Who built your website?

I am just going through the craziness of trying to find a local website builder. If I do a search for local website developers I call them and they are states away if not countries away. Why would they even try to say they are local? Its a bunch of crap. And then when I do get a local person they don't return calls or emails. Very frustrated. I understand artists are not very good business people but it would seem there is a huge opportunity for a professionally run graphics firm in just about any town. Am I wrong?

Now it gets better. Just met with a local web designer and had a great meeting. Very impressed with everything they do, great pricing on design and hosting but........I can't edit the site unless I use Internet Explorer.

Dealbreaker. I am a Firefox Mac guy. She told me I could go buy a cheap laptop to use for editing. Uh...no.

Losing my mind with this whole process.

photobiz.com

LiveBooks - editable in whatever browser you want to use so long as it supports flash.

Build your own with Yahoo Site Builder; it's really easy and FREE and you can design it however you want to. Then, get a web site guru to take it from there and set up everything web technical which gets you to the top of the lists.

It doesn't take very long to set up a nice site that tells the story you're trying to tell.
Gene

sponserv wrote in post #8585303
Now it gets better. Just met with a local web designer and had a great meeting. Very impressed with everything they do, great pricing on design and hosting but........I can't edit the site unless I use Internet Explorer.

Dealbreaker. I am a Firefox Mac guy. She told me I could go buy a cheap laptop to use for editing. Uh...no.

Losing my mind with this whole process.

Then I would assume he/she is not a professional web designer. A pro can design a site in all platforms/browsers.

FWIW, I designed my own site (not a brag) and I'm not a "pro"...I have just enough knowledge in HTML/CSS/PHP to be dangerous!

I agree that web designers are some of the worst people to try and do business with. Have you thought about buying a template and doing some customizing with css?

I do my own sites plus others. As a result my sites are the worst, the least updated or are still waiting to be done. I've had my new photography site sitting around for at least a year and haven't touched it. It's just a black page with a picture and a note that the new site will be online soon.

Having said that, I would still recommend doing a site on your own. Start out simple and let it grow with time and your skills. Dreamweaver is a pretty nice editor to start with. There are also tons of great templates you can buy for a few bucks to get you started. A good template will have most of the code pre-validated and will probably be in the CSS format which will help with search engine optimization down the road.

Anything requiring Internet Explorer (or any other Micreysoft product) should be stayed away from at all costs.

Jon.

http://www.showitfast.​com/.......

Hikin Mike wrote in post #8586085
Then I would assume he/she is not a professional web designer. A pro can design a site in all platforms/browsers.

FWIW, I designed my own site (not a brag) and I'm not a "pro"...I have just enough knowledge in HTML/CSS/PHP to be dangerous!

I love your site!

I built mine myself (I must stress that it's in it's infancy!!!) using iWeb, Give it a go!

www.ct-photo.co.uk

I did my own, but they need updating and frankly I am out of practice. Recently I have discovered that you can do some wonderful things with wordpress on a blog that I started and I adore all those clever automated plugins. I may well redo a couple of other sites using wordpress and if necessary have a custom template made together with a CMS. It won't cost that much and they seem to work well across a wide range of browsers. There is a huge community of wordpress designers out there and you could have work done at very reasonable prices. For me wordpress was a revelation and I think it could solve a lot of your problems.

Strnge wrote in post #8589419
I love your site!

Thanks! I used Notepad++ and FileZilla.

Wrote the html myself for my two sites main pages (youth & high school print oriented as well as an editorial archive). Exposure Manager is the back end of the prints and PhotoShelter is back end of the editorial archive. Youth site needs a clean up badly at the moment, off-season project. Always good when you have total control over your site.

Thanks for all the tips folks. I went into Dreamweaver to build their sample site from the tutorial. It was cool but I am really not into writing code, etc. Just need to find somebody that I can actually sit down with and get comfortable.