-end for portfolio entries. Cross-browser compatible, with full Flash support and custom styling. I'll probably throw a custom blog on there at some point, perhaps even my own webcomic. I'm spending $0 on software and design, it's all open-source platform and my own personal code. I'm spending less than $100 annually on hosting and domain registration. When companies drop fat cash on web-design, they aren't really buying technology. They are renting the experience and expertise of the designer. |
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jotapeh
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« Reply #17 on: January 19, 2010, 01:24:00 PM » |
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Yeah, keep in mind the bigger jobs involve: - Interface architects who wireframe or template the user experience - Business systems analysts who make sure the user experience covers all necessary business requirements - Designers of all kinds - Developers (front and back end) to implement and unify the wireframes and application requirements with the creative visions of the designers... you're easily paying for a 6+ person team on a big site...  Small jobs should be cheap. But enough babble of cost! Here's another good site that goes into the details of web design.  |
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