Hi everyone.
I'm building a new website for my new production company.
I was wondering if anybody could give me any tips how to do it with relatively low expenses (I'm not very knowledgable to do it myslf). I would like to have an impressive website, but nothing too complicated - so how much I should be looking to spend?
Any suggestions greately appreciated...
Vic

It depends on a lot of factors- How much do you WANT to do your self? What features do you need? There are tons of people like myself, who can build a website for you fairly cheap, or you could do it yourself for free- minus the cost of hosting, domain registration, and software.

It depends on a lot of factors- How much do you WANT to do your self? What features do you need? There are tons of people like myself, who can build a website for you fairly cheap, or you could do it yourself for free- minus the cost of hosting, domain registration, and software.

Thanks Keith,
I'd like to have something like: main page with simple, yet tastefull graphic, a page for pricing, another one for sample videos, and possibly one more for all kind of additional information.
Could you email me some possible prices for that kind of website.
arc75@mac.com
And, as you said, if I'll do it myself, what kind of software would you recommend to use?
Thanks again
Vic

Take a look at my site, it is under my sig. That is as basic as it gets. As far as software, if you are on windows, Internet Explorer used to have Front Page Xpress built in. It is free, and very basic. Netscape also used to have something free with it's browser. I prefer Dreamweaver, but it is a bit pricey, specially if you only need to build one site.

As far as pricing, we would need to decide how much you want to do... but I am very affordable :)

Keith is right. The cost of a website is like the cost of a car. It totally depends on what you want.

My agency develops websites as part of what we do, and the average ballpark range would be $500-1500. You can check out our website to see some examples of the work we do:

www.dreambigproductions.com

We've used both Dreamweave and GoLive (which is what we now use), but if you're looking to build the site yourself, and you don't know anything about website development, they will likely impose a steep learning curve on you. FrontPage works for building very simple websites, although it tends to be buggy from my experience. You can also design your own website via built-in software offered by some hosting companies, with the disadvantage being you can't always do what you want (like incorporating video clips, for example).

Hope that helps a little.

Not that I would choose it for my own website but you can get very classy and simple templates from many different programs as well as online. They can then be tuned very easily to have your info and samples on them. They are usually under $50 online and many programs, such as dreamweaver, are very easy to do all of the editing with. Dreamweaver also has a free 30 day full functionality trial so that would be a very cheap route that would produce very nice results.

There's a GREAT product out there for creating Flash content for your site, without the steep learning curve (or price) of Flash. It's called "Swish" and I've been using it for a few years. The bad news is, they've discontinued "Swish2" which was a great product and have now brought out "SwishMAX" which is still good, but about $50 more in price ($99.95). If you don't want to spend the time and money on Flash, give this a try.

http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=products&product=max

They also have some impressive templates and tutorials you can download and use.

Good luck!

Hi everyone.
I'm building a new website for my new production company.
I was wondering if anybody could give me any tips how to do it with relatively low expenses (I'm not very knowledgable to do it myslf). I would like to have an impressive website, but nothing too complicated - so how much I should be looking to spend?
Any suggestions greately appreciated...
Vic

You can reduce costs by using the same basic page layout on each page, typically by keeping the same menu, header, and footer layout and only changing the content. Decide on the site navigation and write out all of your content in electronic form so that it can be easily imported. Typing and redesign gets expensive. Start out by finding a desiger to design your site, then a web developer who can implement the design. Interactivity that requires back-end programming will cost you, so don't do it unless you really need it -- e.g., it might be worth collecting leads from people to get something for free, so in that case you might have a form to be fillled out. Make sure your web developer can implement the site using a web standards approach -- you want users to be able to access your content from any web browser on any platform. Get familiar with the capabilities that are available to you by visiting some Flash sites and a good CSS site such as http://www.csszengarden.com. Before hiring a designer or web developer, get a list of their latest work and view it with some different browsers. Does it render well on each? Look at your hosting costs. How much storage and throughput is offered by your hosting provider? How much is the overage? Do they offer PHP support on the backend to keep programming overhead low? If you are going to host any video the throughput and overage are important numbers.

I can do simple flash websites for anywhere from $100 and up. So if you plan on hiring someone to do it for you, I'd be more than happy to give you a quote.

Here are some of my recent sites

www.food-ex.com
www.ehansenproductions.com
www.incandescent.us

If you have a basic idea of what you want, the pictures, and the text then I can easily get a website done for you within a week or so.

Let me know,

-Lowell Oswald

thanks for your replies...
Lot of what I saw on your links was impressive...
Me and my partner are researching some options and I'll see how that goes.
Thanks again
Vic

www.incandescent.us



-Lowell Oswald

Lowell, just a heads up the video 35mm short that pops up in the flashplayer volume control doesn't work, infact the main stage audio big switch seems to turn it on and off, not sure if this is the effect you wanted..

P.S. Love the Ehansen site..

Thanks Pat, I'm blaming my friend for that one..The incandescent site was one I did for him for under $200. He's only payed $100 so I told him I'm not going finish it all until I get the rest of the money (I told him I'd give him a good deal if I got all the money up front).

Anyone out there still building web sites? I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to get video on the web and build a nice looking site but hey...I suck at it. I have resorted to giving up and I would love for someone to build it for me. I have a web host and domain name and all I want is a basic layout so that I can post my video samples, a page for packages and a page for other info. I want to go as inexpansive as possible. Anybody able to help me out?

Thank you so much,
Jeff

Shoot me an e-mail Jeff. I can help you out.

Same here, unless you like Keith better. You better not like Keith better! Just kidding.

I found him first!

Yeah . . . yeah . . . d:-)

Hehehe... You bored to, Travis?

Heh, I was on the phone with a client and he put me on hold . . . and . . . yeah . . . I got bored . . .

We've been placing videos on the Internet since 1997

Take a look at http://blackcollegebustour.com/media/2004_media/2004_webisodes.php

and of course our website www.roaddoggz.com

But we don't build websites

Same here, unless you like Keith better. You better not like Keith better! Just kidding.

Bandon? I’m jealous. A golfers dream.