Paul Murray

If you believe in your idea, you could approach investors with it, but you would need something to show, and ideally some proof that it's actually viable, i.e. the site working and generating income.
 
Honestly, and perhaps I'm biased being a designer/coder, but this is something you would need to invest in. Designers and developers are "expensive" because of the value we bring to a business. As a designer, I never make as much on a design as the client does, because that design keeps paying them long after my invoice has been paid. Same with developers, they earn a good wage, because they have to be incredibly knowledgable about what they do, especially when working with databases and such like.
 
There are people out there who will offer you design and build packages for an incredibly low price, but like anything in the market, you get what you pay for. Shop around, get quotes from a number of different designers and developers and compare. NEVER hire someone based solely on price because more than likely you'll regret it.

I sketch and then use post it notes on a wall to look at the flow of a site. Occasionally I'll use wool/thread to show inter-linking pages. I find this is faster and easier to talk about with a team/client, and often ideas will crop up this way when everyone's talking;
 
"Maybe this page could slide into view?"
 
"This could be a full page search 'bar'?"
 
Often I find it's useful to avoid software until the very end. Even an Illustrator wireframe is a bit too polished and can actually restrict ideas in the early stages of a project.

Just tell them you have no desire to work with them after they've messed you about. Or make an excuse and say another project has landed or you've moved a future project forward and their 'slot' is now gone if you don't want to be blunt. To be honest, from what you've said it sounds like getting rid of them now will spare you a lot of hassle in future.
 
Anyone who won't sign a contract or pay a deposit would be ringing alarm bells in my head.

I cover dynamic navigation breakpoints in my blog post http://rbrtsmith.com/2014/12/handling-responsive-navigation/
 
I prefer to go with a dynamic breakpoint like the example in my blogpost, that way if the menu items were to change in any way then you wouldn't need to work out a new breakpoint. Handy if you have a lot of clients.
 
 
Btw I use REMs & EMs for most things but I wouldn't use them for breakpoints. why? Because it's not something that should be tied to the root font size in my opinion. Also it makes for easier debugging in the Chrome dev tools to use px in media querys.
The original argument for EMs against px was for zooming on old IE implimentations. All the versions of IE that support media querys do not suffer those zoom issues with pixels, so that's not a valid argument here.
 
You cannot directly convert px to EM or REM because REMs and EMs is directly related to the font size - not the viewport or device size. setting a root font size of 62.5% will mean that you divide the px by 10 to get the equivalent REM, things get more complex with EMs because of the way they cascade. An online converter ain't gonna manage this if it doesn't know your font sizes.
 
I use media querys to change the root font size for different screen sizes, this allows the typography, spacing units and so on to scale down as the viewport size reduces.

Just wondering if anyone has any current web design trends they are sick of and want rid of forever? You know, the type of stuff that people just add for the sake of it, or you see tacked onto themes. For me, there's two main ones, typically seen on CV/portfolio sites;
 
Pie charts/bars denoting how skilled someone is in a particular field or with a certain software package. Honestly, what do they even mean. You have a 3/5 in PHP but what does that mean to a client? "Hmm, this guy's only 78% competent in InDesign. That's too bad, I was looking for 80% at least"
 
…and…
 
Those 'scrambling' counters that tell us how many lines of code someone's written, or how many cups of coffee they drink whilst they're working, or how many times they've seen Star Wars. They're fun in some respects I guess, and probably look quite fancy to a client, but ultimately I just see them as extra fluff on a site that doesn't really serve a purpose.
 
Any others?

Just tell them you have no desire to work with them after they've messed you about. Or make an excuse and say another project has landed or you've moved a future project forward and their 'slot' is now gone if you don't want to be blunt. To be honest, from what you've said it sounds like getting rid of them now will spare you a lot of hassle in future.
 
Anyone who won't sign a contract or pay a deposit would be ringing alarm bells in my head.

By taking a deposit, the client has a financial commitment in the project and therefore is proving that they are prepared to pay for your time.
Trust works both ways, and I wouldn't even consider working with someone who won't pay a deposit or a contract. If they won't pay anything up front how can you be sure they'll pay the full amount when it's done?
 
For clients who I'm working with for the first time I'm prepared to split the cost into 3 chunks, or just have them pay a third of the total amount as a deposit, especially if they are a new business. For many people, they've never worked with designers or developers before, and are used to operating in a B2C capacity, rather than as a B2B, where a deposit is almost mandatory.
 
And contracts are not just something you sign without having read or understood them. They're not there to trick people, they are legal agreements that stipulate who, what, and how much in writing, to protect both parties. I send my contracts to clients to look at first. Anything they're unsure about or any amends/additions they wish to make, we discuss, effectively writing the contract together. If a client won't sign a contract, that to me is a huge warning sign, and I walk away. As a small business I can't afford to risk my time and income as my home is at stake.

Just wondering if anyone has any current web design trends they are sick of and want rid of forever? You know, the type of stuff that people just add for the sake of it, or you see tacked onto themes. For me, there's two main ones, typically seen on CV/portfolio sites;
 
Pie charts/bars denoting how skilled someone is in a particular field or with a certain software package. Honestly, what do they even mean. You have a 3/5 in PHP but what does that mean to a client? "Hmm, this guy's only 78% competent in InDesign. That's too bad, I was looking for 80% at least"
 
…and…
 
Those 'scrambling' counters that tell us how many lines of code someone's written, or how many cups of coffee they drink whilst they're working, or how many times they've seen Star Wars. They're fun in some respects I guess, and probably look quite fancy to a client, but ultimately I just see them as extra fluff on a site that doesn't really serve a purpose.
 
Any others?

Just wondering if anyone has any current web design trends they are sick of and want rid of forever? You know, the type of stuff that people just add for the sake of it, or you see tacked onto themes. For me, there's two main ones, typically seen on CV/portfolio sites;
 
Pie charts/bars denoting how skilled someone is in a particular field or with a certain software package. Honestly, what do they even mean. You have a 3/5 in PHP but what does that mean to a client? "Hmm, this guy's only 78% competent in InDesign. That's too bad, I was looking for 80% at least"
 
…and…
 
Those 'scrambling' counters that tell us how many lines of code someone's written, or how many cups of coffee they drink whilst they're working, or how many times they've seen Star Wars. They're fun in some respects I guess, and probably look quite fancy to a client, but ultimately I just see them as extra fluff on a site that doesn't really serve a purpose.
 
Any others?

Just wondering if anyone has any current web design trends they are sick of and want rid of forever? You know, the type of stuff that people just add for the sake of it, or you see tacked onto themes. For me, there's two main ones, typically seen on CV/portfolio sites;
 
Pie charts/bars denoting how skilled someone is in a particular field or with a certain software package. Honestly, what do they even mean. You have a 3/5 in PHP but what does that mean to a client? "Hmm, this guy's only 78% competent in InDesign. That's too bad, I was looking for 80% at least"
 
…and…
 
Those 'scrambling' counters that tell us how many lines of code someone's written, or how many cups of coffee they drink whilst they're working, or how many times they've seen Star Wars. They're fun in some respects I guess, and probably look quite fancy to a client, but ultimately I just see them as extra fluff on a site that doesn't really serve a purpose.
 
Any others?

In your 'time' class, add a line-height value and a margin below it;
.time { line-height:38px; margin-bottom:15px; }

Use illustrator and paste the shape in as a smart object. You can then apply styles or smart effects. Doing it with PS is pointless, that's not what PS is intended for.

I see what you're saying. As designers I'd argue that we should be persuading clients to opt out of flashiness, especially as websites are marketing tools. If a site is covered in bells and whistles that do nothing to convert, they should be dropped, even if it does look nice.
 
I was speaking to a client recently who showed me a sneak peek of a demo site he's having designed/built by someone and he himself said straight away "What's the point of that slider at the top, people just scroll past it. And all the transitions look like a Powerpoint slideshow", which is true. He thought it was pointless but wanted a second opinion.
 
Often I think clients wanting X, Y and Z on their sites is because their competitors have it, or more likely, the designer was just lazy.

That was my first thought when I was first introduced to it – "Wow, these sites all look the same"

Sounds like the problem is people just can't be bothered to fill in the form, and rightly so, you're putting a huge barrier in their way of what they want. I know I wouldn't sit through a survey just to download something, I'd just look for an alternative. Sometimes I don't even sign up for accounts to download apps/software, unless I really, REALLY want it.
 
Perhaps offer up some banner ads on the high traffic pages if you're wanting to monetise your content, or provide better, premium versions of the free ones you can charge for?

I read that as you have to pay a years hosting if you want to transfer before a year is up, i.e the first year. Best get it in writing in a formal contract though.
 
As for not owning the design, it likely means you won't own the copyrights to the design (they will) but you will have the rights to use it for the site set out in the contract (your dating site).
 
This basically prevents you from taking the design and code and creating another, new site with that design and code by just changing a few colours/images, etc.
 
This clause is the case with freelancers too (at least experienced ones). If you want to own the site completely you will need to negotiate transferal of copyrights which will likely cost you a bit.

It's not as simple as that. According to http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php the predominant internet traffic is performed by users with 1366x768 displays or higher.
I think it depends on what type of content you provide. Users on mobile phones will be looking for very specific and concrete info. "When does the next train arrive", "Where can I buy gas", "Who made this song". Users on tablets and PCs will likely be the majority on sites with more "in depth content".
In other words: Users with small displays will not be browsing your portfolio of artwork or reading your scientific article. So it makes sense to optimize sites with such content for larger monitors

Personally I'd open a separate account just for your business to keep your accounts easy to manage. Turnover goes into that account, expenses go out from it. Don't bother with an actual business account just yet, just open a new current account with your bank and use that.

Welcome to the forums
 
PayPals add to cart feature allows you to add up to 10 options fields, where each option can add to the total, though it's not widely documented (they only usually show 2 options in example code). If you use their online form/button generator you can get the basic code, PayPal uses a select tag by default but you can change these to radio buttons then add in extra HTML for your images and other infor for each radio button option.

One of my favorite is owl slider.
 
http://owlgraphic.com/owlcarousel/

Hey Mark, welcome to the forum

I think that post might refer to the link to the current site you posted.

Adwords?

I like it, but the sections that have dark text on that green background hurt my eyes. It's pretty jarring.

Basically I find it's just too bloated for what most clients want, plus you end up with a lot of unused code. It's great for blogs, but I think there are better CMS options that allow you to build a site up with the features and functionality that you require, rather than force you to remove/ignore stuff as is often the case with WP.