[Powaqqatsi]

Hey, I'd like to know how much people here charge for a website that's about 40 pages big.
I've done this one:
http://www.cedim-med.com/test/
(mind you, it's not 100% finished yet)

This is the first time I design a site (well, a serious one. I've had some experiments before). I did everything from the pics to the code myself.

Also any comment about the design is welcome. But please don't trash it COMPLETELY

If you see rendering problems please feel free to tell about them I tried to test on as much browsers as possible, but you never know.

And while you are at it take a look here It's my personal portfolio site. Well it will be my site, it's not finished at all, I don't have a lot of time to work on it.

[redJag]

There's a small typo on the products page (English version): Click on one of the products te get more information.

Having most of the text in pictures is a pet peeve of mine, seeing as I'm on dialup (but not for long! DSL next week woohoo!).

The pictures are nice and simple, the site is laid out nicely. It looks like some key images are missing descriptive alt tags. This is necessary for text browsers (application) and for visually impaired browsers (person). Looks like the majority of your images have alt tags that are just empty, which is fine for most of them.

Ah, another small typo in About Us (English version): choice for Spanish at the bottom says espagñol.

Broken links on About Us page (the navigation part).

There's a blue border around radvantageachter.jpg on its product page.
--

Anyway, nice page! Just found a few problems you may have been aware of. It looks very sleek. As far as charging, it depends on your relationship with the client, and I'd need to know how much time you spent on it.

For future reference, determine what you will do, how long it will take you to do it, and how much it will cost them, before you start at ALL.

I would probably charge $400-500 for this page, but can't be sure for the reasons above.

[CobraNT]

I like the way the site is layed out. It is clean looking and the pictures are clear. I agree, using images for text is not a great idea but sometimes it just works out better. There are spelling errors but as you said its not complete yet, just make sure you triple check the site for spelling before delivering it to you customer. As for what to charge there is a lot that comes into that decision. You have to figure out the time it will take to complete the site, and add a few hours just because. I would agree with redJag, never even open a design tool until you know exactly what is to be done, a quote is provided to your customer, and they have signed your proposal in agreement of the work to be done and the price. Now that I have given you a quick lesson on doing business as a designer, I would normally charge $1000-$2000 for a static site like this. Yes this is much higher than redJag, but every designer and customer base is different. Are you doing this as a hobby or are you starting a design company?

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by redJag:
There's a small typo on the products page (English version): Click on one of the products te get more information.

Having most of the text in pictures is a pet peeve of mine, seeing as I'm on dialup (but not for long! DSL next week woohoo!).

The pictures are nice and simple, the site is laid out nicely. It looks like some key images are missing descriptive alt tags. This is necessary for text browsers (application) and for visually impaired browsers (person). Looks like the majority of your images have alt tags that are just empty, which is fine for most of them.

Ah, another small typo in About Us (English version): choice for Spanish at the bottom says espagñol.

Broken links on About Us page (the navigation part).

There's a blue border around radvantageachter.jpg on its product page.

Yep I'm aware of those errors Just haven't had the time to fix them. Except the blue border ? It's black AFAIK.

Well, the client is actually my dad's company so yeah, I don't realle DARE to ask him alot, but €400-500 would be cool, I looked around a bit for prices and it seems to me that a lot of quite simple websites are €1000 or more.

CobraNT, it's more of a hobby actually since I'm only 17 and still in high school but I'll probably do something like graphics design masters after that. And I'm willing to make it my job (combined with photography)

BTW: redJag, thanks for the tip on the alt-tags, I'll try to add them. As for text in pictures: I first had a design which was completely based on pictures but I changed that thinking that not every one would like that too much, so they are a bit of a leftover.

As for time spent on making it, I honestly have no clue. Lot's of hours anyway. But I heard that the site already needs te be expanded in a few weeks (lot's of new products coming). So I'll think about the time spent on it BEFORE beginning.

[redJag]

Yeah, giving advice on what to charge is a tough deal. I can put up static sites in a snap by now, so I don't often charge much for them. Also, I'm trying to build up the portfolio a bit (professional work is a bit lacking ). If it was my dad I would probably just do it for free, or maybe a couple hundred dollars.

[clam2000]

some things to think about:
Your product pages need a back button as well as a next button, Optimally there would also be a number for each page at the bottom.

when I click english I don't want a blank page, think about moving the current news article to the home page. It took me a while to realize that clicking the name at the top would take me to the home, if you write home under it, or somehow show that it is a link that would be helpful.

The "productos" button in the spanish site won't work... at first I thought it meant you hadn't finished it yet, but I was able to get there by going to the english products page and then clicking spanish.


--will

[James L]

Your pages should always be validated... this will ensure that your code is to standards. If it is not, all of your errors will be identified... making it MUCH easier to correct them.

Having valid code makes your pages render properly in more browsers, therefore your pages become more platform/browser independent.

First thing to do is to go to www.w3.org and learn about, then add, a DOCTYPE.

Once this is done, run the page through the html validator, then correct any mistakes you find.

If you progress into more professional design, especially if you learn it in school, this will be a MUST to do for ALL of your pages.

btw, the pages look nice!

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by James L:
Your pages should always be validated... this will ensure that your code is to standards. If it is not, all of your errors will be identified... making it MUCH easier to correct them.

Having valid code makes your pages render properly in more browsers, therefore your pages become more platform/browser independent.

First thing to do is to go to www.w3.org and learn about, then add, a DOCTYPE.

Once this is done, run the page through the html validator, then correct any mistakes you find.

If you progress into more professional design, especially if you learn it in school, this will be a MUST to do for ALL of your pages.

btw, the pages look nice!

Thanks

Anyway, yeah I tried to validate them but it seems I need to specify a doctype. After doing that and runnig the pages through the validator it gives errors I don't really understand.

example: Line 48, column 87: there is no attribute "LEFTMARGIN"

what the hell is it supposed to mean ? my leftmargin says: LEFTMARGIN=0 ??? Could you help out ? I go 11 errors on 1 page like that.

[James L]

If you list them, I will help you with them. Basically, during the browser wars of the late 90's, early 2000's, IE and NN would add in commands and attributes that would only work in their browser. These commands are NOT html specific, but browser dependent. What you want to do to make your pages html, or xhtml, complient, is to replace all of these proprietary commands with valid ones.

First off, which Doctype did you use? I would start with the HTML 4.01 Transitional one personally... it is a little bit more forgiving then the strict one.

The main idea with the web standards is to seperate content (your html code, images, text), from presentation. ALL presentation (the code that describes how your pages look) should be done using CSS (cascading style sheet). So, for example, there used to be 4 commands used to place your page at the top left corner of the browser window. 2 were IE attributes, 2 were for Netscape. They were placed in the body line, and read:

marginleft="0"
margintop="0"
leftmargin="0"
topmargin="0"

These commands aren't actually in the html specification. You should remove them, and replaced them with the appropriate CSS command. To do this, add the following into the head section of your page:


< style type="text/css">
body {margin: 0;
padding: 0;}
< /style>

I put a space after the < in the style tag so it would be displayed in this forum.

...now, the good always comes with the bad. Older browsers had very poor CSS support, and they won't recognize a lot of the CSS specifications. The above, however, is usually safe. The version 4 browsers might not recognize it, but they were released in 1998 and are only used by 1% of the web people out there now.

...hope that helps!

p.s. ALL html code should be in lowercase, and all attributes should be quoted. So:

WIDTH=0

for example, should read:

width="0"

[redJag]

Originally posted by James L:
p.s. ALL html code should be in lowercase, and all attributes should be quoted.

That's a matter of opinion

I usually put HTML code in caps, attribs in lowercase, and values in quotes (except integers, which are..integers--not strings). i.e. < BODY background="anImage.jpg">

Seeing as how I write code more often than HTML (PHP, C++, C, etc. etc.), I tend to write more towards that style. To each his own.

[James L]

Hey RedJag,

Yeah, I know, old habits die hard. I started back with Turbo Pascal in late 80's, early 90's on a Mac Plus. I used to use Caps the same way you do.

With XHTML upon us however, the html 4 specification will eventually go the way of the dino. Part of the XHTML specification is that all tags MUST be in lowercase... end of story.

I switched over to all lowercase about a year ago. It was hard, but as I make the move from HTML 4.01 strict to XHTML (which is occuring slowly!) it has made it easier.

I think what has made it easier for me though is that I use BBEdit (fantastic html editor), and it colour codes the tags. This way they stand out as if they were all caps.

Cheers!