Looking for a good web designer.

[turtle]

So this isn't intended for me to get bombarded with PM's telling me how great you are at building websites in your spare time and all that.

What I'm am trying to do though is get a good idea of what it would cost and where I could find someone to build a site for the organization I'm representing. The idea is to get away from the company that is currently being used and to have something built and handed over to me (and others on the web team) outright. This way if I want to add a flash page, I can, free. Seems it costs us quite a bit to have our current company do so.

The site would have a few pages that include https for credit card info etc. I would also like to be able to hire the person back if there is an issue over the teams head to fix or add. Our current site only has about 30-50 pages total. Obviously, as our organization grows we would want to be able to expand our site as well. There would need to be a couple of WordPress blogs in it with matching themes since that's what we are currently using to run our podcasts. Though 10.5 looks like it has a podcast publisher built in and we might switch to that later.

The site would be hosted on a Xserve running the most updated Mac OS at the time. If the site isn't hosted on our property, then it would be with a hosting company, though we are all pushing to get it on-site. They just upgraded our data lines to 3MB/s to handle the traffic so we are pretty sure it's going to happen. Now they just need to put out the $5700 for the Xserve and goodies.

I'm not sure what else to say we need, but if I've not put enough info here, then please ask and I'll see what I can do. Thanks for any tips and information. If you have a reference, please feel free to share it here as well.

[Jerman]

Have you considered a site where you have people *bid* on the project, such as http://www.getafreelancer.com/ or http://www.programmingbids.com/ ? Of course, based on what you mention, it appears that you would prefer to have a referral, or something along those lines.

And secondly, I do have a bit of design experience, and maintain my own site at http://www.jeremiahrich.com I will be the first to admit that I am not as knowledgeable as many here, but thought I would mention that work I have done. The only thing I have not touched yet is https, but have read about it.

Good luck finding what you need, let us know what you decide!

[turtle]

Yeah, I'm really not looking to just go the the lowest bidder. I'd far rather have a reference with support than a bid.

We might just do it all in house either way, I'm just exploring the options. Thanks for your input though, does anyone else have any?

[Banana]

I know absolutely nothing about web design, and much less about how to get one. However, based on what you say, it kinds of make sense (to me at least), if you convince your organization to set a budget for at least a part time web designer, because you're talking about expanding website as your organization grows; this kind of thing seems to me best satisfied by having a in-house designer. Start out with a small amount that freelancer probably can take as a side job (10 hours a week? I don't know what your needs is), and if you make it big time, up the hours as you need.

Seems to me more sensible than getting stuck in a contract with someone for one time project that ultimately needs to be expanded.

[turtle]

I know absolutely nothing about web design, and much less about how to get one. However, based on what you say, it kinds of make sense (to me at least), if you convince your organization to set a budget for at least a part time web designer, because you're talking about expanding website as your organization grows; this kind of thing seems to me best satisfied by having a in-house designer. Start out with a small amount that freelancer probably can take as a side job (10 hours a week? I don't know what your needs is), and if you make it big time, up the hours as you need.

Seems to me more sensible than getting stuck in a contract with someone for one time project that ultimately needs to be expanded.

I know little about web design too. :\ I like simple designs like this one here at AN. I also like the current design the organization has, but I don't think we will be able to have rights to it after we leave that company. So, one that note we are looking at taking on a designer, but we'd rather have it done and then available to us for editing.

We are going to have a meeting this week to make some more choices though...