Simple website designer wanted!

[Turnarcades]

OK so here's the thing.

The Turnarcades website is ready for the off, but I'm unhappy with my current designs. My coding knowledge is limited to HTML, and I'm not great at that. I've asked around for a few quotes and looked at a few ready-made templates, but I can't currently put the money into a custom design people are asking for (into the hundreds).

All I'm after is a simple site that loads fast, but supports many pictures and has a nice clear navigation menu at the top or side to go between a home page, links page, gallery and product pages for the Turnarcades line, so about 15-20 pages in size. Anyway I was wondering if there are any amateurs out there who are quite handy with a bit of coding and fancies making a few quid from it.

Please e-mail me at samshaw946@hotmail.com or craig@turnarcades.co.uk with details or post a quick message here with your price and contact info. I will do a quick sketch tonight of what I'm looking for and try to post it here tomorrow, but hopefully you get the idea.

[spacies]

Who you calling simple?

[FhM]

You could get someone to set you up a content management system such as joomla then you can do it yourself once you learn the backend.

[ChadTower]

You could get someone to set you up a content management system such as joomla then you can do it yourself once you learn the backend.

That is a good suggestion and the type I recommend too.  He doesn't even have to find someone to do that - there are plenty of third party hosting services that are both inexpensive and do all of the app implementation for you.

EDIT:  BTW, does anyone recommend a specific host for a low traffic CMS hosting solution?  I have a friend who needs something similar - probably can't do much himself technically but a CMS may work for him - and he has some good info to get out to an interested audience.

[fatfingers]

Ow! My Eyes!  If nothing else, please get rid of that yellow text!

[melarky]

You should check out http://www.boxedart.com/ .  If you have some basic HTML skills, you could probably find a decent template there for cheap, my brother uses them all the time (I think they charge something like $50 but it's a subscription for a whole year of unlimited template downloads, they may have changed it though, that was over a year ago my brother was telling me about them).  They seem to have some nice templates.

As for hosts, I know http://www.westhost.com/ has Joomla and wordpress as easy install applications in their control panel.  Might be worth checking out...

[Turnarcades]

Oh ignore that! That's just a temporary few pages I uploaded from my old old old webpage I did on my first build years ago. It's just there to fill space, mess with some fonts and test uptime/response time on my new web host.

I've used a couple of website building programs including the one offered by my host but I just don't have time and finding little animations and clipart and that I like is LONG.
I'd rather just pitch a storyboard brief and have someone compile the images I do have.

If it's that simple then surely someone can knock one up for me.

[DiGi]

I know it not fully up but the homepage link doesn't work once you've gone to another section unless you havent made the page 01 home page.htm change the links to index.html.

DiGi

[Turnarcades]

It's not meant to be fully functional.... Like I said, ignore that crap there at the moment, it's just some test material and I've messed it all up a bit playing around with it. It's coming down soon.

[ids]

surely someone can knock one up for me.

I might be interested - do you have a picture of her?    Oh sorry - family friendly forum 

[Neverending Project]

There is also some good, inexpensive stuff at Template Monster. If you are not HTML savvy at all, you can even hire them to customize your layout.

[ratzz]

If you really want something you're going to be pleased with, you'd be better hiring a competent website designer. 'Knocking one up' means you'll get just that - it probably won't be indexed successfully in Google either.

Bite the bullet my friend, and get some books, and plenty of knowledge, or hire someone to fo ir professionally for you.

BTW, if it takes a long time for you to source good images etc., what makes you thing it won't take someone else a long time also?

Good luck

[Space Fractal]

is the page system like that one I used many of my pages (which using php with no database)?

multijuke.com, spacefractal.com, btktennis.dk (removed links to avoid these as a Advertising, which are not mean here).

They are all mostly share the same php code I used and templates and design can of course been changed.

[Turnarcades]

Thanks for all your comments and special thanks to Ratz - I love your stuff man but I just can't stretch to it at the mo.

Space Fractal you almost have it right. The basic layout you have almost to a tee, and the third one you list is getting closer; using the full browser area and having a graphical header. I'd like the background to have a very neon glow though - kind of a vlack overall theme with like a blue neon mesh background, kind of smoked to allow a bright text to be read clearly, and maybe a page with some drop-down lists to create a 'quote builder'.

[Space Fractal]

The first two domains use the same code, just changing the theme (read: skin) and content. The third is based on the same code, Just modificered due to the diffecent design.

It would been a good idea to start design a webpage in Photoshop or other paint application to show what you would need (and number of pictures).

Personly I code my sites in php (a server script language), so it can been use much more dynamic without needed a bunch of html files for each page. All pages I have on these domains is actuelly just a speciel formatted text file, seperated completly from the design, which is "loaded" by the script.

[spacies]

If you really want something you're going to be pleased with, you'd be better hiring a competent website designer. 'Knocking one up' means you'll get just that - it probably won't be indexed successfully in Google either.

Bite the bullet my friend, and get some books, and plenty of knowledge, or hire someone to fo ir professionally for you.

BTW, if it takes a long time for you to source good images etc., what makes you thing it won't take someone else a long time also?

Good luck

Wise words.
If you want to look like a backyarder, do it yourself.
If you want to look professional, hire a professional.

[Space Fractal]

Mightbeen you should simply hold to the content alone first and get that to work. There is a bit to much backgrounds, scrollers and such.

You could use the greate www.colormatch.dk and www.colormatch5k.com to select the colors needed and hold to these colors to keep them to a minimum.

You could also split the page to 2 frames (even I normaly not like them, but ok here), one for the top menu in the top and one for the content, which is easier to mainstream, since you use Frontpage as application.

IM are not a graphics designer, hence I prefer simple webpages, but I do have wrote some jave, php games and jukebox software as well.

[ratzz]

Thanks for all your comments and special thanks to Ratz

Hey, no problem -- its the least I could do.

Actually, the least I could do would be not to reply at all, but that would be just downright rude!

[ChadTower]

As for hosts, I know http://www.westhost.com/ has Joomla and wordpress as easy install applications in their control panel.  Might be worth checking out...

Westhost doesn't look bad at all, especially given the near root-like access you get with a VPS rather than traditional web hosting.

[Turnarcades]

I decided to give it a go and have started to build my own over the next few weeks while work is quiet. I've used a template similar to one I was after and have modified it to how I want it to basically look. The shell has been uploaded and proper content will be being updated over the coming weeks.

Thanks to all who advised.