₦airaland Forum

Again it depends.  I can give you what I charge on average though 

Web site (I don't charge per page): $800
Web app: $1,500
CMS: $2,000
Web hosting: I don't do this per se. what I do though is say I will charge them nothing for the first year and $50 a year after that.

This is how I determine what to charge: I google'd the web once for web design calculators (the ones that give real-time quotes, as opposed to "contact us for free quote).  I fill in the fields, as though I were the client.  Calculator spits out the results and depending on how I feel, I may go up or down on the resulting price.  I repeat the process for at least 2 other sites, then average the 3.  Over time, you get to know what clients are comfortable with and eventually, you have a minimum price based on that. Since all my clients are based on referrals, they pretty much know what to expect before contacting me.

I hope this helps.  Again, these are average prices.

To everyone:
Please read this thread first before barking back with accusations of "harassment":
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-295593.0.html

www.jordanschools.net
1) Add a left margin to the content in the right column

2) The grayish column in the middle, why isn't it stretching all the way down?

3) I see nothing wrong with the yellow strips.  Having said that, on http://www.jordanschools.net/photos.html , I would expect the same 2 bars that exists on other pages.

4) Why no contact form?

5) It appears the main content well is set to a fixed height.  That is why, on certain pages, there is a huge black gap and on others (like the home page), the content fits just right.  Why not make it flexible?

6) School anthem belongs to only the "overview" page

7) photo gallery: make it more interactive by using one of the javascript libraries (jquery et al). I shouldn't have to click back and forth.

8 ) Why is the font for photo gallery in the nav bar not consistent with that of other nav items?

9) who is in charge of updating? You or the client? If you, are you getting paid for it? If the client, do they have the necessary skill set?  I ask cos it appears to me that the "news" section will be updated frequently for the site to be worth visiting over and over and for it to be useful to the students' parents.

www.alumanacoarts.com
I, and I am sure others, have very little patience.  Why did I have to wait for what seemed like eternity, looking at the images.  I clicked each one expecting something to happen, nothing happened. To me, a total waste of my time.  I shouldn't have to figure out what a site is about.  It should be self-explanatory.

kolitos, have it your way but even based on the site you reference, IMHO, you are doing the developer(s) a great disservice, and vice versa,  by not being specific.  Looking at that site, I can easily see how a customer can walk away not being satisfied, based on their needs.  I would feel like I am being boxed into a corner.  I am the kind of person who likes personalized service and that is what I give to my clients.  In the end, from experience (cos I have tried this pricing model before), you either cheat yourself or the client.  Either way, someone will get screwed.

I just had a conversation with someone who wanted a site the other day.  He said he wanted a 5-page site.  I said, "what kind of site?".  He said, "something simple". I said, "again, it depends on what kind of site".  In the end, he told me it was for his accounting firm and based on that, I tailored what he will be getting to his answers.  I would rather give the impression that I am a professional and know what I am doing than be a code monkey/order taker.  That Mr. Biggs mentality doesn't go down well with me.

Again, have it your way but I think it will be best for you to state what kind of site you need before asking for price.

Good luck!

1) Hosting price isn't determined by whether you want to have a web site or web app. It depends on bandwidth, storage, etc

2) Price for Web design for 5-page website depends on what kind of site, whether you will need images (if yes, how many), number of email addresses desired, if content is provided by you or the developer and if images are provided by you or the developer, to mention but a few

3) Again, depends on what type of site which in turn determines the level of customization.

In general, for 2 and 3, I give a flat rate, again, depending on type of site. No need stating rates, IMHO, for 5-, 10, 20-page sites as from experience, sooner or later, the number of pages is exceeded and you are left wondering how to charge extra. Besides, if you are talking web apps, a 20-page site could actually consist of say, only 4 or 5 files.

I have a minimum rate for web sites, web apps and CMS sites. That min. rate may then go up based on requirements.

Sorry to go off on a rant but I think it is necessary to state that your request is vague. With these pointers, you can hopefully be more specific.

P { font-size: 12pt }

Always refrain from using "pt" for font size as this is suitable for print media (books, etc). Use "px", "em" or "%".

plz can you direct me to someone in abuja who cant teach me web designing, i'll appreciate ur help

Are you sure about that? Maybe that is why you will probably not get any responses to your request

no problem. By the way, most answers aren't necessarily meant to answer your questions directly but to make you go back and think and, as in your case, rethink the problem and work a solution on your own. This makes the solution yours and most likely, you will never forget it. That is why I seldom post code and prefer to use english.

It certainly beats copy and paste

poster:
Listen to kehers, esp with opening FORM tag part

au contraire mon frere, we did, albeit not in the way u wanted it to appear

"Full Name:".$_POST['name']."\r\n". "Arrival Date:".$_POST['arrival']. "Departure Date:".$_POST['departure'].

By the way, if I were you, I would:
1) Think about assigning your POSTs to vars for readability
2) use REQUEST, as opposed to POST for "hackability" reasons.

Make sense?

My bad kolitos, for assuming it was me. Next time, for ppl like me who aren't that sharp, please put down the name of the person you are referring to, so as to avoid collateral damage

Out of curiosity, if this isn't a matter of urgency, why not go with cms tools that are already out there then, once you are done with your project, for which I assume you are getting paid, you can then spend the time to create on of your own? Various Free cms tools abound: drupal, joomla etc.

Try those then as I said, once you are done and are paid, you spend the time to build on of yours. There is no need reinventing the wheel, if you don't have to

Good luck!

kolitos, one thing I like about myself is that I always allow myself some wiggle room in whatever I do in life

Observe again, my first post:

With #1 being preferred. As always with my code examples, please verify for yourself that it contains no run-time errors.

So in essence, assuming the poster was so stubborn as to go with #2, he would see the html for which I can't be held to blame as I issued a warning about the poster verifying that my code is correct (I am posting from work, a jsp environment, so I can't test my php code and what I write half the time is from my head).

Yes, For the errors part, the BR tags are fine. For the sending email part, the BR tags aren't.

Thanks

This particular thread will perhaps go down in nairaland history as one of the weirdest 

Expanding on kolitos' suggestion:

if($_POST['apartment']==""{
print "You cannot leave the Apartment date empty[b]\r\n[/b]";
exit();
}

OR

if($_POST['apartment']==""{
print "You cannot leave the Apartment date empty[b]
[/b]";
exit();
}

OR
With #1 being preferred.  As always with my code examples, please verify for yourself that it contains no run-time errors.

Good luck!

webdezzi:
3 posters (excluding myself) can't be wrong. I therefore strongly urge you to read the original post again

I have been, up until my latest personal project but my latest project at work has got me thinking otherwise.

We recently deployed changes to our website that for one, has increased our page widths to support those with 1024x768 resolution.  We also were able to cut down server requests on the home page from 121 to 92.  We also (and this is where this post becomes necessary), decided to separate our bulky stylesheets into IE and non-IE (6 and 7) stylesheets.

Throughout the project, coding for IE6 was a pain. IE7 had a thing or 2 here and there but for IE8, we actually didn't do any extra coding.  According to our revenue statistics, only 15% of revenue comes from IE6.  60% comes from IE7 and the rest from FF et al.  So that got us thinking, "do we really want to cater to the remaining 15%?"  Besides, it's not like we are abandoning IE6 users; they will just, like safari users, get a less pleasant experience.

I and 3 others have been working on this for 4 months (you would think expanding one's pages would be that easy but trust me, it isn't. Over 900 files (yes, we do use includes all over the place), 10% of our files, were touched in the process) and I can honestly say that I am strongly reconsidering making my pages IE6-compatible.

What are your thoughts?  Have you stop coding for IE6? Are you still coding for IE6 now?  Of course note that we made our decision not based on the fact that we pulled our hair out trying to hack for IE6 but based on raw, hard statistics.  In other words, what is good for the goose in this case may not necessarily be good for the gander.

Either way, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks,

Nice cloning of FB's look and feel. Before this post, when i saw your ad on other posts, I actually thought it was owned by facebook

It would be nice to know what your web stats say or if for instance, you have been contacted by facebook. My only suggestion would be to consider trimming down the number of boards. Unless you intend to have multiple moderators, management will be very difficult. Also, based on my 1024x768 resolution (which is what most of the world uses to browse the web), if I hadn't looked at my scroll bar to see that I had more ways to go, I would have thought that the first column was the only column, in terms of boards.

Good job and good luck!

Just wondering. I haven't

I use FireBug on FF and just found out they have FireBug lite which I think can be used on IE. Recently at work, I had to fix a defect and of course in IE I still had to edit, upload the file and refresh the page until someone recommended that I use IE's developer toolbar. I downloaded it but didn't really like it (or maybe I am a little biased in favor of FireBug ).

So, have you used IE's Developer Toolbar? If yes, what are the good and bad sides to it? Would you recommend it? etc. If no, why aren't you using it?

The floor is open.

inhisimage:

I replied to your request at least 2 weeks ago now. Check your spam folder. I also included my price quote for you (definitely not 10K).

The ball is in your court. Check your spam/blacklist folder and get back to me.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.a794af41909b94da7c284e00ebc37709.481&show_article=1

A Russian Internet company is offering to buy 100 million dollars worth of stock from Facebook employees in a deal which values the fast-growing social network at 6.5 billion dollars.

The Russian company, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which invested 200 million dollars in Facebook in May, is offering 14.77 dollars per share of Facebook common stock.

The tender offer will close "some time in August," said Jennifer Gill, a DST spokeswoman.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the DST offer.

"While individuals must make their own decisions about participating in this program, I'm pleased that the price DST is offering is much greater than the price originally considered last fall," Zuckerberg said in a statement.

"This is recognition of Facebook's growth and progress towards making the world more open and connected," he said.

At the time it purchased a nearly two percent equity stake in Facebook, DST said it would be purchasing at least 100 million dollars of common stock held by current and former Facebook employees.

DST's purchase of a 1.96 percent stake in preferred stock in privately held Facebook, the largest cash-raising exercise by the Palo Alto, California-based company in two years, valued the company at 10 billion dollars.

US computer software giant Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for 240 million dollars in 2007, a deal that at the time valued the company at 15 billion dollars.

While its number of users has grown at an amazing clip, Facebook, unlike other Web giants such as Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo!, has yet to prove how it is going to translate traffic into cash.

The company has not yet unveiled plans to go public.

Privately held DST, which is based in Moscow and London, holds significant interests in Web companies in Russia and Eastern Europe.

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poster:
Mind your postings. Thanks.

and VERY powerful too

Given recent posts on review threads, I felt it necessary to create this thread in order to solicit responses with respect to the subject line. To put my money where my mouth is, I will go first. As always, I could be wrong and I stand corrected in that case.

A site review to me is not done to make the requester feel good. It is not done to say, "site looks cool" or "site sucks". It is to point out flaws with the sole purpose of making the site better. It is like going to a *real* church - you don't go there to feel good but to receive a message that will make you go back home and think, "am I really living my life right?" Of course, a review is a 2-way street - I tell you what is wrong, you fix them. There might be some fuzzy areas where you either choose to implement such changes or not, or we agree to disagree, but for the most part, such flaws are pretty standard stuff and obvious.

When I perform site reviews, I try to stick away from stuff like, "site is cool" or "color combination is off" cos those to me are subjective. Rather, I stick to again, the obvious (contact form doesn't validate, grammatical errors, layout, code structure, logic, etc). The latter is more objective, IMHO. I also am the type of person who hates it when someone complains to me about something without offering a solution. To that effect, with each point I make, I try to offer a solution. What's the point of saying, "form doesn't validate" if I don't say, for example, "I entered bad data in your email field and the form took it" or "use of inline/page level styles is bad" if I don't follow it up with, "unless for a very good reason. Put all your styles in a stylesheet. This will among others make your site more readable as well as reduce page load time"?

Some might not want to hear the truth but as they say, the truth hurts. If you are not ready to stand the heat, as they say, leave the kitchen. Don't leave a site review feeling bad over what your peers have said. Leave with the attitude of, "at least, I have learned something new". Whereby you find none of such reviews helpful, kindly ignore and walk away. In YIMs with fellow forumites as well as at work, I take it and I dish it. Worse case, I agree to disagree. I never come back with, "oh, can I see your works?" or turn to ad hominem/"do you know who I am?" arguments. Off-topic rants don't help me at all.

We are on an online forum folks. You have nothing to lose. It's not like I will one day walk on the roads of Warri and say (for example), "remoranger, how u dey now? na you b dis?". Chances are that we will *never* meet each other in our life time.

The floor is now open to debate.

kolitos, it's all good. As I said earlier:

Does it mean I am always right? Far from it.

I stick to the aforementioned quote

I expect you to look at my portfolio and all the clients that have contacted me have only looked at my portfolio of my WORK not my website.

You can't force your expectations on clients.  What you expect and what they will do are 2 separate things.  They will see what they want to see.  Also, you can't say the above for a fact unless you provide statistics to back it up.  I am not saying you are lying, but that you can't and shouldn't make such a statement without facts.  Do you survey them to know this? When they call you, do they all say, "I found you online and I like your work (which could include your site as well.  I want you to do a site for me"? Do you know how many times they might have tried contacting you via say, your form, before they were able to get through?  Again, not questioning your business model, just asking.

Regardless, I expect that too.  I have done sites for people who so liked my portfolio, that they were willing to pay up front.  I was the one asking them to withhold payment till I was actually done.

Having said that, I still say it is no excuse not to give yourself/your clients the best.  As I tell kids (please don't misconstrue this statement either. I am not referring to you directly or otherwise), tis best to speak proper english early cos the way you speak (even to yourself) is most likely the way you will write (for yourself and others).  Always strive for quality, whether or not the site is for you.  That's all I am saying.  Also, please don't misconstrue my honesty and straightforwardness for negativity.  Tis only advice. You don't have to take it.  In the end as they say, time will tell.

By the way, form validation isn't all about mail injection.  It is also to ensure that potential clients don't mistakenly enter wrong data, which could possibly result in frustrated clients and your losing money (for example, I could make the mistake of entering "555-1i1-222a" as a phone number or "sdasdf.com".  If you don't validate and assume the person has N1m to spend, you just lost some cool cash, potentially  )

he he, was he about to pick his nose or did he just finish picking his nose?

http://www.vanguardngr.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/saninff.jpg

Good talk bugs, though I fell for replying, on purpose. Sometimes, it is necessary to reply to such to make a point or to let others see where you are coming from 

kolitos:
Tis good to work 2 places in 10 years however, for me, staying in one place, IMHO, makes my ideas incestuous.  By moving around, I see things that I probably wouldn't have seen, learn new things based on others' ideas, etc.

When I mentioned my "travels", my point wasn't in the number of jobs but to stress the paragraph above this.  I have also had opportunities to be a manager  but I turned them down. Why? cos at least based on where I am, being a manager could make me stagnant in the sense that, if I were to move on, or worse, get fired/laid off, it is easier to find a job as a coder as opposed to as a manager.  At the end of the day, for me, it's about the money and adding to my skill set, not title.

Look at it this way, if I stumbled upon your site as a potential client and saw that you did certain things certain ways which I didn't like, do you think I will be thinking to myself, "oh yeah, he did it this way cos it is his personal site.  when he works on my site, it will be way better and different"?  You get my point?  You don't have a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression.

By the way, I visited barnsley.  Cool site but your validation error messages are not lining up with the fields (in FF) 

These are getting quite interesting 

Another (some code purposely stripped off in the interest of brevity as it has nothing to do with the actual quiz itself ):

Building on quizzes 1 and 2 (https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-293811.0.html and https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-294974.0.html), let's say you have a site with 10 pages and all, thanks to the power of includes, have this code snippet in them:

<style>
div.blah { margin-top: 10px; }
</style>

<div class="blah">blah blah</div>

Now, let's say that 1 or 2 of those pages needs to have a unique top margin.  I could do it in one of 2 ways:

<div class="blah nairaland">blah blah</div> OR <div id="nairaland" class="blah">blah blah</div>

I personally would go for #2 as I don't like "classitis" but for the sake of argument, let's just say I wasn't aware of this "disease" and decided to go for #2 anyways, with the following rule:

<style>
div#nairaland { margin-top: 20px; }
</style>

Questions:
1) Given <div class="blah" id="nairaland">blah blah</div>, which rule (ID or CLASS) gets applied to the particular page
2) why?
3) Which of these is valid syntax?
3a) <div class="blah" class="nairaland">blah blah</div>
3b) <div class="blah nairaland">blah blah</div> OR
3c) <div id="blah nairaland">blah blah</div>
4) Explain your answer to #3 above


As always, I await your answers.

1) I am a **she**, not he 

2) **Never** do anything in life to make anyone happy.  Code as you will but take note that there are good ways to code and bad ways and the former should never be misconstrued for "complicating things".  At the end of the day, you become a better coder for it.  I have worked in 6 places over a 10 year period (don't take this for bragging.  I am trying to make a point, hopefully), in addition to doing things on the side and I can tell you confidently that every single place operates the same way.  Since you are doing it for me and not you, there is no point in viewing it again.  Am I the only one who visits your site?

I have been on teams that developed games  and dabbled here and there in software engineering though I prefer to stick to the web as it is the only medium where I can actually show someone what I do (for free) without resorting to explanation.  A good programmer is one who is, as one of my uni profs said, "anal-retentive" and "paranoid delusional".  What that means is, if you step on your car brakes for instance, you want your car to stop.  No corners should be cut in the name of "simplicity" or "time-wasting".  If it requires 100 if-statements, so be it.  No offense but I am the type who draws conclusions based on certain observations.  I would hate to go that far, but if you choose not to do email validation, what else might you choose not to do?  Testing/reviewing a website involves testing certain basic functionality (sanity testing) before even testing the "koko". 

One thing your gaming company hopefully does is peer reviews.  If you don't do it, I recommend that you do.  It makes you a better person.  When I write what I write, it isn't to please me or to show off.  It is based on what I have seen/been through in my years of coding.  It is like an involuntary response in reaction to what I see.  Does it mean I am always right? Far from it.  Having said that, I think I know a thing or 2 about web dev and just as someone made me who I am in the game, I see it as my job to transfer same knowledge to someone else.  No vex o, if you don't like my posts.  That won't make me stop though 

As 2 proverbs in my language say (loosely translated), "doing a good thing isn't bad" and "taking your time to do a good thing isn't a waste". 

Chew on that.

Actually, you are very correct kehers. The first time I encountered this, I spent hours trying to figure it out when it hit me that I should probably test the idea of setting a height out.

Sometimes, the "simplest" of things, take the most time to figure out.

Now, off to find something far more trickier

Hmm,

1) I don't think that just because you are practicing lawn tennis in your backyard, you should comfort yourself with the fact that you are serving "let" balls, just because you aren't playing at wimbledon. You have to be prepared, so to speak, always.

2) The purpose of testing isn't to see what works but what doesn't work. If you feel this way about what I said, it means you couldn't work where I work cos they will point out something that is off by 1px, literally

I equate reviews to testing and besides, you can't go through life feeling good all the time. I haven't exactly trashed your site (though I could). I am pointing out things that, in my opinion, are rookie mistakes.

As for the spinning stuff, sure that is your opinion but it doesn't necessarily mean you have to stick with it if many don't find it appealing.

1) Too many "sharp" edges. try using rounded corners a bit.
2) "scholarship" image header et al: y not use css headers? they save bytes
3) Try and get a better header
4) If I am not in Nigeria and don't want to spend money on phone card, how can I contact you on your website, as in contact form?

5) http://www.websmsalerts.com/menu.php?run=Privacy - there is something wrong with this page but i am having a hard time trying to figure it out. Also, on this and other page, you need to make the "home" link more visible so I can easily find it and go back to the home page. You also need to make your navigation area consistent. So the links I see on the home page, I should be able to see everywhere else. This makes me think you aer not using includes which will make maintenance a nightmare for you.