Web Designers and Hosting Company Questions

[Cyberland]

I am in the process of contacting several web designers to contract with for designing web sites for my hosting customers. What I would like to know is what type of arrangements have other hosting companies made with designers for providing such a service.

Also if anyone has a contract they used for such purposes that they would like to share, I sure appreciate it.

[Chicken]

I'd actually like to know this as well as I...

1) Can't design for dog turd myself.
2) Probably could find some people who would want design and could farm it out.

The only thing I ever came up with was to try to hire foreign designers who would work cheap and I would just mark up the cost. Problem with designers is that if they are good, they are generally too busy. Hard to match schedules with customers and payment, etc.

[Alex[nl]]

ANother thing is if you buy those cheap designs you sure need to know a bit about slicing it yourself, not even mentioning optimizing html code. I once bought one that had a HUGE background picture which was actually just one color. . . 'bgcolor=' or 1x1px would have done the same ... ;)

[Chicken]

Yeah, I stay away from buying the "just a big picture" designs, heh. It wasn't until some time that I realized sites could be designed this way.

[VoxKeysGtr]

I recently purchased photoshop and golive. I am looking to buy DW soon. I have been buying a few templates from TM to practice while I learn to use my Adobe apps. Once I get some proficiency with my web dev tools, I hope to find a good designer to build a custom template for me so that I can use that to build my site around. So far, it's been a lot of fun, and I'm learning quite a bit. :cool:

[timb]

I was lucky and found a killer designer, the guy is from New Zealand and just does really killer web design and graphics work, he's pretty affordable as well.

[nameslave]

I AM a web designer myself. True, my work is not particularly geared towards the high-end market that charges say $5k just for a starter website of a few pages; instead, I've got quite some small business people who are looking for an affordable yet reliable web presence.

The interesting thing is: opposite to Cyberland, I package my web design with hosting to create a one-stop shop for my clients (most of whom are not quite Internet-savvy).

Personally, I don't like MOST of the templates on that Monster website. :D I even don't like DreamWeaver not to say FrontPage and do ALL my coding (from HTML, PHP, Javascript to even some Perl-based CGI script hacking) almost entirely on Notepad and only occasionaly using Word for really large files.

It's really amazing that so many hosting companies actually use look-alike templates for their websites. ;)

[Living Media]

I can handle a lot of the design, particularly for my hosting site, and actually prefer to - I've got minimalist sensibilities, and most designers I know tend to be on the other end of the spectrum. When I have a client that wants a whizbang jobbie-doo with a fancier look, I have a good friend whose coding I trust, whose work I know, and to whom I farm out the design work. He has more training in visual media, and so can approach design with that mindset.

[TheGAME1264]

Cyberland: I'm in your boat myself. Perhaps it would be good if we compared notes (don't worry. I won't scalp your competition. I'm in Toronto and have more than enough to deal with by myself.) I'm going to be doing my contract either tomorrow or Friday and I'd be willing to exchange the terms and conditions of such with you in the hopes that I in turn get some ideas that will cover my own butt.

[wello]

Originally posted by Alex[nl]:

ANother thing is if you buy those cheap designs you sure need to know a bit about slicing it yourself, not even mentioning optimizing html code. I once bought one that had a HUGE background picture which was actually just one color. . . 'bgcolor=' or 1x1px would have done the same ... ;)


well that is not just new designers proplem..even some big Template companies have amazing photoshop skills..and then when you see the template you like it very much....but when you buy it you get shoked by the missed html...cause they simply design facny designs which are very hard to be converted into html.
thats why i think any designer have to learn html before getting into designing

[PierreB]

I must agree with wello.

The hardest part is to get work for the designer, you won't get a request everyday, kind of hard to believe any hosting company that says they get the request to design web sites for their clients everyday, maybe big companies with 20000 customer get much requests.

Most designers that are working with hosting companies also work on their own to get client(s), they don't waste too much of their time waiting for the hosting company to get them work.

So it is hard to keep a designer woking under your hosting company name. Think about it carefully.

[GnomeyNewt]

There are a lot of freelance designers out there that can do work for you... If you want to just work with one, than that might be hard as the others have said they can get busy and might not be able to do jobs for you. But if you are flexable, you could keep a few contacts for when the time comes.

btw... hello everybody I'm Sarah :c)

[suppleSupport]

Originally posted by littlestar:
btw... hello everybody I'm Sarah :c)

Hi there! :cool: Welcome to our hideout :)

[interactive]

Originally posted by PierreB:

I must agree with wello.

The hardest part is to get work for the designer, you won't get a request everyday, kind of hard to believe any hosting company that says they get the request to design web sites for their clients everyday, maybe big companies with 20000 customer get much requests.

Most designers that are working with hosting companies also work on their own to get client(s), they don't waste too much of their time waiting for the hosting company to get them work.

So it is hard to keep a designer woking under your hosting company name. Think about it carefully.

That's why you look for a freelancing developer. It all depends on your niche too for hosting. If your targetting every little kid on the internet your obviously not going to get any requests at all. But if you're targetting alot of local businesses you may get quiet a few. Just find a developer that will work with you.

[maxhest]

A very good designer is www.acsiak.com they are great. Anjay is a great person and helps well. Also very affordable.
-Max

[proxy]

As a freelance myself i work on a case by case basis with my customers.

[Dave]

Originally posted by timb:

I was lucky and found a killer designer, the guy is from New Zealand and just does really killer web design and graphics work, he's pretty affordable as well. URL?

[EasyWebDev]

Originally posted by Alex[nl]:

ANother thing is if you buy those cheap designs you sure need to know a bit about slicing it yourself, not even mentioning optimizing html code. I once bought one that had a HUGE background picture which was actually just one color. . . 'bgcolor=' or 1x1px would have done the same ... ;)

I dont know how some of those one page pics ever became known as templates.
To me a template should consist of a page header linking to a js navigation file, a css file and a page footer along with the main graphics, bullets, table headers etc etc, to which the buyer only has to add his content.

Some of those designs on the so called template sites give no thought to anything more than an index page, a lot of them you cant use for a whole site.

I bet theres a good market for a propertemplates.com.

(dont all rush to register it at once :))

[Chicken]

Originally posted by EasyWebDev:

I dont know how some of those one page pics ever became known as templates.
I'd have to agree with you on this one. To me, one big image that I have to slice up and code into HTML isn't a template. When you have to go through all that before you can add content (if you can do that), you might as well pay someone to design the site or get an actual template. Designs are nice, but not what I'd classify as templates either exactly.