premade/template websites....

[rushworks graphics]

no.....sorry, its not a site where you build a sign, its a generic website that uses templates apparently. basically the guy has built the site and he uses the same 8 page template design for everyone, which you can slightly change add/delete stuff to.

 

[Jim Doggett]

I used WordPress and ElegantThemes for:

www.reidsigns.com
www.cocutusa.com

Work in progress: www.harukoslist.com

I think CMS (WordPress) is the bomb. Then templates can do most of the heavy lifting, saving weeks of work. But templates need some custom tweaking to work well for your specific needs.

The idea, I believe, is to first list what you need to communicate / do, in the order of priority, and then find the ideal (or close to) container for what you're doing. (and whack everything else. Do not do stuff that you do not need; it clutters your prime objectives.) Also, do not choose a cool Web site and then force your priorities to fit within it. That's backward, IMO.

Consider www.apple.com. Remove the content, and here's their Web site design. Less is more, definitely.

 

[rushworks graphics]

thanks jim...... if you take a look at rhe web page i'm looking at, its on the very bottom of the signs101 website.....see what you think....

 

[gnemmas]

We have a two sites can sum up for this subject.

Site 1: www.instantsign.com is construct by ourselves using a citymax.com template, including e-commerce, free with $25/month hosting. Been up for more than 10 years.

Site 2: www.instant-signs.com is done by Dan, been up since last Christmas. Cost an arm and a leg.

Site 2 is already in first position or first page of google organic ranking for certain keywords in surrounding counties, bringing new business. Where site 1 is no where near that.

 

[Dan Antonelli]

We have a two sites can sum up for this subject.

Site 1: www.instantsign.com is construct by ourselves using a citymax.com template, including e-commerce, free with $25/month hosting. Been up for more than 10 years.

Site 2: www.instant-signs.com is done by Dan, been up since last Christmas. Cost an arm and a leg.

Site 2 is already in first position or first page of google organic ranking for certain keywords in surrounding counties, bringing new business. Where site 1 is no where near that.

This all goes to speaking about return on investment. So costing an arm and leg (as you put it lol) is fine, so long as you see a substantial return on investment. In this case (pretty sure) and the last two sign company sites we've built, the investment was paid for within 30 days or so of launching. One site in particular yielded $100k in new business within 12mos of launching.

Everything is relative. But the old adage of getting what you pay for generally rings true.

 

[signswi]

Dan I love your stuff I just wished you guys would eliminate Flash from your toolbox. No reason to be using it now that you can do so much with the various javascript frameworks. Maybe you're moving that way already and if so, great .

I'm with Jim on the WordPress CMS bandwagon, however I'd echo almost everyone here in that you don't want to mess around with your shop website so avoid 'templates' and pre-built packages. You're in the business of custom aesthetic products and your site should reflect that.

 

[Dan Antonelli]

Flash still has its place, but the last 50 web sites or so we've done use JQuery. Those that do use it usually have a mobile detector. For example, this is 100% CSS/JQuery - http://www.brushmarkssigns.com/

 

[rushworks graphics]

so it seems cms is a must then. hosting, are there any do's and don't regarding that? i know someone had said not to go for a cheap overseas hosting company....any recommendations?

oh, and thanks everyone for your imput, really do appreciate.

dan.....love your work, and if i had the money you guys would be first on my list....i think what you guys do is truely jaw dropping at times!! funny thing is, my wife asked me if i had any christmas gifts i had thought i may like this year for myself, i told her that i wanted your 2 books as i have been meaning to get them and i thought they would make a great christmas gift for me.

 

[Dan Antonelli]

so it seems cms is a must then. hosting, are there any do's and don't regarding that? i know someone had said not to go for a cheap overseas hosting company....any recommendations?

oh, and thanks everyone for your imput, really do appreciate.

dan.....love your work, and if i had the money you guys would be first on my list....i think what you guys do is truely jaw dropping at times!! funny thing is, my wife asked me if i had any christmas gifts i had thought i may like this year for myself, i told her that i wanted your 2 books as i have been meaning to get them and i thought they would make a great christmas gift for me.

I really want to help you so we can work together and randomly quote Rush and apply it to everyday situations... Can't believe the rock and roll hall of fame snubbed them again this year. What a joke!!

Off topic, but you should check out Porcupine Tree if you haven't heard them. They're the reincarnation of Rush -----

 

[Ghost Prophet]

Dan is absolutely right, you get what you pay for.

@ rush, I've been using a company out of Florida called Ace-Host for about 10 years. I've used their webhosting and reseller packages and received excellent custom support on both... and no, terrible FL weather has never effected the service.

...I've also used GoDaddy for non-profit organizations that I donated my web design time to. For things like that, I'd say GoDaddy is probably fine, for a business, no way jose. GoDaddy has a long list of problems that I'm sure you can find by searching through this forum or googling. They are however, an excellent domain registrar.

 

[EGI]

Check out intothedarkroom.com and hostgator.com for hosting. ITTD has some really nice website templates that let you really customize your site that anyone with computer knowledge can use.

Here is a ITTD website I made. click here

 

[rushworks graphics]

yeah...............don't talk to me about rush and the whole hall of fame thing...........talk about ridiculas!! don't get me started on that topic!! lol.....

 

[rushworks graphics]

i was told when we first registered our domain name to use godaddy for that, but have also read on here the stories about why not to use them for hosting etc. so we have them as our register and thats all.

 

[SightLine]

Thats another good point that people should in my opinion always follow. Do NOT use your hosting as your registrar - keep them separate..... For several years now I've used Godaddy as our registrar only, Site5.com for our hosting.

Our site did start off as a template (as far as Dreamweaver goes it still is which makes adding pages or updating the menus a breeze) but I customized it pretty heavily to better fit my needs. At this point is really does not even remotely resemble the original template. The menu is true text (very important for crawlers - avoid flash navigation). The only flash bit is the gallery - works nice so I've not bothered to try and change it. I know jquery is the future but I do not anticipate flash going away anytime soon. Gah - this just reminds me I really need to update the site....

 

[Stevealex]

so it seems cms is a must then. hosting, are there any do's and don't regarding that? i know someone had said not to go for a cheap overseas hosting company....any recommendations?

oh, and thanks everyone for your imput, really do appreciate.

dan.....love your work, and if i had the money you guys would be first on my list....i think what you guys do is truely jaw dropping at times!! funny thing is, my wife asked me if i had any christmas gifts i had thought i may like this year for myself, i told her that i wanted your 2 books as i have been meaning to get them and i thought they would make a great christmas gift for me.

I agree Dan's Work is amazing. if I had the money I would definately go to him as well. I dont know if this was mentioned on here but if your looking for something low cost and has templates available yet more customizable I just got sitegrinder3 for around $350 which is a photoshop plugin and if you have some photoshop knowledge and are willing to take about an hour watching a few tutorials and reading some documention to learn the hints for the layers and a few other basics then its a good alternative. and no working with code because its all done for you. Just an Idea.

 

[rushworks graphics]

thats one of the things i kinda liked about the company advertising at the bottom of the signs101 page, its made for a sign shop, has 8 pages, not that we need 8 pages, you can add logos, pics etc and i guess change around wording.

i'm just after something that someone can take a quick look at whilst searching in google or whoever in our area wanting signage. what we can do, maybe some examples of stuff.....

 

[Ghost Prophet]

I spent about 30 minutes in Windows Notepad writing HTML for ours, can you tell? ^_^

http://pecksprintery.com/

PS. We are the only commercial printer/sign shop within 30 miles with a website. When a competitor comes out with something better I'll be happy to top it.

 

[Mike F]

I spent about 30 minutes in Windows Notepad writing HTML for ours, can you tell? ^_^

http://pecksprintery.com/

PS. We are the only commercial printer/sign shop within 30 miles with a website. When a competitor comes out with something better I'll be happy to top it.

Not bad, I'd center the link for the photo gallery though and get rid of that green dashed border, looks outta place the way it is. Nice clean code, although you did forget to fill out your meta description.

 

[signswi]

I agree Dan's Work is amazing. if I had the money I would definately go to him as well. I dont know if this was mentioned on here but if your looking for something low cost and has templates available yet more customizable I just got sitegrinder3 for around $350 which is a photoshop plugin and if you have some photoshop knowledge and are willing to take about an hour watching a few tutorials and reading some documention to learn the hints for the layers and a few other basics then its a good alternative. and no working with code because its all done for you. Just an Idea.

For that kind of money you could put up a Squarespace site that would be much easier to work with and is managed hosting.

 

[Ghost Prophet]

Not bad, I'd center the link for the photo gallery though and get rid of that green dashed border, looks outta place the way it is. Nice clean code, although you did forget to fill out your meta description.

Actually the Index file was way out of date. Thanks for noticing. ^_^