build a website? how?

[PersephoneSnape]

following from the intro topic. I need to build myself a website in a coupel of weeks I work full time as well as my self employment, so need something relatively simple, yet stylish and preferably as cheap as possible.

I've got my domain name sorted out - now what? has anyone used Nvu to build their own page? can anyone hold my hand through this ardous process?

please feel free to link your page so i can see what you're talking about!

thank you for listening. Any change I hope will help sell more products at the end of the day.

Thanks for the advice, I get the message, you don't like the design of the site, hope the logo is okay though!
As you can tell, it's hard for me to justify prices, I guess it's just my nature, will be more bold and will reword this in the morning, thanks.

so that last message was to flibberty

so should have said sorry

Logo is fab

cool, thanks snora i designed it myself, glad you like it, does the black work with the logo though, or would you alter that too?

Please dont take it personally, I've read the thread and hoping over.

Thanks flibberty have reworded it, thank you, I just have to be more proactive and not have to justify charges

hiya snora i have removed the harsh black edges, what do you think so far

Im on your other thread

Can you tell I struggled with prices etc as well when I set up... I'm not a website expert just a self employed mum who struggled to get going because I wasn't confident on the money side of things.

If the nature of your work means you have to travel to their home to check out the site for the work (which I assume you do?) then I think its fair to make a charge for it.

I don't charge for meeting with a potential client, but used to spend half a day at a time going to see them, at silly times to suit them. Now I meet them at the motorway services which they don't know are only 2 miles from my house. I always meet them at a lunchtime as its easy to then make out that I've worked for one client in the morning and am about to charge off to the next one. I think it makes them keener as I look like I'm in demand

loops how much do you charge for one of those disney murals?

Ooh you work fast! Just been to check the welcome page and potential customers will hardly notice that they have to cough up £25

A contact of mine is an office furniture designer. He used to hand over plans etc and found that people went elsewhere for quotes and then he didn't get the projec but had spent his time on the plans. So now he takes the deposit or part of it at the time of handing over sketches or plans. Just enough to cover his time for producing them. Just a thought.

I went to have another look at your website, the FAQ page is great. But I was looking for your location, as I suspect that you will have to be within travellable distance of the rooms you decorate? If I was looking for something like your services I'd want someone local. Can you put an FAQ in to say what areas you cover and whether any of the work can be done remotely and shipped over to the customer?

Oh well off to bed now, got to pull dp off flickr and put my hot water bottle in!

(quite envious really as I'm so not-artistic.... knitting from patterns is as good as it gets at flibberty towers)

i've gone about the whole web site thing in a different way and have started with a blog instead. but in the craft market, this is quite a common thing to do. its a way of building up an online reputation, customer base, body of work etc for free.

have spent some time personalising the site though to learn a bit about how html code works. the plan is to eventually graduate from the blog to more specific web site of my own in the future, but at least with the blog i get to try out colour themes, logos, layout and develop a brand identity before spending any cash of a full site.

link here

you can, with a blog, re-direct the address so it is a .co.uk or .com just not worked out how to do it yet!

Agree Flibberty - I could't find easily where Loopy was based. No clue on the contact page - had to look at the reviews to suss out.
Unf. no-where near me - boo hoo - I could do with a Muriel for my ds bedroom.

I have updated the site now, oh the FAQs page Ihave added a map and where I am based, maybe I could do with adding this to the contact page also, what do you think?

I'd normally expect to see it on the contact page I think.

Not necessarily a map - but an address would suffice.

oh I see - an area of cover map.

thanks tracy, the only reason I didn't put my address is so I don't get tonnes of junk mail from companies advertising for loans, insurance etc, this has happended with a previous website I had.

have mentioned now on the front page where I am based

i'm almost done mr siteis a piece of pie! a bit limited in layouts etc and my site looks nice in IE, but rubbish in firefox, so i need to change the fonts around a little, but i'm fairly happy so far

click!

what do you think?

Fantastic - puts me to shame - still haven't done mine!

you can alter the layouts a little bit, and you can design your own header, your artwork is gorgeous maybe draw and paint your own header!

Loopyredangel
You have amessage via your website from me -
just to make you doubly aware!