website design?

M

mymark93

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I'm getting ready to start my own online publication here in the big MO and was wondering if anyone here had any website design experience? I only ask to get some pointers on the best way to organize the site and such. I have done some shopping for a host that will also give me a free domain registration and I'm looking into a few CPA networks to get involved in, along with some local advertising I hope. You see my background is in journalism and graphic design but not so much website design. I can handle the content part of this just not the set up.

Just FYI the online magazine will contain info on everything from cars to hunting. It is basically a magazine for people like to stay active no matter what that my be. Although national stories will be found in its pages it will be focused for residents of Missouri.
 
To be honest I am not sure I have the money to pay a professional designer, even though I want to your stuff looks good. I was just looking for some tips. I hope this doesn't offend anyone. :)
 
Also once you get up and running we could talk about some cross promotion, seeing as racing and working on cars and bikes involves the outdoors and being active. :)
 
yea but it seems you use mostly pre-made templates, which are your companies' design? sites do look good though. Who does the design on your work?
 
Depends on the client. If I have to put together a custom made template from scratch, it's going to cost a LOT more than just taking a pre-made template and modifying it to spec, since I charge by the hour.

Work is either done by me or farmed out to various contacts depending on budget and preference. For example I refuse to do any flash work, so that goes out of house.

I do a lot of back end scripting, which you can't see. A good example is www.blacklabelgrading.com, which has a huge amount of SQL work that drives the card databases.
 
Some cross promotions would be great. Since this website is a online magazine I will need all the content and traffic I can get.
Basically after I get the host and domain name bought how do I choose a good template. Like I said I am a graphic designer so I can make a lot of the graphics for the site I just need help organizing in the most productive way. Also how hard is it to work with the template?
Also any suggestions on a CPA network. I need that will allow forum/blogs, since this is a magazine public feedback will have to be a must.
 
Several of your questions can only be answered by "depends on what your host is". If your host is a typical LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) then it's going to be pretty straightforward to do what you want to do.

You are in Jefferson City? If you are willing to make the trip down here to Springfield, I'll happily sit down with you for an afternoon and go over everything you'll need to know. If you have a sense of design already (and I am going to guess that you do) then the rest of it is just technical know-how, and you can learn that.

No charge, under two conditions: 1) It's a day that I don't have something scheduled on, and 2) you drive your Mark VIII. :)
 
I was looking at this as a host.

http://www.justhost.com/

But my main question is, and actually this my be a rather dumb one, what is the process of getting the website from my computer to the actual web? Like I said I am journalist not a web designer. Also how hard is it going to be to update the website? I mean like get the story or picture placed on the site where I want it.
 
mymark93 said:
I was looking at this as a host.

http://www.justhost.com/

But my main question is, and actually this my be a rather dumb one, what is the process of getting the website from my computer to the actual web? Like I said I am journalist not a web designer. Also how hard is it going to be to update the website? I mean like get the story or picture placed on the site where I want it.
Click to expand...

That's a... hard question to answer in a few lines of text.

You can craft the whole thing in HTML, in which case you'll be uploading it to the server via FTP. I would recommend strongly that you look at using a content management system, in which case sending things up and composing articles, etc, is like posting on facebook or myspace. There's a backend that you use, then it massages everything through a template.
 
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