Electric Studio

We did struggle with templating Magento initially, but after the latest update (1.3.2.x), the templating is now so much easier. First store almost ready, plenty more to come. Love it!

We use both, but only use Drupal when pushed to ;-) Drupal is very tedious to use and can take some serious time to get used to, if you ever do get used to it ;-) WordPress on the other hand, is so incredible easy to use and our customers swear by it and it's user-friendlessness. Drupal can do some pretty wizzy stuff, but for the end user admin, very tricky to manage with long winded steps just to add a page and menu item.

We use either WordPress or ExpressionEngine. Both are great, and the main reason for sometimes opting for EE is the multiple blog feature, better members management and more supported add-ons like the wiki and shopping basket. But for most of our "sub 1000 pages websites", WordPress is more than adequate and is so simple to setup and theme. Both WordPress and ExpressionEngine are also so much easier for our clients to learn and update if you compare to Drupal/Jomla, which are both dreadful to manage, at least as far as our customers are concerned.

Fair enough, in that case i did misunderstand ;-) Thanks for the link btw.

Why don't you use something ready-cooked for that? Like CubeCart, Magento or Interspire? Or for something simpler, WordPress with an eCommerce add-on, all of the above have payment gateways readily built so you don't have to re-invent the wheel again

Start with a pen, post-it notes and paper. Draw up the various pages, and the various scenarios e.g. what happens when you click somewhere. Once the pages and scenarios are laid out, fire up Photoshop/Fireworks and start designing the pages. Get all of the above signed of by the client, then start worrying about the code ;-) You can always use something like WordPress/ExpressionEngine/Gallery2 to run a website for a photographer, the choice boils down to what functions you need. Have fun, and enjoy the project!

Thanks for the jQuery link, great stuff!

You'd struggle to do this without flash, but I'd always recommend to not use flash for any functional elements, like menus etc, stick to normal HTML for that. Flas is great for adding a bit of wazzaz, but not for menus...

Google offer a great free tool for this. It gives you complete code to implement the subscription boxes for your website, and then you can send the emails form their control panel. All free at http://feedburner.google.com

And our little easy guide http://www.electricstudio.co.uk/search-eng...or-the-beginner

Maybe I've misunderstood, but http://feedburner.google.com/ is greta for "burning" feeds and getting good statistics from them.

I honestly have no idea what you are on about ;-) We have done a small list of SEO tips on our website, the first part is about the title tag http://www.electricstudio.co.uk/search-eng...or-the-beginner Hopefully this will help.

You can find all you need to know about WordPress here http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page WordPress is truly fab, you can even use it to manage the content of your brochure website.

Looks nice! Clear pricing, prominent calls to action, thumbs up ;-)

One guy that stood out for me is David Pache over at http://www.dache.ch/. He explains his design process very well on http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/d...design-process/ Truly inspirational ;-)

I find it slightly peculiar that people can live (Eg. pay rent/mortgage and buy food) when offering "web design" for £199... Fair enough if it's more like a hobby done out of a bedroom in the evenings, but surely never as a professional? We spend somewhere between 10 and 25 days average on each project just to design, build and setup. Then you have the ongoing support, maintenance and SEO to consider too. But I suppose it's a bit like buying a car, some people are very happy with a cheap banger (like me), other want, or need, something more spectacular and are willing to pay the price. And I suppose, as the boys with the hottest cars get the ladies, the guys with the best websites get the customers ;-)

I think you should break each task down into time first of all. Web design - 2 days Development - 1 day 5 field form - 0.5 day Logo - 0.5 day Then set a daily rate and multiply. Time = Money, simple.

I think you should have a look at the time spent first of all, and then put that down besides the or tasks you did. If you are are a 'newbie', charge around £15-£25 per hour. Once your portfolio has come along, and the work you do is getting better, charge a bit more. But I'd have to agree with the others, always agree a price up-front, and if possible, as for a deposit to avoid getting taking for a ride.

Great list, always been a big fan of Kuler

If you are using the website commercially, you have to pay a royalty. Having music on a website is a very bad practise, well perhaps not on music websites. Imagine this, you are about to get married, you are working in your office, you take 5 minutes of when the boss is looking away to find a photographer online, they you open the website up AND MUSIC IS GONNA START BELTING OUT.... never gonna look at your website again...

These guys are good value for money; http://www.psd2html.com/

Try changing the timeout, set it to 60 seconds or higher.

It looks like the divs are too wide, make sure they fit. Perhaps also float it to the right?

Nice website BTW ;-)

Colours can make or break a website. After we have decided on the general page structures, we usually spend days tweaking the colours and doing a few various options before presenting to the client. We always look at existing brand guides before doing this and take great consideration of what target audience and product/service we are trying to sell. The "safe" colour combos we use are white/black/grey/blue and white/black/grey/red, sometimes with an accentual colour. A great tool for coming up with cool colour combos is http://kuler.adobe.com/ Best of luck with your studies!