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Finding a good webmaster
Posted in: Blog, Web Design, Wordpress by MauiHawaiiUpdates on February 11, 2012
We have people come to us regularly and ask us if they’re getting a good deal with their potential web designer. Since we take very few clients, we can give unbiased opinions about whether the proposal looks good or not. Here is a pretty classic proposal that we recently were asked to check out.
“I can definitely do a site like this, I can offer a custom professional 5 page website, hosting and the domain name paid for one year, Paypal and payment integration. I can complete it within 1 to 4 weeks depending on how smoothly everything goes. It would run around $800 I would need half upfront, If you didn’t want the payment integrated in the site then I would be able to do it for $600. Let me know if you’re still interested.”
1st off, that price is cheap. cheap is good and bad. Good cause you spend less, bad cause you don’t know what you’re gonna get. At the same time, an expensive web designer can do just as bad a job as a cheap one (yes, I’ve not helped you AT ALL.)
Ok, so if he pays for your domain and hosting for a year, MAKE SURE IT’S ALL IN YOUR NAME!! That means, have the domain registered in your name, and have the hosting account in your name. Why? I wrote an article on website hijacking to better explain it.
Honestly, I think most people can handle the task of registering a domain name and signing up for a hosting account themselves. If you’re not comfortable with this, have your webmaster do it with no uncertain terms about whose name is associated with the account. ALSO, make sure to get the user and pass codes to get into the account(s).
Make sure to see his previous examples of work. Also, it’s best to have a designer that you either know, or you know where they live/work (in case they disappear with your deposit. A very common thing. Webmasters can be slimy bastards.)
Before you pay a dime, I would make sure you have the following put together:
- A basic idea of what you want for your layout and navigation (see other sites you like.)
- All the written content you need for the 5 pages.
- All the images you want for the 5 pages.
The reason you need this upfront is because:
- If you pay, and lag for 2 years on getting your designer the stuff he needs, he may not be around anymore.
- If you can’t get that material together, then there’s no point in having a site. (I know you think this is easy, but the reason I don’t build sites for clients anymore is because this happened so many times. I’ve waited 3 years after beginning a project, put loads of work into it, and never had the site complete for my final payment. Waste of time for everyone.)
For the most control of your content, and the most design control, I suggest looking into WordPress. You can look around online for free or paid themes that you like (which can be implemented VERY easily without changes).
With WordPress, you can make changes to the content yourself. The only problem with WordPress is that it’s not as secure as hand-coded sites. I’ve been hacked and lost some material I didn’t back up. Not fun. It may require maintenance by your webmaster to keep the site updated/upgraded and secure at all times. See my article on WordPress Security.
Hope that helps. If you find the right webmaster, life can be very good and easy. The hard part is find a webmaster you can trust, a webmaster that works hard and in a timely manner, a webmaster that is good (at coding, SEO, and graphic design), and a webmaster that doesn’t charge you unnecessarily.