http://woopassmedia.com

 

 

Well I finally finished my design site, any thoughts?

 

For those of you who don't read my blog on there I am offering my services for free to a handful of people.

This is simply because I need to build up my portfolio.

Hey Oliver. I'll delve right into the fold here. Your site lacks structure and there is way too much empty space. But i'd much rather talk about your plan here.

 

Offering your services for free just to build up a portfolio is a bad way to go. I took part in a big discussion over it at another forum and 99% agreed that its the wrong way to go about building a portfolio.

 

I would suggest asking friends, family, local companies if they want a website and offer your services for a low to reasonable fee. Once you build a rapport with these people the word will spread. As long as people can get in touch with you work will start to flow in.

I agree with Donny about offering services for free - I did that a few times when I was starting out and freinds just started taking it for granted that I would do stuff for nothing...I would advise you to take a low fee or at least a trade of services. For instance I'm doing a website for a friend at the moment, but in exchange she is designing a printed mailshot for me - we feel it's an equal exchange of skills and services and so that's good.

 

As for the site - I found it a bit unstructured and found a few broken links as well. I'd advise you to set up some structural continuity. Make the pages headers sit in the smae place on every page, the same goes for the main content and additionla bits of content. The information needs some sort of uniformity. I found my eye a wandering all over the place as I went from page to page and it just got me frustrated.

If your looking to do 'free' work (which I'd personally disagree with!) then approach local charities and clubs - but at the very minimum get them to pay for hosting/domain names - gives the product a value to them which is important for them to take seriously and credit.

That's a really good idea BabyBen!

Yes what Ben said is exactly true. I have done work for Non-Profit organizations for free and when you do something for free, they tend not to care much. Normally an experienced web-master would not do any work for free, however, if you do at least have them pay a small fee they can cherish.

 

You layout is too crowded and seems to be very random. If you are going to design for free that means the person you are designing for does not have much computer experience/web-mastering experience and they would not understand the true meaning/goal of your design. So for them you will need to make something less complicated.

 

In the future I wish to begin a website called the N-PSG (Non-Profit Support Group) who has been on the web for a while but brought down because of the lack of time we had on our hand. If you wish to join and help us, it will be greatly appreciated.