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Yeap, it´s pretty hard. Or I guess not if you got a a huge amount of cash. Which I do not.
Anyway, so yeah. This past 4 months I´ve been looking for a webdesigner for my team to update the design and functions of our site. It started of with a really promising guy who contacted me and said he was intrested. I think this was in the middle of september.
He started right off working with the site and seamed really dedicated and passioned about it. After a week or so I asked him things were going and he supplied me with a sketch and a brief "protoype" of the site which looked awesome. From there on I were really satisfied with the result and being able to find a webdesigner so quickly!
A couple of weeks passed on and we had great contact and he said that all went fine until one day he suddenly disappeard and I did not hear from him until a couple of weeks later. By then he had quited the work with the site and were busy with other projects.
So in early November we stood without webdesigner and that´s pretty much where we´ve remained until today. There have been some interested persons started to work with the design and functions over that period but they went the same road as the first guy.
I do not really know what to do now. I´m getting really frustrated with myself for not being able to find a designer. In addition, we can´t really offer a good price either since our team is not that big and we have pretty much no resources. We just got the money at our bank accounts, that´s it.
Several times I´ve played with the idea of making the changes myself. Learn CSS, java etc from scratch and get on it. But with full time employment and being a team to manage beside that, there´s not alot of time over for other stuff.
Should I just go on and spend my savings to benefit my team? Are there no students or people who do webdesign as their hobby and see themselves as skilled?
With our sponsor willing to provide us with cash prizes for tournaments, we really need a attractive website. Which does not help to make me to forget the stress of finding a designer...
Cool story broh. What now?
 
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1) Go to http://99designs.com/
2) Create an account
3) fill in what kind of job you want and specify your budget (what you are willing to pay) Along with a time limit
4) Profit.
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Did you get Zuckerburg'd?
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I have some web design experience, but my work would be marginally professional at best. Perhaps your expectations are far outside your budget range.
If you want to post what you are looking for, I could at least give you an idea about whether what you are asking for is a lot or reasonable.
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Making websites is HARD. For most people not terribly experienced in web design it often seems like if you are smart and you spend some time reading up on HTML/CSS you can do this no problem, or you can hire a creative kid or a student to do the work. People terribly underestimate how much work it is to get it right.
Would you ask for free dental care? No, because A) getting it right is hard and B) people qualified to be a dentist have experience and knowledge that takes a lot of hard work to get.
1) Do you really need a custom designed website? The low-cost alternative is finding a pre-existing template that meshes well with the spirit of your team. People will be likely be able to suggest 'standard' software if you can explain your needs better.
2) Your best bet to get quality work is to find a professional to somehow get excited about what you are trying to do and volunteer to do it for free.
3) Please keep one thing in mind above all else. Be *functional.* Make sure letters are easy to read on the background, and your font size is not too small. Make sure navigation links A) can be found B) make sense to users. Make sure your fancy scripts don't make your site slow or unresponsive.
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Projects which don't pay and asking strangers in combination is almost always a bad combination due to the things you've already experienced.
You either have to know someone personally to get him/her design for free or pay a designer.
From what I've understood so far is that you have a design already but no one to actually build the website and/or code?
You really need to be clear on what you want so others actually know what they're getting themselves into.
This way you'll have people actually be able to tell if they have the time or not to accept rather than finding out later they don't or find it too much work. Be very specific with this (to prevent most people from quitting in the middle of a project).
If you're ever going to run your own company be specific and clear to your workers. If you do have your own company and workers then I might suggest to check your work methods again 
Right now it looks really vague and unprofessional. As it sounds right now you're basically looking for someone that is willing to design (if you don't have that design of that old designer),build (in HTML/CCS etc?) and code(PHP for login etc?) and probably more which is really a lot of time and work than most people will/do realize.
Besides that the more important question you might not have asked yourself is do you really need a website to run your project (your tournament in sc2 I guess)? It feels like you're trying to blame all the delay on that designer who stopped working. I can't imagine your whole team is depending on that designer alone.
Make a plan. What do I need, how long will it take to realize the project, prioritize, divide work etc.
You don't need to do that all alone. You said you have a team and with just 4 people each spending an hour max each day for a week will become a solid plan (28 work hours just to make a plan sounds more than enough for a small project).
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this is pretty much standard; it's rare to find someone that committed who will work for free
especially for something like a website which takes a pretty significant amount of effort and takes a lot of different skillsets depending on what you want
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On February 01 2012 05:16 Phrujbaz wrote:
Making websites is HARD. For most people not terribly experienced in web design it often seems like if you are smart and you spend some time reading up on HTML/CSS you can do this no problem, or you can hire a creative kid or a student to do the work. People terribly underestimate how much work it is to get it right.
Would you ask for free dental care? No, because A) getting it right is hard and B) people qualified to be a dentist have experience and knowledge that takes a lot of hard work to get.
1) Do you really need a custom designed website? The low-cost alternative is finding a pre-existing template that meshes well with the spirit of your team. People will be likely be able to suggest 'standard' software if you can explain your needs better.
2) Your best bet to get quality work is to find a professional to somehow get excited about what you are trying to do and volunteer to do it for free.
3) Please keep one thing in mind above all else. Be *functional.* Make sure letters are easy to read on the background, and your font size is not too small. Make sure navigation links A) can be found B) make sense to users. Make sure your fancy scripts don't make your site slow or unresponsive.
Wise words man! Thanks for the response.
About finding a professional. I´ve found a few which have been really interested in the project but once again it comes down to the cost. They havn´t got that exicted to do it for free sadly  (which I do not expect but our budget cannot match the price they ask for).
1). Well, the site do not have to be advanced in any way. It should just be able to offer a pleasent visit experience for the viewers.
The sad thing with this alternative is that we need a tournament system added to our own site to try to "focus" all the traffic to our site. By generating more views and visitors we´ll be able to expand as team and hopefully be able to gain more resources.
Also, I´d like the site to not just look like any other eSport-team site. It does not have to advanced once again. It´s just that so many teams seams just to mash stuff up and then go for it. I´d like it a bit more personal and "unique".
Once again, I guess that will add to the whole budget problem since it takes more time and effort to make such a site.
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On February 01 2012 05:16 shannn wrote:
From what I've understood so far is that you have a design already but no one to actually build the website and/or code?
We already have a design yes and the website is currently running on the "old" code from our previous webdesigner who pretty much made this website as his first. So there´s alot of "trial and error" over it. Now later on he got offered a sweet job and therefor do not have the time it takes to continue work on the site.
So what we basicly want to do is to keep the design and get a new system for the site to make more easier to edit etc.
A designer I talked to earlier today said that Wordpress were something he would implement to the site and work on from there. Might be an idea.
On February 01 2012 05:16 shannn wrote:
Right now it looks really vague and unprofessional. As it sounds right now you're basically looking for someone that is willing to design (if you don't have that design of that old designer),build (in HTML/CCS etc?) and code(PHP for login etc?) and probably more which is really a lot of time and work than most people will/do realize.
Well. I´m looking for a someone who can continue pretty much from where our old designer stopped. We got access to all the information, designs etc and our old designer is willing to guide the one who will continue with the project in his thought process.
We got a design but it needs a refreshing look to it and a cleanup pretty much. The most urgent thing to insert is as said above to make the site editable for me the admin to be able to actully be able to change the content at the site. In addition also add new functions like a new "News tool".
I think I realize how much time and effort it takes to implement such changes to the site. Therefor I´m looking for someone who cares more about personal development in skill of the site, like a student then a already fully educated professional.
On February 01 2012 05:16 shannn wrote:
Besides that the more important question you might not have asked yourself is do you really need a website to run your project (your tournament in sc2 I guess)? It feels like you're trying to blame all the delay on that designer who stopped working. I can't imagine your whole team is depending on that designer alone.
Make a plan. What do I need, how long will it take to realize the project, prioritize, divide work etc.
You don't need to do that all alone. You said you have a team and with just 4 people each spending an hour max each day for a week will become a solid plan (28 work hours just to make a plan sounds more than enough for a small project).
Well we can run the tournament through a third party site like we´ve done in the past. But this time we got a huge amount more in prices for the tournaments and that´s why I want the traffic focused to our own site. So that´s why it seams like I´m counting so much on the designer but that maybe is wrong of me? I should maybe continue to host them through a third party site (like z33k). It´s just that I want the participants to actully se us who host the tournament and not just sign up to it like "any other tournament".
I´m glad at the same time since our team keeps progressing and the whole team is not depending on the tournament. It´s just that I want to give them more of the publicity they deserve.
The last months of my time leading the team I´ve been more and more on my own sadely. I can´t really blame the players for that since they´re on the team to play . It´s just that I´m the only one frpm the management team still strggling to keep moving forward. The only thing I think off at work is "how to make the team of my dreams". And when I get home after 9 hours I just don´t know where to start.
I´ve been trying to recruit some more to the management board from outside the team as "manager" or whatever title you´d like to give em, without success.
I have no business education and I´m just about 20 years old so I havn´t got that much experience of running my own organization. It feels like I want to continue onward with this but I´m still confused about it. I guess I´ll try to set up some sort of plan of scheduling the weeks and see if I get more job done.
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well i made my clans tourney site using wordpress and some know how i got from HS haha if you would like i can show you what it turned out to be?
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I feel your pain. I've had four members of TL offer to do web design for me in the past (few years ago). Each one was paid half upfront, gave me a simple prototype design, then disappeared forever a few weeks later.
From my experiences, as someone who's willing to go 50/50 on pretty much everything, I've learned that when it comes to web design you should just do nothing at all until you get a 100% finished product. Unfortunately this also leads to what you mentioned in your op. The lack of upfront payment causes most people to just give up as soon as they run into trouble somewhere. They get frustrated or hit a road block and go "You know what? This guy hasn't paid me yet... and this is more work than I thought it would be. I'm just going to bail".
So... you pay upfront and you get screwed over. You don't pay upfront and you get screwed over. It's really harsh and unfriendly trying to contract someone for web design. Even moreso because I'm willing to bet the majority of "web designers" are just kids who just tinker with things in their spare time (hence the high dropout rate once they realize they can't deliver).
Best bet is to just find a website that can mediate things and hold designers accountable if they bail out on you or put in a local newspaper/craigslist ad. That way you can work with the designer in person to keep an eye on things.
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On February 01 2012 06:16 Serejai wrote:
I feel your pain. I've had four members of TL offer to do web design for me in the past (few years ago). Each one was paid half upfront, gave me a simple prototype design, then disappeared forever a few weeks later.
From my experiences, as someone who's willing to go 50/50 on pretty much everything, I've learned that when it comes to web design you should just do nothing at all until you get a 100% finished product. Unfortunately this also leads to what you mentioned in your op. The lack of upfront payment causes most people to just give up as soon as they run into trouble somewhere. They get frustrated or hit a road block and go "You know what? This guy hasn't paid me yet... and this is more work than I thought it would be. I'm just going to bail".
So... you pay upfront and you get screwed over. You don't pay upfront and you get screwed over. It's really harsh and unfriendly trying to contract someone for web design. Even moreso because I'm willing to bet the majority of "web designers" are just kids who just tinker with things in their spare time (hence the high dropout rate once they realize they can't deliver).
Best bet is to just find a website that can mediate things and hold designers accountable if they bail out on you or put in a local newspaper/craigslist ad. That way you can work with the designer in person to keep an eye on things.
id have to agree with him try posting on craigslist or something along those lines but if you have to do it your self like my above post said wordpress and a lil tiny bit of knowledge can take you a LONG way in terms of a professional looking site
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On February 01 2012 05:16 HardlyNever wrote:
I have some web design experience, but my work would be marginally professional at best. Perhaps your expectations are far outside your budget range.
If you want to post what you are looking for, I could at least give you an idea about whether what you are asking for is a lot or reasonable.
Well, I´ve posted some things in other responses but I´ll try to sum it up. (Sorry if my typing seams a bit off but it´s getting late here in Sweden ).
For the design:
I´d want the design of our website to more "professional looking". The previoous designer had no experience from building website before so it has still the touch of trial and error over it. There´s no need for a totally new design, we just want the design we got reworked and "refreshed". A gentle touch by someone more experienced from other projects.
The content of the site:
I guess some mix of the design adds in here but anyway.
As it stands today I cannot add or remove any content on the site except for the news. I cannot add anything to our roster page (which looks horrible at the moment) or at any other information page. I´d like as admin of the site be able to edit anything written or added at the site. May it be that a player has left a team and has to be removed from the roster or some changes in regard of our sponsors or the management of the team.
I guess that´s all a coding question and not a design issue. So basicly the site would need a new platform but with the same updated design.
The forum:
Our forum is working well but since the server migration of the website some things seams to be off and I have not been able to switch them back to how it supposed to be. Probably easy for someone who got the experience which I sadly do not. Just minor stuff which can not take alot of time.
Our wish - Our own tournament system:
This is probably the most advanced part of the whole site. We´d like our own tournament system to our tounaments that we´ll start to host once again. It doesnt need to be as fancy as craftcup´s or TLs. We just need a proper, enough good looking bracket system for the tournaments.
The price I were offered from a designer who have shown great interest is 1500 USD . That does not include the tournament system, just the coding and design upgrade of the site. I thought at first it was a bit much but when I thought some more on it I realized that must be a standard price for a professional designer which he is.
That´s why I´d like a student or "hobby" designer to accept the project. Not only that it would be cheaper, also to make the designer want to upgrade and work with the site for his/her own benefit. To be able to learn and work with us through regular payment for every task on the long term.
I don´t know. Maybe I just have to increase our budget?
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On February 01 2012 06:12 zickoray wrote:
well i made my clans tourney site using wordpress and some know how i got from HS haha if you would like i can show you what it turned out to be?
I would be very happy to see how the end result turned out to be .
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On February 01 2012 06:18 zickoray wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 06:16 Serejai wrote:
I feel your pain. I've had four members of TL offer to do web design for me in the past (few years ago). Each one was paid half upfront, gave me a simple prototype design, then disappeared forever a few weeks later.
From my experiences, as someone who's willing to go 50/50 on pretty much everything, I've learned that when it comes to web design you should just do nothing at all until you get a 100% finished product. Unfortunately this also leads to what you mentioned in your op. The lack of upfront payment causes most people to just give up as soon as they run into trouble somewhere. They get frustrated or hit a road block and go "You know what? This guy hasn't paid me yet... and this is more work than I thought it would be. I'm just going to bail".
So... you pay upfront and you get screwed over. You don't pay upfront and you get screwed over. It's really harsh and unfriendly trying to contract someone for web design. Even moreso because I'm willing to bet the majority of "web designers" are just kids who just tinker with things in their spare time (hence the high dropout rate once they realize they can't deliver).
Best bet is to just find a website that can mediate things and hold designers accountable if they bail out on you or put in a local newspaper/craigslist ad. That way you can work with the designer in person to keep an eye on things. id have to agree with him try posting on craigslist or something along those lines but if you have to do it your self like my above post said wordpress and a lil tiny bit of knowledge can take you a LONG way in terms of a professional looking site
Maybe I should just sit down and take my time to try and figure it out? It´s just that I have to handle the team economy, establishing team league matches, MAKE THE PLAYERS PRACTICE (that´s the hardest one ) etc. I feel like I could use and extra 30 hours per day and I´ll be fine.
Perhaps I´m bringing forth my negative attitued again. I should atleast try it before I give up!
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i PM'ed you
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Designing something as amazing graphics wise in an eSports context gets extra difficult. Trust me, to get the design right and not look like some lame photoshop mash of gradients ( cough... sorry NASL ) you have to be really talented in the futuristic approach. Because most webdesigners are more accustomed to bussiness sites you're less likely to find a reasonable designer that will do it for free.
The fact is, even with a good design and site, what are you really trying to attract with your site? Because just adding a tournament system ( which is hella expensive to make since it requires a lot of customization and testing to get it right ) won't get you the traffic you are hoping for. If you are trying to get by from placing ads on your site, you might break even on the hosting unless you get a lot of traffic.
Don't get me wrong, I love enthousiasm about websites. However I just wouldn't just plunge into it without any coherent plan of what the function of the site actually is. Is it for publicity? Is it for ad-revenue? Is it for sponsorship adplacement? This isn't 2003 anymore, people actually need a genuine appeal to the function of a particular application or website to return to it in a regular basis. If the goal isn't laid out at the start, your traffic will probably really disappoint you.
If you want to promote the team, go for it. But I suggest sticking to facebook and twitter accounts and manage groups through that over getting a website. It is a lot cheaper to start off with, and you get a lot more engagement with your audience.If you want to go for ad-revenue, you will need to get a lot of visitors to your site to make it worth it. And I mean truly a LOT.
Let me give you an example of my own portfolio site and some statistics: http://raa-media.nl/
The basic strategy here was: Set up a portfolio site for potential clients to browse through and perhaps add a blog for starcraft stuff. Now after I first published the general portfolio stuff, I was glad to get 30 visitors a week ( not kidding, it was a lot for the time ). It was almost unfindable in google due to the age of the site ( yes, even that costs money if you can't do that stuff right ) and my only way of spreading it was through sharing links with my friends ( not really any clients there whatsoever ).
So I altered my strategy to gain more visitors: Create content that people will want to re-read, thus searching for my website to get back to it. This required a LOT of effort on my side, I mean the kind of 'writing roughly 100 pages of content' effort. I spent probably 25 hours per large article and getting it out there on TL and reddit to get visitors. Granted, they didn't really come for the portfolio stuff but it was nice to see people looking at it regardless. Only after that did people start googling for my site, if only to get to the starcraft content they wanted to re-read. This happened after some peaks of 16k visitors during the publishing of articles and a steady 200-400 visitors between and after those peaks.
Any kind of customization costs TONS of extra resources. 'Personal' and 'unique' are almost synonymous to expensive and labor intensive, if you want to keep it cheap steer clear away from that. And I'm just talking about the design here, if we are talking really unique tech stuff you're going to deflate your wallet lots if you want a secure, easily navigatable and well programmed web application. And if it is not secure, not userfriendly to navigate or performance-obliviously programmed so it stalls a lot, users will not lay back to complain about it and convince other users that it's a piece of Shit.
If you asking what you currently are for free, then I would consider changing tactics and resorting to other means of promotion.
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On February 01 2012 06:20 Teodice wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 05:16 HardlyNever wrote:
I have some web design experience, but my work would be marginally professional at best. Perhaps your expectations are far outside your budget range.
If you want to post what you are looking for, I could at least give you an idea about whether what you are asking for is a lot or reasonable. Well, I´ve posted some things in other responses but I´ll try to sum it up. (Sorry if my typing seams a bit off but it´s getting late here in Sweden ). For the design: I´d want the design of our website to more "professional looking". The previoous designer had no experience from building website before so it has still the touch of trial and error over it. There´s no need for a totally new design, we just want the design we got reworked and "refreshed". A gentle touch by someone more experienced from other projects. The content of the site: I guess some mix of the design adds in here but anyway. As it stands today I cannot add or remove any content on the site except for the news. I cannot add anything to our roster page (which looks horrible at the moment) or at any other information page. I´d like as admin of the site be able to edit anything written or added at the site. May it be that a player has left a team and has to be removed from the roster or some changes in regard of our sponsors or the management of the team. I guess that´s all a coding question and not a design issue. So basicly the site would need a new platform but with the same updated design. The forum: Our forum is working well but since the server migration of the website some things seams to be off and I have not been able to switch them back to how it supposed to be. Probably easy for someone who got the experience which I sadly do not. Just minor stuff which can not take alot of time. Our wish - Our own tournament system: This is probably the most advanced part of the whole site. We´d like our own tournament system to our tounaments that we´ll start to host once again. It doesnt need to be as fancy as craftcup´s or TLs. We just need a proper, enough good looking bracket system for the tournaments. The price I were offered from a designer who have shown great interest is 1500 USD . That does not include the tournament system, just the coding and design upgrade of the site. I thought at first it was a bit much but when I thought some more on it I realized that must be a standard price for a professional designer which he is. That´s why I´d like a student or "hobby" designer to accept the project. Not only that it would be cheaper, also to make the designer want to upgrade and work with the site for his/her own benefit. To be able to learn and work with us through regular payment for every task on the long term. I don´t know. Maybe I just have to increase our budget?
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. It's unrealistic to expect a contractor to want to voluntarily stay on and maintain the site after the contracted work is complete. It is also unrealistic to think that a website's demands can be met in a single contract. Things break. You'll want new features. You'll start to dislike features and want them changed. You'll need to pay more money or get someone experienced in your organization.
As for price, you should expect to pay more for serious programming work (beyond HTML/CSS/PHP). You should expect to pay more for backend work over frontend work. You should expect to pay more for high quality artwork, and most programmers are not artists -- most artists are not programmers.
Also, whether you go indy or firm, the quality of the final product is based solely on experience, not price. Paying more money with a firm probably means they're going to glue together some pre-built components (3rd party code), dress it up according to your design requests, and ship it sooner. Whether it's battle-tested depends on the quality of the firm and the tools they use. On the indy side, it's probably going to take longer to build but the single point of failure is the experience of the developer.
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On February 01 2012 06:34 Chaosvuistje wrote:Designing something as amazing graphics wise in an eSports context gets extra difficult. Trust me, to get the design right and not look like some lame photoshop mash of gradients ( cough... sorry NASL ) you have to be really talented in the futuristic approach. Because most webdesigners are more accustomed to bussiness sites you're less likely to find a reasonable designer that will do it for free. The fact is, even with a good design and site, what are you really trying to attract with your site? Because just adding a tournament system ( which is hella expensive to make since it requires a lot of customization and testing to get it right ) won't get you the traffic you are hoping for. If you are trying to get by from placing ads on your site, you might break even on the hosting unless you get a lot of traffic. Don't get me wrong, I love enthousiasm about websites. However I just wouldn't just plunge into it without any coherent plan of what the function of the site actually is. Is it for publicity? Is it for ad-revenue? Is it for sponsorship adplacement? This isn't 2003 anymore, people actually need a genuine appeal to the function of a particular application or website to return to it in a regular basis. If the goal isn't laid out at the start, your traffic will probably really disappoint you. If you want to promote the team, go for it. But I suggest sticking to facebook and twitter accounts and manage groups through that over getting a website. It is a lot cheaper to start off with, and you get a lot more engagement with your audience.If you want to go for ad-revenue, you will need to get a lot of visitors to your site to make it worth it. And I mean truly a LOT. Let me give you an example of my own portfolio site and some statistics: http://raa-media.nl/The basic strategy here was: Set up a portfolio site for potential clients to browse through and perhaps add a blog for starcraft stuff. Now after I first published the general portfolio stuff, I was glad to get 30 visitors a week ( not kidding, it was a lot for the time ). It was almost unfindable in google due to the age of the site ( yes, even that costs money if you can't do that stuff right ) and my only way of spreading it was through sharing links with my friends ( not really any clients there whatsoever ). So I altered my strategy to gain more visitors: Create content that people will want to re-read, thus searching for my website to get back to it. This required a LOT of effort on my side, I mean the kind of 'writing roughly 100 pages of content' effort. I spent probably 25 hours per large article and getting it out there on TL and reddit to get visitors. Granted, they didn't really come for the portfolio stuff but it was nice to see people looking at it regardless. Only after that did people start googling for my site, if only to get to the starcraft content they wanted to re-read. This happened after some peaks of 16k visitors during the publishing of articles and a steady 200-400 visitors between and after those peaks. Any kind of customization costs TONS of extra resources. 'Personal' and 'unique' are almost synonymous to expensive and labor intensive, if you want to keep it cheap steer clear away from that. And I'm just talking about the design here, if we are talking really unique tech stuff you're going to deflate your wallet lots if you want a secure, easily navigatable and well programmed web application. And if it is not secure, not userfriendly to navigate or performance-obliviously programmed so it stalls a lot, users will not lay back to complain about it and convince other users that it's a piece of Shit. If you asking what you currently are for free, then I would consider changing tactics and resorting to other means of promotion.
Really great answer. Thanks so much for your feedback and thoughts!
Beyond hosting tournaments I´ve been trying to get the site known to deliver swedish eSport news. No in the regard of reporting in swedish more likely finding material to work with like events not that many know of etc. Promoting the swedish eSport scene is the second goal with the site. The primary being promoting and helping the team move forward.
At this point I mainly try to spread our message and news through twitter to promote our site. It has been fairly successful but hey, I´m not that good of a twitterer (does such a word even exist?).
By hosting this tournament I was aiming to in the end go for a more add-revenue tactic when we established a more regular traffic to the site. But the more I think about it after reading your post, the more I question the logic I for not so long ago was so certain of.
The thing is that we already got a site which is www.teamproperty.net. If you take a look at it, it doesnt look very good to be honest. There are so many functions on the site which do not work properly and the design is kinda off. The team itself is pretty established on the swedish scene through our sucess at previous tournaments and offfline events. So we pretty much got somewhat a identity to work with in the team. That´s why I want to focus some on updating the website and make the site itself more attractive for the visitors.
At Dreamhack Winter I got contact with a company, better not say their name, and we got into discussions regarding if they would be interested in sponsoring the team and they showed genuine interest in the matter. Later on we had 2 meetings discussing the matter once again and even there they showed great interest.
The thing was that they realized the players skill and confirmed us as a high aiming team. And by that point we had a new designer on the job working with the site so one of deal of the sponsorship were pretty much "update your site and make it more attractive and you might have a deal.". And when the designer just suddenly quited the job and disappeared and then launch of the updated since were delayed (or canceled I gues you should say), the sponsor slipped through our grasp and continued on.
So I guess the website itself plays a pretty leading role when it comes to attracting the sponsors since our website is the only face we got to the public.
Anyway slipped away from the topic of the discussion.
I think I simply got to rethink what we´re trying to achieve and determine our main focus with the site.
Either way, we still need the site updated since the functions are really messy so its really hard to produce anything of good value with the tools not working properly.
It may sound weird but it seams like we´ve missed alot of positive things by having a half arsed site. Is it wrong to think like that? Should we stick to the site and continue onward with twitter and trying to achieve better results before moving on to the topic of upgrading the site?
Again. Thanks for your response. It really got me thinking in new terms and ways of the team!
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On February 01 2012 06:40 mmp wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2012 06:20 Teodice wrote:On February 01 2012 05:16 HardlyNever wrote:
I have some web design experience, but my work would be marginally professional at best. Perhaps your expectations are far outside your budget range.
If you want to post what you are looking for, I could at least give you an idea about whether what you are asking for is a lot or reasonable. Well, I´ve posted some things in other responses but I´ll try to sum it up. (Sorry if my typing seams a bit off but it´s getting late here in Sweden ). For the design: I´d want the design of our website to more "professional looking". The previoous designer had no experience from building website before so it has still the touch of trial and error over it. There´s no need for a totally new design, we just want the design we got reworked and "refreshed". A gentle touch by someone more experienced from other projects. The content of the site: I guess some mix of the design adds in here but anyway. As it stands today I cannot add or remove any content on the site except for the news. I cannot add anything to our roster page (which looks horrible at the moment) or at any other information page. I´d like as admin of the site be able to edit anything written or added at the site. May it be that a player has left a team and has to be removed from the roster or some changes in regard of our sponsors or the management of the team. I guess that´s all a coding question and not a design issue. So basicly the site would need a new platform but with the same updated design. The forum: Our forum is working well but since the server migration of the website some things seams to be off and I have not been able to switch them back to how it supposed to be. Probably easy for someone who got the experience which I sadly do not. Just minor stuff which can not take alot of time. Our wish - Our own tournament system: This is probably the most advanced part of the whole site. We´d like our own tournament system to our tounaments that we´ll start to host once again. It doesnt need to be as fancy as craftcup´s or TLs. We just need a proper, enough good looking bracket system for the tournaments. The price I were offered from a designer who have shown great interest is 1500 USD . That does not include the tournament system, just the coding and design upgrade of the site. I thought at first it was a bit much but when I thought some more on it I realized that must be a standard price for a professional designer which he is. That´s why I´d like a student or "hobby" designer to accept the project. Not only that it would be cheaper, also to make the designer want to upgrade and work with the site for his/her own benefit. To be able to learn and work with us through regular payment for every task on the long term. I don´t know. Maybe I just have to increase our budget? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. It's unrealistic to expect a contractor to want to voluntarily stay on and maintain the site after the contracted work is complete. It is also unrealistic to think that a website's demands can be met in a single contract. Things break. You'll want new features. You'll start to dislike features and want them changed. You'll need to pay more money or get someone experienced in your organization. As for price, you should expect to pay more for serious programming work (beyond HTML/CSS/PHP). You should expect to pay more for backend work over frontend work. You should expect to pay more for high quality artwork, and most programmers are not artists -- most artists are not programmers. Also, whether you go indy or firm, the quality of the final product is based solely on experience, not price. Paying more money with a firm probably means they're going to glue together some pre-built components (3rd party code), dress it up according to your design requests, and ship it sooner. Whether it's battle-tested depends on the quality of the firm and the tools they use. On the indy side, it's probably going to take longer to build but the single point of failure is the experience of the developer.
Pretty much how I think and know how it runs.
Especially the bolded part is true  If only I could do some designing :D
Edit:
Since you already have the design you basically want to make it in such way that you can change / update the site yourself. For such a thing you indeed need a CMS (Content Management System) like Wordpress or Drupal to manage your site without depending too much on a programmer since the CMS should be able to do what you want (except the tournament hosting part).
You won't really need to learn much HTML/CSS. Probably a little bit PHP in case of installation (I never worked with open source CMS so just going on an assumption it is in PHP/MYSQL).
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EPT
