Website Building

[Rvrwind]

It seems I have lost my web guy & am need of revamping my site. Not good timing.

I used Microsoft Publisher last time & found that many things were not compatible or efficient. Rather that is what I was told.

I would ask the membership if they have any suggestins for software I can obtain that would help me build a new website. Keeping in mind I know very little about html programming & prefer a WYSIWYG format.

Also keep in mind the format of such a site with registration & order forms as well as picture galleries & profiles, etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

RVR-Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner

[catzenmouse]

Rvr,

 I know people that swear by FrontPage but personally I don't like the product. We use Dreamweaver for our web work here which has a good variety of ways to do things and has a WYSIWYG interface for those of you who don't want to dig into the code. I've been using this product for about 6 years now and it's my product of choice so far.

Ken

[Shadow]

RvR, I will send you a PM

[docetae]

If you need an ukrainian software development company and hosting provider with a branch in Canada, just let me know   I have a ressource with no work these days.

By the way, if you develop it yourself, stay away from frontpage ... I will recommend dreamweaver too.

[andrewfi]

For your purposes, ideally, you need to be using a customised version of a readymade script. If you look back, you will see that I gave you the link to one that will meet all your current needs and will expand into the future.

Ideally, the editor that you use should never be more than a management tool to control and work with what has already been made for you.

If you are accustomed to Microsoft products then FP is probably the best way to go, if you decide to stick with your current site. There are reasons for and against, but what most people forget is the learning curve involved in learning a product. You have money to earn and what you have will developed already will fit relatively well into FrontPage. Get FrontPage 2003, you will find it addresses the issues that those who do not like M/soft products tend to find.

Also, as I also wrote before, look for a local development team. They are everywhere, but SPb has some very good guys and you should not need to be paying more than about $15 per hour for script rewriting and template adaptions. If you want a more structured approach look at E-lance.com .

 

[docetae]

if you are looking for ressources in Ukraine, do not pay more than 8$ / h ...15$/h is a lot.

[andrewfi]

Sorry to disagree, but if you are paying peanuts, you will get monkeys. If you are working with a competant firm where the concept of a deadline is not alien, where staff can take and understand a design and technical brief in a language you can understand and where the text is reasonably recognisable as English then $8 is not enough. Frankly $15 is on the cheap side, but many people will do basic template work for that kind of money, or work where they can recycle previous time investment.

I am sure that you will write that you know people who will do work so cheaply, frankly, the phone book is full of them, but would one want to work with them when there is any kind of quality requirement? If, for example, you expect that the staff will work with licensed software, then overheads alone would render such a silly price impossible. If such matters are not of interest to you then, yes, perhaps you are these guys target market.

If one wants to get into this kind of market and pay good prices, then Elance/Rentacoder is a good entry point, prices are a little higher, but there is plenty of opportunity to judge quality and effectiveness and payments can be escrowed.

 

[ConnerVT]

Sorry to disagree, but if you are paying peanuts, you will get monkeys.

Monkeys will not work for peanuts.  Bananas, yes.  But never peanuts.  It's been rumored that elephants will work for peanuts, but they are very hard on the keyboards. 

Never judge a coder by price alone.  Look at his product, then decide how much you will pay.  Just as hiring any craftsman.

[docetae]

Hum, I can tell you I get a Phd happy to work for me at 8$/hour ... doing C code since two months now (conversion from fortran generated multi dimensional data files _weather forecast_ to a relational database) ... I 'm not sure he will be happy to be called "monkey".

But to find that kind of ressources , you will have to go out Kiev and find a city with few local work opportunities and a good university ...

Look at this site : http://www.developers.org.ua/salary-db/data/salary-by-year/2005
this will give you an exact idea of IT salaries in Ukraine.

These people are working in my company, and we use only opensource software.

[andrewfi]

OK, so you are telling me I am correct!

If you employ a person, pay his wages for 40 hours per week, the hourly rate of that employee, to the employer is lower. If RVR hired him from you, you would add an overhead and charge much more than $8 per hour (taxes, management costs, profit etc etc). If RVR needs a guy for a few hours, or for a contract an independent contractor has to consider that he might work for Richard for a few hours, or even a few days, but he loses the chance (time) to work for others. As an employer, you already know that nobody generates billable hours 100% of the time. A contractor can generate even fewer. If you're paying as little as $8 per hour in wages then his chargeout rate, from his employer, will be around double that amount per billable hour, more likely 3 times. (actually, $8 per hour as salary is not bad, but, as you should know, that is far from the final cost)

If Richard wants to hire somebody in Kiev, what is the real cost to him? - much more than $8. If he has to go into the sticks, how much does the real price increase to? 

Do you really run a business, or just work with some Ukrainian guy for some other employer?

Lets not even go near the open source thing when working collaboratively with somebody not using the same tools. If I am contracting somebody to work on a project, that I will be maintaining, then a minimum expectation would be that the supplier would be fully familiar with the tools that were going to be used afterward in order to maintain compatibility and provide support; that is not going to happen when somebody is using open source stuff and I am not (assuming that the open source gambit is not being used to conceal the use of stolen tools!)

Conner, you are right, cost is not the only indication of quality (however its many facets may be defined), but in the long run, in an open market it, it is about the most reliable! In an open market, unless one offers value (quality) commensurate with the price, then nobody will buy at that price. Low price, relative to the market norms tends to indicate that there is some reason why the seller has to sell at such a low price  - usually some aspect of quality is absent, or risk is higher; for example a seller with no track record may need to sell low to overcome the perceived risk of poor workmanship, but the real cost to the buyer is higher as the buyer has to seek out the neophyte seller and take the risk. That is why there are many web design businesses in Estonia. It is, overall, cheaper to pay local prices and ensure that overall costs are competitive, than take a risk on paying half the price in Ukraine.

As an interesting excercise, it is worth comparing productivity per dollar spent. In general, it can be seen that the countries of the FSU are productive in ratio to the costs. Simplified greatly this means that if the the wage cost, per hour is half that of the US, then that product will take about twice as long to manufacture in the FSU. Foreign firms that are able to leverage their own internal efficiencies are able to benefit from this disparity by working in the FSU, most can not. McKinsey published a series of very interesting comparison studies, including the software production business, they are, IIRC, available on the web, if you subscribe to their free research service. TANSTAFL applies, in full, in the FSU

[docetae]

Andrewfin, you are right and wrong at the same time. First , regarding my company, I have created a team of around 10 people  who works now on telecommute mode from the same city  Ukraine. The first goal of my travel next march is to setup the office for them and to build a team. Right now we hire two new developers every month.

I agree regarding software except the Ukrainian group is doing only coding, integration is done in Canada where we have the various platform you are talking about. Instead of offshore work, I prefer to talk about distributed development. We use people where they are the most productive. In this case, I can tell you that FSU developers are very efficients to code small new development projects. All the project management and tracking is done in Canada. We cost more than a usual offshore company but the final $ figure is less than usuals models (offshore and local)

To let you know, I offer to Richard to get his site done at cost, why ? because I have a guy who is waiting for one customer specs to be completed and yes, I pay him to do internal work right now. This is a free offer. He will decide what to do.

You are right, I resell work hours from these guys a lot more than 8 dollars but for the kind of work he needs , paying more is definitely not necessary and any students should be able to code a few pages or to modify an existing php script.

[Rvrwind]

Wow quite the overall generation of comments in answer to one question.

Thanks guys, I got a million PM's & all this to go through & I recieved links to several different places & products. I'll check them all out & make a decision.

Thanks for all the PM's & replies here, we deffinitly have our share of knowledgable people hereabouts, makes me proud to be part of such an elite group, .

RVR - Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner

[Bruno]

Thanks guys, I got a million PM's & all this to go through & I recieved links to several different places & products. I'll check them all out & make a decision.

Maybe i am a little late with my reply but it was not easy to find something cheap ( or free ), easy to install and easy to use/admin with a lot of option... but i have maybe find what you need... no programming work, all in a package and ready to work...

And it is free !!! ( osDate is a professional-grade, open-source PHP/MySQL dating script. It is distributed under the General Public License (GPL), with the only restriction that you should not take credit for the development of osDate, and if you make improvements to osDate, you should share your code with the entire osDate community )

With so package, everybody can build the site of a marriage agency in a short time.

Take a look at http://www.osdate.de/ ... sorry, it is in German but keep the link for the new template or plug-in

You can have english explaination and download at http://www.tufat.com/script39.htm

http://www.tufat.com/gallery.php?script=39&index=1 for the feature...

http://www.tufat.com/docs/osdate/install.html for the installation

http://www.tufat.com/docs/osdate/flashchat.html for integrate a FlashChat ( same that RWD  )

 

 

[Admin]

Maybe i am a little late with my reply but it was not easy to find something cheap ( or free ), easy to install and easy to use/admin with a lot of option... but i have maybe find what you need... no programming work, all in a package and ready to work...

And it is free !!! ( osDate is a professional-grade, open-source PHP/MySQL dating script. It is distributed under the General Public License (GPL), with the only restriction that you should not take credit for the development of osDate, and if you make improvements to osDate, you should share your code with the entire osDate community )

With so package, everybody can build the site of a marriage agency in a short time.

Take a look at http://www.osdate.de/... sorry, it is in German but keep the link for the new template or plug-in

You can have english explaination and download at http://www.tufat.com/script39.htm

http://www.tufat.com/gallery.php?script=39&index=1for the feature...

http://www.tufat.com/docs/osdate/install.htmlfor the installation

http://www.tufat.com/docs/osdate/flashchat.htmlfor integrate a FlashChat ( same that RWD )

You need to be careful with osDate - at least for a few more weeks/months. The current version is a beta and the release version is scheduled for February. The developers (www.tufat.com) are explicitly recommending that no-one take the software 'live' until the first release is made public.

Having said all that - it is, indeed, a nice package - and promises to blow away the commercial packages once it is in final release form.

Darren is a terrific developer and has numerous scripts for web use that are extremely cheap ($5 each) and extremely functional - such as the Flashchat script we are using for the Chatrooms here. I thought about recommending one of the other scripts to Richard (the EasySite script - sort of a small CMS) for his website development, but I don't know enough about it yet to make the recommendation.

FWIW

- Dan

[Bruno]

Working on template will be the real work... no more programming... in the case of Richard, he can use a specialist for build a specific template for his own site... one time pay for te template and after, he can make the rest of work himself without real problem...

[andrewfi]

This is the kind of thing Richard needs to be looking at, IMHO. There is no need for him to reinvent the wheel as he has been trying to do. Get a decent template hacker to make the thing look as he wants it, to incorporate the functionality that he needs and to give the training to maintain it.

I know, from working with some similar stuff, that the first few days with a script like osDate or other CMSs is a brainbending experience, but the result is a good payoff. A well laid out template design and a well implemented backend will reap dividends in professional appearance and reliability that no self-made system made by a single, non-professional is likely to do.

[Rvrwind]

http://www.tufat.com/script39.htm

[/color][/u][/url]This was one site that was recommended in a PM from another boardmember. I have been looking it over in my spare time the past couple of days but am still not sure how it all comes together. As Andrew said this is kinda what I am looking for templates I can easily workwith without much real inventing of scripts & programming.

I'm entertaining one other offer although I havn't heard back from the individual who made it yet. In the meantime I am delving more into this to see if I can figure out how to apply it & use it. Guess I'm basically dense when it comes to this sorta thing.

RVR-Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner

[jb]

Richard,

I took the liberty of giving your contact info to my son in Moscow.  He and his buddies do this stuff for side money while they're in school.  Trust me, they are all 4th year students at Moscow Institute on their way to a MSEE, and are quite expert at building websites.  If I were you, not putting you down, but if you don't understand what you are doing, you are much better off letting an expert do the basics and then let them train you on the maintenance of the site.   You could probably figure it all out eventually, but how long do you want to fart around with the project?  Using an expert, it might cost you a couple of hundred to get the site the way you want it, but it'd be done and you'd be up and running.

Just my thoughts

[Ste]

http://www.tufat.com/script39.htm

[/color][/u][/url]This was one site that was recommended in a PM from another boardmember. I have been looking it over in my spare time the past couple of days but am still not surehow it all comes together. As Andrew said this is kinda what I am looking for templates I can easily workwith without much real inventing of scripts & programming.

I'm entertaining one other offer although I havn't heard back from the individual who made it yet. In the meantime I am delving more into this to see if I can figure out how to apply it & use it. Guess I'm basically dense when it comes to this sorta thing.

RVR-Canadian Cowboy/Agency Owner
[/quote]

Hey Richard, I got a Sun Enterprise 450 computer sat next to me now for you to run it on!!

It's a bit old now - but has 4 procs, 3gb RAM, and 20 SCSI disks, AND THREE WHOLE PSU'S!!

I have to get rid of it cos Nadia has refused to let me bring it in the bedroom, what's wrong with her?

It's a bit noisy and weighs 90kgs, uses a lot of electric and hums in the background. No, hang on - that's me......

Redoing ur DVD tomorrow mate!!

Ste