You tell me.

http://www.twomenandatruckoffayetteville.com/

4/23/2009 1:20:11 PM

barely perhaps - does it include hosting for a # of months?

is the request an estimate going to always lead them away from your website to another one that doesn't have the same template

home moves and business moves shouldn't require a a scroll either on my screen 1400x1050

4/23/2009 1:22:47 PM

Is this the same guy who was pissed about his developer using WP? You really should have done some research before plowing into this thing.

About your site, though... not particularly attractive, appears fully functional, I don't know what your hosting package is, but $1,500 doesn't sound that unreasonable. I'm assuming you're one of those clients who thought he was gonna get blown away for $200.

P.S. did you pay the entire sum up front? No one should do that.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 1:32 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2009 1:29:27 PM

If that's worth $1500 then I need to change careers. I could do that in a couple hours.

4/23/2009 1:33:07 PM

If I could make static websites like that for $1,500 each I'd be a millionaire in under a year.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 1:41 PM. Reason : $texas$]

4/23/2009 1:37:55 PM

No, I didn't expect to get blown away for $200. They did another site for us, and we were very happy with it.

I guess I just expected more for $1500.

4/23/2009 1:44:58 PM

No offense to anyone else in here, but Ernie is the only one really qualified to talk about this who has said anything of substance.




$1500 is not unreasonable for that site.

The polish is a bit lacking - like I don't know why they're showing "previous entries," and the design is uninspired and boring, but functionally it seems fine.



*edit:

I take back the part about the design looking uninspired. Those appear to be thematic colors inherited from the parent company. I can't knock the design firm for that.

The UX in the jumping from your site to the parent one for the quote thing is a bit disconcerting, though. But again, for $1500 I wouldn't expect them to write you a webapp that interfaced with the parent site to return a quote in your sites format, either.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 1:49 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2009 1:45:07 PM

Quote :

"P.S. did you pay the entire sum up front? No one should do that."

4/23/2009 1:47:09 PM

uhh, not if every single URL in the site redirects from twomenandatruck.....com to host2.arcdesignnc.com/~twomen . that's ridiculous.

and Wordpress makes it super easy to enable permalinks, so the URLs should not be something like
http://host2.arcdesignnc.com/~twomen/?page_id=3
it should be
http://www.twomenandatruckoffayetteville.com/home-moves

and the bottom of all the pages has the "Previous Entries/No Entries" block? that's incredibly lame. Basically that confirms that the creator either 1) is too lazy to edit the template, or 2) is incompetent and doesn't know how to edit the template.

4/23/2009 1:47:46 PM

I assume the site is still being hosted on the developer's server.

4/23/2009 1:48:35 PM

^ Yeah, that's what I was assuming... after roll-out that stuff should be gone.

Maybe I shouldn't give benefit of the doubt?

4/23/2009 1:50:42 PM

Yeah, I paid upfront. Like I said, we did a project with them before. Turned out great. I know the guy fairly well through multiple business contacts.

4/23/2009 1:54:31 PM

^ !!

I'd never pay a developer 100% up front, and I'd never take 100% from a client up front. 50/33% up front, the remainder at milestones or on completion. It keeps a bit of trust and oversight in the mind of the client and (should) keep the developer on their toes.

I'm not trying to rail on you, but you gotta do a better job communicating with your developer. It's easy to make them look like some sort of web dev predators, but you didn't seem to stop them from doing what they wanted (no communication about CMS choice, all money up front, etc).

--

About the previous entries, I figured that would be a container for news or something. Maybe, like jadn, I shouldn't assume.

Also, your business name makes me think Two Men One Truck.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 1:57 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2009 1:54:58 PM

Having no experience with this type of situation, I was counting on them to help me out with how it goes. I guess I've learned a lesson.

4/23/2009 2:20:34 PM

KiLLm3rEd


What do you think that site is worth? You're obviously unhappy with it. I'm curious what value you believe that site has.

4/23/2009 2:46:05 PM

a couple more things I would expect for a $1500 site, having looked through it further

- "^ Yeah, that's what I was assuming... after roll-out that stuff should be gone." - ok, yeah. i see now that the designer is arcdesign.com, so, yeah, i guess all the urls will be updated. however, just make sure the permalinks will be enabled after the move.

- the Request An Estimate page - i guess you are just a local subsidiary of the bigger Two Men company? And the parent company provides the Estimate page? Not much you can do about that, i guess. Maybe have it open in a new window so your customers aren't kicked off your site

- the Contact Us page should at least provide an email address or a contact form for people to write you directly


the biggest thing I've learned? I need to start charging more for my sites..... If a design firm can conscionably charge $1500 for a site like that, and a small business will pay for it, then I am way, way undercharging my clients....

4/23/2009 2:50:41 PM

http://www.thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensomeandthensomemoreandmore.com/

4/23/2009 2:53:09 PM

Yeah, ideally it would be a form, and not JUST a link that causes an external email client to pop-up. A lot of people use gmail or other web-based emails as their primary client.

4/23/2009 2:54:25 PM

I agree with everything agentlion said, but I'm going to beat this dead horse again:

Killwhatever should have discussed those (or similar) features with the dev beforehand. It seems like the he just wrote a check for $1500, said "make me a website", then bitched about it after it was complete. It was naive on his part and kinda shady for the dev, but communication would have curtailed the whole thing.

Summary: terrible business practices by both ends.

4/23/2009 3:02:59 PM

In my totally uneducated and inexperienced opinion, I'd pay $200 for that website.
It looks fine and seems to work fine, but there's nothing there that couldn't have been done by a high schooler with an HTML for Dummies book.

4/23/2009 3:13:01 PM

Quote :

"In my totally uneducated and inexperienced opinion"

4/23/2009 3:18:03 PM

^^ you could get by making that site maybe with near-zero HTML experience.
It's clearly from a free Wordpress template. If I had to guess, all the dev did was change the background color and change the header image. Literally everything else on that site could be taken care of inside the Wordpress interface, without touching a line of code.

Now, if the get rid of the "Previous Entry" block, then I'll be convinced that they actually opened up the single.php or post.php page.

ok, i take that back - they opened footer.php to put a link to their design firm.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 3:21 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2009 3:21:03 PM

Quote :

"In my totally uneducated and inexperienced opinion, I'd pay $200 for that website."

You want a $200 site?


Perhaps I should direct you to Geocities.

4/23/2009 3:24:38 PM

I charge $175 for Angelfire

4/23/2009 3:29:38 PM

Holy god yes, the domain name. I'm not going to go into the website itself since it's been dissected by everyone else already, but something must be done about that domain name.

The problem with thinking of a shorter name goes back to Ernie's comment about "two men one truck". How do you shorten this name without sending up with something that is derivative of this?

I guess your entire company name doesn't need to be in there, how about something that describes what you do like fayettevilleshipping.com fayettevillemovers.com or something like that.

2men1truckfville.com is just wrong.

4/23/2009 3:29:50 PM

here's the theme the site was based on
http://templates.arcsin.se/demo/natural-essence-wordpress-theme/
as I suspected, they changed the background (for the worse, i think. that blue is kind of "blah"), and obviously the header.
They cleared out the sidebar (if the theme is widget-enabled, this is drag-and-drop), then just put an image in the sidebar.

The "previous entry" block is part of footer.php, so they should have removed that block and replaced it with something else, or stretched the "about us" across the whole width. They did edit footer.php, and simple exactly replaced the copyright and the designed by text with their own.

overall, they replaced the chocolate brown used in the links and the header/footer background with black. And for some reason, they removed the "framing element" of the page, where on the original design, the header had columns that extended down on both sides of the pages content into the footer, giving the content a nice frame. Might be difficult to do with the header as an image than a solid color or abstract drawing.

Overall, they took an elegant and cohesive theme, and made it clearly worse

4/23/2009 3:31:43 PM

Like jadn said, the color scheme was the company's not the designer's.

And I'm not saying that's a remarkable WP theme, but do you know how much themes are sold for?

Theme + customization (well, sort of) + possible hosting = $$$

Would Killwhatever have been better off just using his own template in his preferred CMS? Probably.
Is it his fault that didn't happen? Probably.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 3:36 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2009 3:33:30 PM

That theme appears to be a free download?

It really looks like you got taken KiLLm3rEd.

4/23/2009 3:38:29 PM

oh yeah, the blue came from http://twomen.com
that's unfortunate..... there are two blues on that site, though. I think i'd go with the darker one for the background, and maybe add a little border around the whole Container so it doesn't look like the page is just floating in a sea of blue

i.e. from


to

4/23/2009 3:42:52 PM

Oh, ha, I saw "arc" in the URL and thought it was the developer's site. Didn't realize it was a free download, either.

You got hosed, Killdude.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 3:47 PM. Reason : That em dash wrapping to the next next line in the "about" section bothers me, too.]

4/23/2009 3:43:54 PM

haha agentlion yep, thats EXACTLY what I came to post. I had just seen that same design a few days ago when I was looking for a nice base template for a personal site. I was actually at that exact link (http://templates.arcsin.se/) and recognized his theme.

No way in heck I'd pay $1,500 for a job that could be done in one day's work. And I agree that he did a worse job. It's not a terrible site, but whenever I have done some sites for friends and used an already made template like he did, I would have felt guilty charging half of $1500.

also as agent said, I think it needs some sort of border or at least something to separate the container from the background. Also, the background color is kind of annoying to me. Maybe a barely-there gradient, or use the darker blue, or some very subtle pattern.

well, I added a gradient going from the darker blue to a lighter blue, and added a soft drop shadow to give it some depth but I can't host anything at work. I tried uploading it to tww but the compression caused it to look terrible of course. Those are my suggestions at least.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 4:08 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2009 3:52:06 PM

You guys saying you wouldn't charge $1500 for that are selling yourselves short and making it harder for the rest of us

4/23/2009 4:48:14 PM

^^ i just used FireBug to change the CSS, then took a screenshot

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 4:49 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2009 4:49:38 PM

I would have charged around 1200 for site like that.

but I also would have give you a custom design, included 6 months of hosting, and maybe even thrown in our CMS.

4/23/2009 4:57:12 PM

Quote :

"^^ i just used FireBug to change the CSS, then took a screenshot"

yea, my problem is that I just don't have a place to host a picture. Nearly all image hosting sites are blocked at work.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 5:33 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2009 5:33:10 PM

for those who dont want to read this entire thread, this is a good summation:

Quote :

"About your site, though... not particularly attractive, appears fully functional, I don't know what your hosting package is, but $1,500 doesn't sound that unreasonable. I'm assuming you're one of those clients who thought he was gonna get blown away for $200."

though for that $ I would expect them to fix the URL issue and take care of any small fixes that remain after the design phase

4/23/2009 5:57:16 PM

^^http://tww.e00.us/

4/23/2009 8:05:03 PM

Alright. So I just learned an expensive $1500 lesson. I'm usually pretty smart, and tight when it comes to my budget. Very expensive. Where should I go from here? No hosting was included. $50 a month for hosting.

What do I need to tell him to fix? I expected it to get handled. I wanted a site that google could index, b/c our twomen.com does not have tags, and does not show up in organic results.

Shit.

4/23/2009 10:25:08 PM

Oh, and I think the site is probably not worth a dollar over $700. Once I saw what he did, and read through the wordrpress docs, I could have done it in 2-3 hours while learning along the way. My time isn't worth $500 an hour just yet.

I'm pissed. 2 years ago he did the this site http://www.mastergreenhort.com/ for $1800

and

http://www.greenbiznursery.com for $6,500 (we've removed a few features since then.)

I just expected more customization. Thats all.

4/23/2009 10:29:31 PM

Quote :

"What do I need to tell him to fix?"

Tell him thanks for fucking you over and take your business elsewhere. There are plenty of folks (several who have posted in this thread) that can give you a lot more for $1500 or less.

[Edited on April 23, 2009 at 10:32 PM. Reason : ]

4/23/2009 10:30:28 PM

Well, he's got my money.

4/23/2009 10:36:24 PM

$50/mo hosting? what?
Through the designer? Or on your own? If it's through the designer, get that shit off his servers and and make your own account somewhere, and you can pay ~$10/mo. I'm assuming that you are a relatively small outfit, and it's not going to be an ultra-high traffic site, right? Do you have anyone in house that has even basic knowledge of webhosting - like how to set up a 1and1.com account, create a database, use FTP, etc? If not in house, you can pay for hosting yourself at $5-10/mo, then pay someone else like $25/hour if and when you need updates. Barring any major design revisions, you can do most of the content updates yourself inside Wordpress, and if any part of the template needs changing, it would almost definitely be cheaper to pay one-time hourly rates than $50/mo flat fee.

as far as searchability, there are Search Engine Optimization Wordpress plugins and Google Sitemap plugins that make it super easy to add tags to all your pages and to submit sitemaps to Google. The most important thing for google-juice, though, is to have a popular page that other sites will link to. For a site like yours, i guess that means trying to get listed in directories of moving companies or something.... i dunno.


as far as what you do with the designer before they hand the site off to you, just double-check that all the links and permalinks will be cleaned up, and the Previous Entry block is removed.
If the site ultimately lives on a server that you have direct access to with FTP, or if the design company will transfer the site and database to you fully, then if you want some future design tweaks (like color changes or borders), then we can tell you exactly what files to change and how.

4/23/2009 10:38:46 PM

Lessons for the future:

1) If you are paying more than 10 bucks a month for hosting (unless it included mainenance/content services), you are getting screwed. I charged my clients 10 bucks a month, which was almost double the actual cost.

2) Never, ever pay for a design service up front. You pay as you go, as you get what you want.

Every web design I ever did worked the same way:

Initial consultation (1-2 hour meeting with the stakeholders) followed a few days later with a signed contract - Textual Description of work to be done, expectations and penalties for all parties.

Vision meeting - Rough visual flow through the application/website. Highlighting every contractual aspect, and establishing the functional needs of the project. - Cost 10-15% of total

Iteration meeting - Full fidelity pass through the project, mostly non-functional. This meeting establishes the visual language, identity, branding and assets. Generally followed by 1-3 more iteration meetings to come to a final design (as agreed upon in the initial contract) - Cost 20-30% of total

Production meetings - Weekly, or Bi-Weekly meeting with stakeholder/contact to give brief status updates, to let them preview functionality that has unanswered questions, or to accept changes/additions to the project (change orders to the contract). This is the meat of the cost, and usually runs to 90-100% of the total. Iterate until complete. It's not complete until the customer has physically signed off that the contract has been upheld, and they are satisfied with the quality of the work.

Occassionally 5-10% cost for deployment, initial retainer for services, training, odds and ends.


This is how *any* reputable development and design project should progress in today's world. In very rough terms (there is certainly a lot of flex for how signoffs, demonstrations and agreement can be handled)

4/23/2009 11:02:39 PM

^ yaaaaaaaap. 100% correct.


Too bad we don't have sticky threads. This is the shining example of how not to get taken by your Designer & How to conduct proper business for a Designer

4/24/2009 7:39:55 AM

Thanks guys. I appreciate the input.

4/24/2009 8:23:20 AM

hahahaha $50 to host a wordpress site...that's flipping highway robbery.

agree with the above. good thread.

4/24/2009 8:26:41 AM

Quote :

"$50 to host a wordpress site...that's flipping highway robbery."

...and that site is not even a good looking iteration of a wordpress site.

4/26/2009 6:36:56 PM