Jeweler's Website design

[bcredeur97]

Hey guys, my dad recently put in front of me the issue of making him a Website. Trouble is I do not know much about web design, and it turns out he wants something *like this but not exactly this: http://www.thediamondstudio.net/

 

He is a master jeweler(years and years of experience and reputation, cant afford to have a cheesy website like the one I made) and this is one of the better sites he says he has seen. My question is how much do you think it would cost to get someone to build a website like this with some modifications? Or if I am indeed capable of doing it myself, what will I need to do?

 

 

We do have our own webserver setup, I can easily set up a webserver all day, but when it comes to actual website design I fail as you can see by whats on the webserver at this moment (no domain dont want to pay for that yet) http://76.72.21.102/

 

 

 

any help would be greatly appreciated!

[EpicGeekonFire]

If you don't want to learn coding, and make your own whole website from scratch to get something like that sample, then just look at some SquareSpace templates as they are made by designers and an easy to operate website platform. 

 

http://www.squarespace.com/templates

[SirRoderick]

Well Linus keep telling us how squarespace is so amazing to easily set up a professional looking website, so go and check that out.

[Ivyk]

If you are going to hire a professional web developer it will cost you a couple thousand. It's much cheaper to use free or buy a template and add text yourself.

[EpicGeekonFire]

Well Linus keep telling us how squarespace is so amazing to easily set up a professional looking website, so go and check that out.

Its true though, even before our savior Linus showed us, I saw the amazingness of SQ's designs. 

[bcredeur97]

Well Linus keep telling us how squarespace is so amazing to easily set up a professional looking website, so go and check that out.

can you use squarespace with your own web server?

[SirRoderick]

can you use squarespace with your own web server?

They supply you with a domainname if you subscribe I believe, but you can access all the code as well as use easy templates. Frankly I don't see any reason NOT to offload serving to them

[bcredeur97]

They supply you with a domainname if you subscribe I believe, but you can access all the code as well as use easy templates. Frankly I don't see any reason NOT to offload serving to them

I just rather have a local web server to manage since we have the power to do it anyway. 

[SirRoderick]

I just rather have a local web server to manage since we have the power to do it anyway. 

But that's the thing, you can change everything to exactly the way you want it, the hosting is included in the price for a domain name. What is the added value in using your own server? Let them handle it and take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of expensive, reliable equipment I say. Plus it'll be MUCH easier to set up a great looking website.

[bcredeur97]

But that's the thing, you can change everything to exactly the way you want it, the hosting is included in the price for a domain name. What is the added value in using your own server? Let them handle it and take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of expensive, reliable equipment I say. Plus it'll be MUCH easier to set up a great looking website.

well saying you can host and manage your own website will get you a job faster than saying you just have one and someone else hosts it for you

[SirRoderick]

well saying you can host and manage your own website will get you a job faster than saying you just have one and someone else hosts it for you

If you're looking to get hired for web design you can always make a seperate one yourself

[leodaniel]

It really depends on your financial situation or better said, how much do you want to spend.

 

What is sure, amazing design is unfortunately not cheap. If you hire a webdesign team, this will easily cost some thousand bucks.

The pros of that, you get a personal design, which should be kind of "unique". I mean, It was build for you and you can normally tell them exactly how you want it to look like. And the website will clearly be apart of some "templates" (not saying that those are bad) and you will get a professional website.

And a not to underestimate value is the time! The team will do the work, manage problems and more for you. 

The cons are obviously the costs. It is not cheap, but it is a solid work.

 

Now if you choose to want something like square space, the main benefit in my opinion: You get a good looking template for a reasonable price.

The cons, you have to manage the work, especially if you want to add something to your template. This is really time consuming (and I don't know if you can edit the Template source code at all...).  

Another con, is that you get kind of a pretty sandart good looking website. It s not something personal. I think this is a general problem if you use a template. 

 

 

Now, it s yours to evaluate which is the better solution for you. Depending on how your fathers business is, you should consider to spend a bit more for a webpage.

Whats also important in my opinion, to have a clean and clear design for all your business stuff (like letters, business cards ...) and so your website should be in the same look, this is hard to achieve with a template...

 

Hope it helped you in some ways.. and keep in mind thats my opinion

 

 

leo

[Xploda]

If you don't want to pay for someone to develop the website, you'll have to either buy a template, or learn some basic HTML and CSS.

If you do decide to code it yourself, I'd suggest you take a look at some frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation. Those frameworks will allow you to easily integrate things like navigation, image galleries, contact forms, ... in your website.

 

You might want to check this out as well. It's a website which is full of relatively cheap themes/templates for Bootstrap.

 

Hope this helps  .