FineBoxMedia

I seen one client years ago use 500mb of space on useless image files no more than 100 but all between 3-5mb in size for each image. Images for web galleries should be saved for web using a design package such as photshop, this saves them at the best quality for web and reduces the file size With Digital cameras getting bigger and bigger pixels the size of an image directly from a camera these days is 10mb plus so if you didnt save for web or scale these images down correctly, disk space could quickly get used up. Hope this helps

I don't normally comment on thissort of stuff but omg that was hilarious great find

Hey Fellow WDF users, I have added an image to my profile but it does not display in forum posts? Does it need to be approved first or something? Cheers

Hey ZigoJacko, Interesting question, i persoanlyl have onyl doen this when you seperate the menu div outside the containing div. Having somethign go 100% width whilst contained inside a fixed width div doesn't sound possible but maybe i'll be prooven wrong. Is there no reason why you cant take the menu Div out and position it absolute, i know absolute is a horrible thing to do but if you already have the site coded maybe this would be an option without recoding too much stuff. Can you link me the site i wouldn't mind having a play with it.

i woudl agree off loading your templates to somewhere who gets teh traffic already is probably a better route to market

Nice Design, i have been reviewing designs on this thread for the last 15 minutes and so far this is the best by a long shot, shhhh don't tell the others

It looks a bit dated to me, maybe try some softer pastel colours instead of grey.

Nice site, clean and eye catching

double post double answer lol, admisn not sure if you want to remove one of these topics as it's doubled up Hi, If you don't have any design or coding knowledge then your going to find it difficult to find a package to create a professional job for you. Not to be rude but if you want an electrician to change some plugs you pay a professional, if you want your bathroom tiled you pay a professional. My point is if you don't pay a professional the results will only be as good as your own abilities. I do great websites if you want to have a chat have a look at my profile or checkout my website fineboxmedia.com

Hi, If you don't have any design or coding knowledge then your going to find it difficult to find a package to create a professional job for you. Not to be rude but if you want an electrician to change some plugs you pay a professional, if you want your bathroom tiled you pay a professional. My point is if you don't pay a professional the results will only be as good as your own abilities. I do great websites if you want to have a chat have a look at my profile or checkout my website fineboxmedia.com

Are you lookign to buy one or build one? If building i can sort out a good spec for you

Not to sure if i'm too late to post here but i thought i'd offer my opinion. Firstly sorry to hear things have not been goign great for you so far. A few things i learnt early on when started otu as freelancer. 1. I would contact local agencies and get freelance work from them as it was easy targets and when they didnt have the man horu sin house htye would give me a call. I quickly learned this was good for makign money but not good for growign my own client base as i didnt get recognised for my work. 2. When startign otu i think year 1 i took abotu £5k year 2 about £9k year 3 about £16k year 4 about £22k and year 5 im still in but on target for £30k it;s all about tiem and effort. I'm not makign huge money but i'm living comforatbly and doign a job i love and i'm happy I tried everythign from cold calling, to email marketing, to Forum jumping. everythign i coudl think of to find more work, i spent alot of tiem doign it and the pay off was not that great short term maybe findign 1 new client a month or something, but over time inow have over 50 cleitns on the books some use me reguarly others just pay for hosting now, but the best thing is once you have a reasonable number of people you have done great work for they are the best sales people you can have, peopel see there site and say "hey who did your site" 3. It takes time to acheive long term results, set your self a plan, take on soem of these smaller jobs to stay a float, put contracdts in palce to cut down on the freebie work you do, this was a big lesson for me at first i wanted to keep everyoen happy so i would do the odd update for free, now i put everyone on contracts / retainers which explicity covers support rates and they are signed up to it so when they ask me to do 30 minutes work i dont have to give them a price or raise the question of money, i do the work, log the time and my accoutnant invoices it at the end of the month. Clients are cheeky sometimes and expect alot for nothing but hey you got to make a living. As for freelancing in the UK i totally agree freelancer sites are bombarded with offshore providers who quote so low its not worth quotign for the work. Is there anythign we cna do about this i really don't know. Some people prefer to work with local companies so if i was you i would target you local market heavily. If you live in London target onyl london based companies from marketing persepective, someoen in Scotland will probably use a designer in Scotland is my mentality. I am in the southwest i occasionallt get work from the long distance companies but majority is local. Also now i have a customer base the majority of my work is word of mouth referals. Do i think UK freelancing is dead? i think everyone is feeling the crunch but i have to say since xmas things have started to look up again. It's only a matter of time before peopel will want to work with locals again rather than offshore, just take big organisation call centres being offshored, we as consumers have got so fed up with long queue times on the phoen when you need help and not beign understood when you finally get through to someone, those big organisations are slowly but surely bringing there call centres back to the UK. maybe the saem will happen with oru line of work.

I was recently asked if i wanted to sell my company and faced a similar question, what is it worth. I run a service related company and it's all about me, the service i provide, i don't know why anyone woudl want to buy it becuase without me or replacing me with someoen similar the business wouldn't make money lol. If it was a ecommerce shop which was generating cash from sales ect i could see the attraction. I woundered if it was just becuase of my Google rankings but even they are not top, first page yes but not top. Maybe my competitors in my local search phrases just want me to stop competing lol

I did it the other way around lol I quit my job and started otu as a freelancer, at first it was hard findign your own clients and gettign a stady income, but 5 years in and steady client base with regular work flow, i'd never want to go back to a 9-5 job again

There are many variables to this question 1. Designers quality of work > If a designer is new to the world of web designing maybe he you charge £50 > If the designer has 10 years experience and know his stuff and how to create attractive user friendly sites maybe he would charge £500 2. Client budget > As already mentioned some people budget by client. If i priced a job at £300 and client said budget was £200 i would have to make a deicision is £200 better than nothing or am i really too busy to take it on for less than what i was askign for 3. Client expectations > I have worked with all types of clietns soem have high expectaions others think designs from the 90's are still top quality, the web is a big place and peoples opinions of good and bad design vary from person to person. Some times selling to a client at £500 for a 1 page design would alienate them and they might go with someoen who charged £50, if the cheper guy does a good job, fair play but in my experience bad design or low quality design noramlly comes with the lower end budgets. For me i make it clear to my cleitns, design counts for a lot, if your site looks crap you wont retain what visitors you get, if your site looks good, interesting, user friendly, easy to navigate ect you have a better chance of getting return visitors and retainign there interest. Bounce rate is a word i hate to explain to my clients but some times you have to take the risk of of sayign a crap design is just as bad as havign no website if not worse due to it being a reflection of your business. It's not liek you would have people turn up to your office or hotel and the place be a mess, its all about the potential buyer perception of you as a business. Thats my 2 cents worth PS. already been said but i agree the majority of work is in the first page design anyway, noramlly 5 page sites ect use similar or the same design layouts