Meow

Here's this years screen reader survey results from Webaim. Apart from accessibility issues it contains a lot of good best practices and correct methods of presenting content.
 
Survey results: http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey2/
Blog post: http://webaim.org/blog/screen-reader-user-survey-results/

If you are serious about your business, you will pay the money to have a professional job done and attract customers that want to spend lots of money with you.
 
If you are a cheapskate who refuses to pay much for anything, you will use one of these types of sites, have little to no conversions (visitors to paying customers) and the people that do convert are probably tight just like you.
 
So - it depends if you want people to take you seriously or not. Me, I'd rather pay for quality and get it done right the first time rather than not and having to pay twice for the same job.

Is it the
#secnav li {display:inline; padding-left: 30px} ?
 
If each list item has a 30px padding on the left, the whole list will appear to be 30px offset as it will include that on its left hand side but not the right. Could you do it as 15px left and right instead?

Saeed - do as the other guys said, do some reading and learning. Then decide if you are in a position to write it yourself. Even if you decide you can, take a look at some open source code first to give yourself an idea of what's involved.
 
For your news items you will need to look at sending your input to a database, then asking the display page to call it up again. But you can't just say you want 'a dynamic news site', it doesn't work like that. The variables are far too many to list but for example...
Will you be writing your input in plain text/code or do you want an on-page HTML editor? And how will the database record that input correctly (inc any code, special characters, etc)?
Will there be restricted access to the input page - do you need to be a registered member or an admin?
Are you going to call a limited snippet to the front page which can then call up a new page to view in full?
Will the front page display only latest item?
Do you want to restrict entries to a certain length?
Do you want to display them in a particular order?
Do you want them to automatically archive?
...
 
You can sit and list all sorts of scenarios which might get progressively more complicated. You need to figure out all the details of exactly what you want it to do and then learn how to implement them.

If you want to show them to me cinnamondm I can let you know if they look like a pony or a horse

I took a look at the colour scheme chooser you posted a link to. I wasn't much for the tool itself but I did like the way it gave you a page preview.
 
For web designers something like this tool would probably be more useful http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html as it gives you all the HEX web colour values as well as the RGB values for Photoshop users.

Congratulations NeRo!! You have won a +1 from me for spotting the not so hidden error!!!

Not neccessarily, its horses for courses.
 
If you need transparency in a larger, or irreuglarly shaped, image then in most cases PNG is the way to go. PNG or GIF is also best for flat colour images.
 
If you don't need transparency and you have a large image to display with a lot of smooth tonal and colour variation then JPEG is probably the best format; you can compress JPEGs without getting 'artefacts', (antiques are what you find in your grandma's hallway) you just need to choose the correct settings.
 
If you have a very small image without much tonal and colour variation then GIF might be worth a try.
 
Advising someone to always use PNGs, regardless of the image content and size, is the equivalent of advising Bob the bricklayer that he needs a DB driven, content managed, ecommerce site with a forum and a blog & hosting on a dedicated server.
 
Regards

Hunger
 

Hi
 
You are half way there, just reading these posts I don't even need to look at the site to tell you that. You have sold Zoes cakes so much so that everyone wants them. You just need to rethink how you are going to convert them which I presume in this case is to contact Zoe.
 
I think there are too many steps before the call to action, I would condense them into About, Occasions, Gallery and Contact. I would also spread Contact Us and a phone number liberally throughout the site. I am not saying all those pages arent needed I just mean stick weddings and cookies into the occasions page. Doing this will basically cover AIDA - Attention (the cakes on the homepage), Interest (about the company and their services), Desire (more images of the cakes), Action (the contact form and phone number).

Well, it does what it says it will very nicely!
 
Is this a permanent upload, or do you purge the server to remove older images?

I suggest that you Google Alternate stylesheets or alternative stylesheets as they are usually javascript based solutions and then a suitable button(s) will let someone refresh the page with a different stylesheet.
 
I found this one through Google
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/
which says
When a document is initially loaded, the persistent and preferred style sheets are applied to the document. The alternate style sheets can then be selected by the user.
you don't actually need the cookie but that helps if the viewer looks at lots of your pages and saves him always clicking a button for the alternate styesheet.

I've got a good idea, in the user control panel, a setting that allows users to set the target="_" for their themselves, that way you're conforming to accessibility by not including it, and giving users the option to have it set as target="_blank" or target="_self", I know I'd use the _blank one and I'm sure other people would too, I did a large post the other day, and pressed a link and it took me away from it completely, couldn't recover what was written .

Definately with traxor on this one (as usual).
 
Personally when I develop a site, external site links always get a blank target!!

Bit of a double edged sword aint it?!
 
Personally, I prefer my links to open in a new window so I can shut them down when I have finished.
 
There have been times when I have gone so far past, it impossible to return and I have to go right back to the beginning.
 
!

It probably doesn't matter to have a long css file as long as you actually need all the styles, just try to create spaces and /*COMMENTS IN CAPITALS*/ occasionally so that you can find your way around more easily later.

For the first time in a long time I feel ashamed to be Irish.
 
You class yourself as an advanced web designer yet you can hardly spell and use capital letters correctly. I can understand a web design company maybe charging over €1000 for a site like that as companies like that have overheads and other employees to pay unlike freelance designers who work for themselves.
 
I'd charge €500 for that site and easily have it done in 2/3 days. That's just my price, maybe other designer will charge more and have extras like a CMS but everyone will vary. Any designer who'd take 3k for that exact site is just plain greedy.
 
I think everyone else here know's how far you'll go with that attitude

Just so you know, i ran the homepage through some tests.
 
 
Cynthia says you fail both WAI and 508 guidelines
 
Your homepage fails xhtml validation.
 
W3C failed you on semantics because you're using h3's without h2's or h1's
 
And you shouldn't be using tables for non-tabular data.
 
So before you slate us for being crap, and not conforming to standards, get off your pedestal and lead by example.

I think it's a bit rich to come on here asking what you should charge for a site and then slating everyone else for their own pricing opinions.

I think it's a bit rich to come on here asking what you should charge for a site and then slating everyone else for their own pricing opinions.

thats more like it! i was getting worried with the first replies of 250! i would never do a site for 250 even if it only had 2 pages! it wouldnt be worth my while. i do these jobs on the side as i already have a full time job so its good to get extra cash. i was a little suprised to see so many low prices to begin with, thats the problem with designers, especially around this site, there are too many people churning out low end designs and asking for any kind of money for it, i see it too frequently around here, people calling themselves webdesigners and then struggle to even design a half decent portfolio website for themselves.

It's quite a nice site - but £3k is quite excessive.
 
I would probably charge in the region of £1k for design and build. You have to remember that as a freelancer, you can't charge the £75 per hour that agencies will charge in; about £25/£30 per hour is the going rate for most freelancers.
 
Most designers/developers I know will charge a smaller amount up front for a basic 5 page site (£300-£400) and then make their money over the course of the year on updates etc...
 
Try not to jump down people's throats for their opinion either; just because you expected people to say "wow that's amazing; charge £2k" and they didn't is no reason for a personal attack. Skidz is an excellent coder who has helped me out on numerous occasions with different PHP issues and saying his design skills aren't up to much is a bit personal
 
The key in business is not to charge a set price, but to really charge on a project by project basis taking everything into account.
 
Good luck

I work as a professional PHP web developer. WYSIWYG editor. OK.
Your just an ignorant **** I didn't as much as criticise your design and you say "im talking crap". I come to this forum to help people with the knowledge I have not to put up with school kids like you. If you don't like the answers your given don't ask the question.
 
I won't post in this thread again!

i just think ur talkin crap sayin that u could design and code that in 10 hours. thats all. i have asked on a another design forum (which has a much higher standard of design as this place) and they have replied with sayin u should be asking for as much as €3000 for such a site. "A €450 designer probably doesn't know what he/she is doing, probably using a WYSIWYG editor, no thought about things like usability, accessability or findability. i suppose you usually get what you pay for (or in a lot of cases, less)"

ah god. im not gonna get into this. ur design skills dont look up to much so if u think u could design my site in 10 hours all i can say is fair enough. maybe u could code a couple of pages in 10 hours but u wouldnt be able to design it