Website needed

[StanFoster]

I have been wanting to set up my own website for my curved stairway business. I am constantly sending pictures the slow way and just need to have a place for potential clients to see some samples of my work.

I want a site that I can update on occasion the various stages of construction that is constantly going on in my shop. Sometimes even gyrocopters.

Anyone here that would be interested to set me up will be compensated for their effort.

Thanks

Stan

 

[The Last Church]

I build websites. How much do you want to spend?

 

[iconnary]

You might be surprised how easy it is to build a website yourself using a few easily obtained tools (FrontPage, etc). I guess you'll have to consider how much time - if any - you want to spend on it, as well as how computer literate you are.

Something like what you've described can literally be thrown together in just a few hours, pictures and all.

 

[ptope]

do it yourself, save yourself some money..Netfirms is pretty good, when you sign up at netfirms.com they send you a real easy to use program to build your site.. its all drag and drop, no html knowledge needed..

 

[The Last Church]

No don't go to a net firm.com

No don't go to a net firm.com

1. You don't want them to host your site.
2. Stability is a big issue. Their limited space
is also a problem.
If yo are building a .com site you want total control. You want a perfect Logo. you want graphics that are not seen anywhere else. And on and on. I have places to host your own site that I have been dealing with for 15 years with out a problem. And for the price net firm charges I can get you 20 times more space for the same price or less.

 

[The Last Church]

If it looks like something you throwed together in
4 hours you would not want it to represent YOUR Business.

 

[karlbamforth]

I set up my own

I set up my own

I set up my own website, with about a weekends work.

Ok its not fantastic but hey.
Never had a problem with it, easy to handle and only cost be about £60 ($40)
My own web address which I keep forever, it currently has about 20 pages and I am only using about 10% of what I paid for.
Take a look its divided into 2 parts.

www.ckaviation.co.uk

www.ckaviation.co.uk/tipjets

 

[StanFoster]

Thanks everyone...


Patrick: I will check into your suggestion first. The drag and drop method sounds like something I may try myself. I may know how to build curved stairways ...thats mainly because I cant build anything straight... I am a total klutz when it comes to computers.

Stan

 

[Red Sky]

Doing it on the cheap!

Doing it on the cheap!

Stan, if you are only semi-serious you can use one of the free services like Yahoo 360. It will get you up and running in a hour, includes a blog and picture area that you can use for any purpose you want. Is it a commercial site, no. Is is cheesy, kinda , but it would work just fine without any expense and it is simple! You can update, change and add content without yourself, without sending it to the host, but from anywhere with internet access

I'm an IT guy and I don't like spending anymore time on that stuff than I need to. You won't have to make 10,000 choices about every little part of your website like building one. If nothing else, you'll be that much further along on figuring out what you want on your own website. My plan is to use it for my building log when the time comes. If nothing else, it's a whole lot easier than building a curved stairway!

 

[Adam H]

Stan, Jim Schuler from our club set up www.gyroclub.com and www.calumetair.com for Tom Milton, he doesn't get on the forum much but if you want me to, I can talk to him for you.

 

[Hognose]

Karl,

interesting site. That's a good Luscombe maintenance checklist and would work for the non-paperwork part of an annual inspection, too. With a few mods it would work for Cessna 120/140/150 and up. Good catch on aeobatics damage to firewalls. The odd thing is, these planes are not certified (meaning, not stressed!) for aerobatics, which is unknown to at least a large minority of owner/pilots.

As far as your website goes -- there is one usability guideline that would help people navigate your site if it were consistently applied. That is the style of text. Most people now associate blue text with links. They also associate underlining with links. You should change your site so that if it's a link, it's blue and underlined, and if it's not a link, it's any other colour.

A good (a great, actually) source for usability info is Jakob Nielsen's www.useit.com. Plus, Jakob is Danish, so it will irritate the Islamists, which is a dandy bonus in my opinion.

I have built a number of websites. Right now my old network design company's is down and I've been too indifferent to set that one back up again... I have a blog at www.hoglog.com but that just uses default behaviour of the blogging software, which does some violence to standards itself. And a placeholder for the Me 163 foundation which wants to build a 163 is strictly that, a placeholder.

Web design is a bit odd in that it requires four things that are normally, in industry, handled by or farmed out to different specialists. Those things are graphic design, textual content, imagery (usually photo) content, and coding. My experience with web design firms is that most of them do only one of those things well. You also are vulnerable to the sort of expert who has a deep expertise in one development tool and knows bugger-all about everything else (we ran into this with Aero-News, where we are now slaves to ColdFusion, and it was very difficult to change web developers, although we finally did. BTW, I think the user interface for Aero-News is awful!).

Some tools develop really bad HTML code. (*cough* FrontPage *cough*) and are only safe to use for really simple sites.

I have a lot of websites where all I do is serve them... all my paying customers left or went tits up, and I was left with nothing but the charity cases, starving musicians and impecunious non-profits. But I get to see a lot of ways to approach a website. Musicians care more about being hip and changing a lot than they do about being consistent. Non-profits for some reason want to put all 400 pictures of their trip to build wells for third world tribesmen all on one page, so that it takes 11 years to load. And you'd be shocked how many businesses design a web page (or hire a design firm) and discover after the site's been live a month, that users can't find the company's phone number or address on the site!!

One of the most annoying things I find is the widespread use of Macromedia Flash for long opening animations. It's like taking someone who came to your site because he or she cares about your service or product, and saying, "Shut up! I don't care why you came! You must first sit through my commercial." Fortunately this habit or practice is dying out, except among the most obtuse and flash-happy developers.

Things that move jerkily around when what you would like the customer to do is look at or read your content are another pet peeve.

In Stan's case, he has an unusual requirement, because he has to showcase a meatworld business that has certain values (quality, precision, pride) that are hard to transition into web world. For instance, he absolutely needs to have no spelling or grammar errors on his site -- many readers don't care much, but it slows most of them down, and slowing them down is the second worst error... the worst is giving them stuff they don't want. 'Cause either way, they are one click away from blowing your site off.

Above all, be consistent. You might have a better way to do it than 95% of the web but people spend 99% of their time in that other 95% and so they will expect your site to behave like the others. In most cases, following the W3C guidelines will keep you safe.

cheers

-=K=-

 

[karlbamforth]

Karl's website

Karl's website

Kevin,

Thanks for the advice, must admit I had never thought of the blue font problem.
The aircraft in the background and the coloured font was simply lifted from the business cards.

I was asked by a customer for a checklist of what to look for on the Luscombe hence the buyers checklist. My plan eventually was to link certain items like corroded spars and lift strut rivets to photo's.

Once again thanks for the advice.

 

[The Last Church]

Don't put text over a picture back ground it makes it hard to read. You need more color and half as much text.
Specialize the text with links. On the whole the sight is very confusing.(unless they are in the same business as you.) I agree with almost everything Hognose said. Your sight has about twenty seconds or less to capture the attention
you want.
Website are 200 times more effective if you keep a small cheap news paper add just showing your name and url.
The first thing I look at is your web site. It must
give a good impression. If is looks cheap and hurried I figure your labor is also cheap and rushed.
A website is not just an address. It is advertizing
what and who you are. Are you a confused black and white ( old news) lazy guy looking for a shade tree? No but that's the first impression yoru site gives. (No to offend)
email me and I will give you a graphic that represents avation perfection. Remember to make a sight the guys wife can understand since
90% of the money and buying power is controled
by women.

 

[StanFoster]

Let me clairfy myself a little. I do not intend for this site to drum up any business. I dont need any more business....and besides...it would more than likely be out of my working radius.

What I want is when I get contacted for a stairway....is to be just be able to give them my website and then they can see all kinds of different styles of stairways I have built....and in various stages of construction.

This will save me a lot of time individually e-mailing each prospective client and sending them pictures by my slow dial up connection.

I have had a bunch of e-mails with different ideas for me to consider.

Thanks for all the effort.

Stan