looking at launching a website but hard to find reliable web developer

[bdw]

I am perhaps going to make myself unpopular as the devil's advocate but I think this should be said.

Why do all the great, good and experienced web design companies who post in response to threads like this have to hang around forums looking for work? If you were that good you would not have time for this. If you know what you are doing, have a good reputation and a track record then you should be capable of generating your own work without hanging around forums looking for scraps and getting into cat fights with others about who is the best. It's not nice to look at!

And before anyone asks why I am posting here it is not because I am looking for work so don't anyone PM me. I can generate all the enquiries I need at my time of life and I have the time to spend in here. I reject more work than I take on and I would not dream of giving myself the hassle of taking on something that I am 100% sure that I can complete.
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[gavcooper]

And before anyone asks why I am posting here it is not because I am looking for work so don't anyone PM me. I can generate all the enquiries I need at my time of life and I have the time to spend in here. I reject more work than I take on and I would not dream of giving myself the hassle of taking on something that I am 100% sure that I can complete.
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Lucky you in the current economic climate being able to turn away work is very much a luxury. Even good experienced design companies are looking for work.

I believe a lot of the designers / design companies are posting on these forums to make people aware of the services they offer. People start threads looking for answers or because they are disappointed in the service they have previously received.

I see nothing wrong with designers replying saying yes I can do the job, but agree about your comment of people looking to get into fights.

 

[bdw]

Lucky you in the current economic climate being able to turn away work is very much a luxury. Even good experienced design companies are looking for work.

I actually became twice as busy during the recession. We operate at the lower end of the price scale and we are quite successful at onsite SEO so I can only assume that so many small businesses were struggling and trying to optimise their business opportunities and those that did not have a website realised that they had to have one.

(Sorry, I am dragging this off topic.)

 

[fisicx]

Why do all the great, good and experienced web design companies who post in response to threads like this have to hang around forums looking for work?

I don't think the regular contributors to the forums actively promote themselves or are looking for work. Many have sig links but that's a by-product of membership rather than a bit of self-promo.

 

[brownie]

If you know what you are doing, have a good reputation and a track record then you should be capable of generating your own work without hanging around forums looking for scraps and getting into cat fights with others about who is the best. It's not nice to look at!

What cat fights from the great and good? :|

All I've seen is bedroom bandits whos every post is promotion of their business without adding any value to the thread.

 

[NuBlue]

Why do all the great, good and experienced web design companies who post in response to threads like this have to hang around forums looking for work? If you were that good you would not have time for this.
.

It's a fair point. I personally have not pithced for work on here for years (ok, maybe the odd hosting gig) as the general standard of what people want and more importantly the budget are usualy out of sync with the work we like to take on.

I have always found the work requests posted on here to be almost insulting to our profession and for that reason never pitch. It's either "I want it tomorrow for less than £100" or "my web designer left me, please help" which always rings alarm bells too.

I just like the banter

 

[ADS-MARKETING]

Agreed - Luckily our business has been trading since 1993 so we have a good customer base behind us which has steered us through the recession well.

I look after marketing and try my best to contribute to the forum as and when possible to help people, but in return raise awareness out of our area. We are lucky to have such forums during this recession as it helps customers and businesses find the right choices today.

I hope the original post gets the answers they need.

 

[MarcusMiller]

Please dont think im picking on you Marcus, but you were honest enough to say this had happend.

The thing is, whilst you walked away from 9 months of work unpaid, the poor person who comissioned you, perhaps as a startup business, or someone trying desperately to expand ended up 9 months down the line with nothing - this is potentially catastrophic, and could well in some situations end someones business.

I've been on the receiving end of a project like this and its a big blow, thankfully we were well enough established to survive but its a huge setback.

Hey, did I say nine months in my post? It was not that long, was more like 2 months, possibly three and I did screw up. Basically, I was just setting up on my own, I could have managed this project fairly easily, had the skills but just became overwhelmed with the day to day management of the business and all the different jobs I had on. I handed over the code, a fully working site, they were just not happy with some elements and they took it to another company and got it finished - I even helped them find the third party.

Ultimately, the job fell down as we did not clearly specify what they wanted, I built what I felt they wanted from the original brief but they kept trying to add to it but would give no flexibility with regards to budget, this carried on to the point when I became totally exasperated and had to either commit to another month of free development or just walk away.

It was a mess, I screwed up, the relationship soured, i lost sleep, almost considered going back to work, but I did my utmost to limit the pain that they suffered due to my mistake.

Point is, it's easy to make these kind of mistakes in this industry, especially when you are starting out - only human after all!

 

[MarcusMiller]

Quick one, BDW, that's a great post but slightly hypocritical! I have enjoyed forums for ten years, it's kind of cool to socialise online (facebook, twitter anyone?) and I view it as a treat inbetween real work and if I get some extra exposure and maybe pick up a new client or job then, all the better but it is not the main reason, hell, I just like to witter!

 

[fisicx]

Hi

Well we can help you in that regard we have a experience of more than 15 years in that field and we can provide you a dedicated Developer in a very cost effective sort of manner.

If you are interested i can give you a call and discuss things further.

Regards

Ron James

Oh look, someone else who hasn't read the thread and is doing exactly what BDW mentioned. I wonder which part of Asia they are from?

 

[spidersites]

Hello
If your still looking for a web developer please consider me. Some of my projects include

www ukfreepages co.uk
www. imagemapeditor net

Let me know what you want and your budjet and Ill get back to ASAP

regard

 

[fisicx]

Hello
If your still looking for a web developer please consider me. Some of my projects include

www ukfreepages co.uk
www. imagemapeditor net

Let me know what you want and your budjet and Ill get back to ASAP

regard

Aaaaaaagh! Another one! Why doesn't anyone ever read the thread before adding their stoopid pointless posts.

 

[Empecinado]

Join the queue!!!!!

I'm afraid that finding a good developer who really knows their stuff is incredibly hard. I've been let down more times than i care to remember over the years by people who either never deliver, or deliver crap beacuse they werent upto the job in the first place.

Many developers talk big but very few deliver.

I used to develop websites a few years ago and I had friends that were selling absolutely awful designs to people and yet they would pay.

 

[spidersites]

Sorry dont have the time to read 6 pages of posting. Did someone get the business?

 

[fisicx]

Sorry dont have the time to read 6 pages of posting. Did someone get the business?

Read the first post and look at the example site. By not reading the thread you have missed some key discussion points making your offer a little foolish.

 

[awebapart.com]

I think the cause of this problem is the fact that there is no standard accreditation for Web development or I.T.

Most professions have a professional body and a standard level of accreditation which ensures minimum standards but there's nothing to distinguish between a self-taught bedroom web developer and a professional developer/designer. Granted, there are now degrees in web design/development, CIW qualifications and Microsoft accreditation but which is the better root when choosing a designer/developer?

Having read through this thread, is it generally true that choosing web designers/web developers can only be judged on a portfolio of work and not upon qualifications or training?

I see web development as one area of software development. For software development, experience and career/project history is important, but don't underestimate the value of a good computer science degree too. Not just because of the academic stuff, but also because of the software development experience gained during the degree. A good computer science degree will structure projects in a way specifically to introduce to the student important and more and more advanced development concepts, concepts they can take forward in the future, whatever environment they use in the future.

It is the deep understanding of these underlying development concepts that makes a good developer IMO. This knowledge and experience is environment neutral, the environment is secondary to the system. Environments come and go. From my own experience working in the city in the 90's, when the banks changed their architectures from 2 tier windows applications (windows application talking to a SQLServer database), to 3 tier web-based intranet applications, the good developers did well in both environments. In the following decade the good developers also did well moving from pre .net languages to .net languages. I stress this difference between environment and underlying core software development understanding quite a bit on my own how to program tutorial site.

Don't take my word for the value of a good computer science degree, just take a look at the web technology jobs on the IT jobs sites to see where a computer science degree is mentioned:

Jobserve
IT Job Board
Monster
Computer Weekly Jobs

But also look at what a computer science graduate has done after their degree, what companies did they work for, what projects did they work on, what other training courses did they attend, were they in an environment where they could continue to learn from more experienced co-workers, senior developers, mentors, etc.

For what it's worth (not a lot IMO), some computer science degrees are also accredited for the BCS (British Computer Society) Chartered qualification, and the CITP (Chartered IT Professional) qualification.

As for Microsoft accreditation, some companies like this too, but IMO the MS qualifications are pretty much read the manual parrot fashion then take the multi-choice exam. They are also shortlived because they focus on a particular environment and a particular version, so they have to be updated every couple of years. Whereas a computer science degree is for life.

SEO is also a very grey area as apart from google, there are no standard qualifications to be had.

If you look at the backgrounds of the founders of google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin they both have computer science backgrounds. A good proportion of the developers they take on have computer science backgrounds too. A search engine IMO is a computer science project, in fact that is how google started, as a computer science research project at Stanford University.

Since SEO is about second guessing, reverse engineering, and trying to work out how google works, where google is fundamentally an advanced computer science project, I do not think that it is unreasonable to say that a good computer scientist has a better than average chance of performing well in this role. In fact if you change the job search links above, taking out 'web' and replacing it with SEO, you will find SEO jobs mentioning computer science degrees too.

 

[brownie]

Hello
If your still looking for a web developer please consider me. Some of my projects include

www ukfreepages co.uk
www. imagemapeditor net

Let me know what you want and your budjet and Ill get back to ASAP

regard

LOL

What about your other thread being unable to get Paypal to return to a URL.

 

[spidersites]

Fair comment. Havent done much e-commerce work.

 

[bdw]

where google is fundamentally an advanced computer science project,

A very good post AWA and I agree with most of what you wrote but not the above. Google is an international corporation with shareholders whose only interest is good performance on the stock market. The days when Google was only interested in offering the best search results are long gone. Profit is the driving force now as confirmed by the China palaver.

 

[awebapart.com]

Google is an international corporation with shareholders whose only interest is good performance on the stock market. The days when Google was only interested in offering the best search results are long gone. Profit is the driving force now as confirmed by the China palaver.

OK. Google's underlying search technology has gone from being an advanced computer science project doing good things, to an advanced computer science project doing good things, evil things, and greedy things. But it is fundamentally an advanced computer science project nonetheless.

 

[DotNetWebs]

... I agree with most of what you wrote but not the above...

I think the "where" at the start of that sentence refers to the previous part of the sentence i.e. "...second guessing, reverse engineering, and trying to work out how google works"

In other words, Paul's "science project" refers to the technical aspects of Google and not the business model.

Regards

Dotty

 

[Mark-UK]

Avoid Peartree.