Did you build your companies website yourself?

[dagaul101]

If you have the time to clearn CSS/HTML and PHP you could do it yourself, ofcourse if you are pressed for time, outsourcing is the only way to go

 

[hdwedj32]

Built both of mine myself including all the video production.

 

[Loaded Studios]

Depends how you want it to look.
Always worth spending some money on what will be the forefront of your business.

 

[Chris Graham]

We built ocPortal.com ourselves using ocPortal . I hope this doesn't come across as advertising, it's free software. Our site actually took a long time, we put a huge amount of work into it, but you can set up sites very quickly too.

 

[I Love Spreadsheets]

I have always designed and put my own sites together but that is because I come from a web background, however depending on what your budget is I recommend that you get someone else to do it.

If that is out of your price range start with a Wordpress website. You can add to it and change the look of it simply by installing a new theme. There are loads of free themes out there but you can buy professional themes from as low as £50. The advantage of WP is that once you get in to it you will discover you will add more and more content than if you had to pay someone to add it for you. More content normally means better ROI for your website

 

[holmewoodorg]

I built our website myself <link removed by mod> but the best for small business on a budget is MR Site just 25 pounds a year or cheaper on ebay about ten pounds. Business people like Levi Roots built his with that software very easy to use and great for a budget. Websites will do one thing but it depends what you are looking for.

 

[holmewoodorg]

The videos are a waste of time as all they do is read out what it says bellow, in my mind thats the same as someone making a powerpoint presentation and then just reading every word off the slide to me...

Any way i did both of our company websites with more development work to come.

Yes videos are a waste of time hey great website by the way I designed my organic clothing site myself <link removed by mod> myself as well took me a few weeks with an old actinic package I had lying about that was 4 years old.

 

[holmewoodorg]

I built both of our companys websites through dreamweaver. I think it depends what your looking as to whether you build it yourself or send the work out.

They are great websites you designed well done you

 

[RoyaleGraphics]

They are great websites you designed well done you

Thank you very much

 

[Poppy Design]

If you plan to design your own web site you are also going to need a basic understanding of how to prepare images and graphics for the web ie they should be 72dpi saved for the web.
Something like Photoshop Elements (about £50 I think) would probably do the trick.

 

[Deleted member 106254]

You can also use http://pixlr.com which does almost everything photoshop elements will do but for free and it's online so you don't have to install anything.

 

[Paul Norman]

We had ours built professionally, and it is maintained by the company that built it. To build it ourselves would take up more time than we have - our time is better spent sourcing the right products, servicing the orders, and looking after the shop.

 

[Casorni First Aid]

Very interesting thread. I've downloaded the 30 day trial of dreamweaver and am trying to learn how to use it to build my own website.

 

[JDX_John]

For a proper business site I advocate paying someone. That said my current site I wrote from scratch, BUT more as a way to force myself to understand the tech a bit better. And I KNOW my design skills are hopeless.

I don't really consider hiring someone to create you a WP theme is the same as hiring a designer. If I'm going that far I'd probably rather get a decent theme, make minor tweaks so it is unique, and use the money on getting an artist to create great artwork for the site content.

This is all talking about content-only sites though. If I was doing e-commerce or something like that I think you'd have to pay someone unless you are a developer and really want to use your time that way.

 

[JDX_John]

Here's a question - do web designers tend to do art as well - creating logos and nice graphics to put in your pages, maybe images of your product photoshopped to blend well? Or would you ideally have a separate art guy to supply art the designer incorporates with your written content?

 

[JDX_John]

I am a bit of a website snob when it comes to things. I wouldn't ever use a company who's website had a stock wordpress theme as to me it seems like they couldn't be bothered and shouldn't have bothered at all.

I was kind of thinking the same thing, because my target clients are big, big companies. I want my site (when it's made) to look like a 'proper business' site, not a small-business site. That said, many bespoke sites look exactly like WP themes anyway so I'm starting to think it's not such an issue.
Of course a techy guy can tell in 2s if it's using a WP theme BUT the average punter probably won't have seen anyone using "The Professional" before. I hadn't, and I saw a site using it and was really impressed, until I realised they were using an un-modified $30 theme.

 

[DesignerNick]

Here's a question - do web designers tend to do art as well - creating logos and nice graphics to put in your pages, maybe images of your product photoshopped to blend well? Or would you ideally have a separate art guy to supply art the designer incorporates with your written content?

I think most will do if they are designers rather than developers

 

[bdw]

I've downloaded the 30 day trial of dreamweaver and am trying to learn how to use it to build my own website.

It's going to take you a lot longer than thirty days and you will make lots of errors without even being aware of this. These could damage your prospects of generating any traffic to your website and could be potentially harmful to your business.

I have said this before about website design and I will say it again. It's not about knowing a few things about website design (or DW). It's about knowing what you don't know.

Here's a question - do web designers tend to do art as well - creating logos and nice graphics to put in your pages, maybe images of your product photoshopped to blend well? Or would you ideally have a separate art guy to supply art the designer incorporates with your written content?

As stated above, web design and graphic design are two different disciplines. Some small web design businesses like ours will do both up to a point but we recognises our limitations in this. We can normally come up with text based graphics but if the client specifies complex logos or graphics we would sub this work out to a graphic designer.

.

 

[RemoteTechs]

We built our site, and all we also did all the design and image work, although we have outsourced SEO now.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how some webdesign companies have such terrible looking sites! I am not referring to anyone on this thread, just mainly from the tons of spam we get from SEO and design companies.
To me its like being a car salesman and driving an filthy old banger!

 

[Diana Jouney]

I love wordpress & thats what Im doing

We build ours with Thesis a wordpress theme. Soo easy.

 

[Supplier Smart]

Hi, I did mine myself.
I purchased a hosting package and domain.
Installed Wordpress and then found a free template that suited my industry.
I would liked to have had the money to go out to an agency but did not have the start up funds to do this.
Once I have built a good stream of business then I will consider a rebrand at some point.

 

[bdw]

Hi, I did mine myself.

Yes, and I must say that (apart from the obvious omissions in SEO) you made a pretty good job of it .

But we have to consider that you are a software person and that you probably already had most of the the skills required to pull this together. It's when people like local tradesmen try to build their own websites that the cracks really start to appear.

Having said that, had you got someone who knows about SEO to design this for you, you would probably have got your money back and more very quickly.

Aside: I do something similar to you with CMMS software but I actually sell the software. You'll find two of my websites in the top two positions in Google for this. I have been doing this for ten years now so if you are interested PM me and I'll give you some advice.

.

 

[DBMark]

Well, as someone who describes himself as an IT consultant, I could have spent a lot of time on bells and whistles. But I went for the (relatively) straightforward option of setting up a Drupal site, and just added my text (which I need to work on) and modified the theme a little. There are links there to other sites, if people want to see examples of my web work. The best part of using a cms like Drupal is that I can add in modules to change the functionality of the site, from time to time. For example I've put in a scheduling page, so that in future if I'm busy, prospective customers can check when the best time to contact me would be. Well, that's the plan..

 

[Supplier Smart]

That my experience is in accounting and stock control software.

I had no idea how websites worked or how to create them, update code etc etc.

My local library is 50 metres from my house and started there.

My site is Wordpress with plugins which come with some simple tick box options.

I took some examples from other IT consultants about the way they described what they do without copying it.

As with any website, I am always looking to improve it, especially on the SEO side of things.

 

[DBMark]

That my experience is in accounting and stock control software.

I had no idea how websites worked or how to create them, update code etc etc.

My local library is 50 metres from my house and started there.

My site is Wordpress with plugins which come with some simple tick box options.

I took some examples from other IT consultants about the way they described what they do without copying it.

As with any website, I am always looking to improve it, especially on the SEO side of things.

I'm very impressed with how you've adapted Wordpress. The landing page looks very professional, almost too intimidating for smaller companies? At this level though, I think you need to add a favicon. Certainly a lot there I intend to learn from!

 

[bdw]

Actually the landing page or actually the homepage is one of the main problems with this website. It looks fine but it contains very little relevant text. This is a serious omission. Text is food for search engines.

.

 

[DBMark]

Actually the landing page or actually the homepage is one of the main problems with this website. It looks fine but it contains very little relevant text. This is a serious omission. Text is food for search engines.

.

He does have some text below the fold though. Maybe just a bit of tweaking there?

 

[Supplier Smart]

I have the option of adding 3 small section below the homepage picture slider.
I am updating these as we speak.
I was trying to keep the homepage to as few scroll downs as possible.

 

[ukdoorshop]

Getting the relevant software to build your website yourself is very expensive then it is quite time consuming to sit down and learn new coding methods. It is worth while in the end it just depends on whether you have the time and patients to do so.

 

[bdw]

For a medical website? :|

 

[Casorni First Aid]

I thought you all might like to know how I'm getting along - I've been on to my hosting company every single day, several times a day, for the past week, to sort out the mess I'm making trying to make a simple basic website
I change things, then the site won't appear, or it wont let me redownload without deleting files, which I do, but it makes things worse, or even more strange, the files just magically reappear once I deleted them :|
I'm driving myself and them mad!!!
I've mananged to resetup my email contact just now.
I have a choice of Site builder and template, joomla, wordpress, drupal and a few others. Joomla was a nightmare - I tried following a youtube tutorial then spent 2 days with tech support trying to undo whatever it was I did - in the end they just reset the whole thing. I found joomla to be anything but intuitive.
What is drupal like? Or wordpress?
All I want is a simple but clean and bright site that will have my logo, info, and a page for each of the courses I run, and contact details.
Would Wordpress or Drupal be good for this?

Cas

 

[MASSEY]

Wordpress is the best for novices.

 

[Faevilangel]

Go with WP, much easier to use as a user and more flexible for what you need.

 

[Diana Jouney]

I thought you all might like to know how I'm getting along - I've been on to my hosting company every single day, several times a day, for the past week, to sort out the mess I'm making trying to make a simple basic website
I change things, then the site won't appear, or it wont let me redownload without deleting files, which I do, but it makes things worse, or even more strange, the files just magically reappear once I deleted them :|
I'm driving myself and them mad!!!
I've mananged to resetup my email contact just now.
I have a choice of Site builder and template, joomla, wordpress, drupal and a few others. Joomla was a nightmare - I tried following a youtube tutorial then spent 2 days with tech support trying to undo whatever it was I did - in the end they just reset the whole thing. I found joomla to be anything but intuitive.
What is drupal like? Or wordpress?
All I want is a simple but clean and bright site that will have my logo, info, and a page for each of the courses I run, and contact details.
Would Wordpress or Drupal be good for this?

Cas

Wordpress is indeed easy. We run all our sites on wordpress.

 

[bdw]

I thought you all might like to know how I'm getting along - I've been on to my hosting company every single day, several times a day, for the past week, to sort out the mess I'm making trying to make a simple basic website

Don't beat yourself up. In our experience you are not unusual.

Wordpress is indeed easy. We run all our sites on wordpress.

Yeah, that's right and winning the premiership is easy for Man U. It's not so easy for Kidderminster Harriers.

 

[tradedemon]

Definitely worth building your sites yourself. You'll learn loads and it's the best way to start out.

Later when you become more succesful at what you do, sure pay a pro and get it done even better..

@carsoni - search for wordpress it'll probably do what you need.

 

[greenguru]

i built my own
freshstartliving.com