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Requesting help to make my site more professional


chownsy

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Hi all, I have a non profit website that I review products on for my favourite hobby. Currently I am using wordpress themes for ease of publishing but I have been finding that even still it takes time and does not look all that professional. www.madmercsairsoft.co.uk is my website. I have validated the site using w3clove's validator and there was over 3000 validation errors and I have found that even though running a CEO optimiser it is not getting the website its just deserve with 22000 view in a year rather than some of the newer sites that have popped up that get in excess of 100000 - 1000000 unique views a year minimum. Some get many more than that. I know coding is expensive to do professionally hence why I did www.achownscontracting.co.uk myself with a more in depth version coming soon as I can get more details off my brother. Would someone be willing to help (via here, msn, skype or any other contact method) to design a new website that looks very professional, is secure from hacking, easy to upload content to so that I dont have to input <br/> after every page if I am manually coding the site. I want to be able to make it more user friendly, possibly have a static home page instead of a blog roll or do it so the blog is a lot better presented so more people will place news on the website. I am unemployed at the moment so have all the time in the world to work a long side someone to sort out the website and make it the best I can. Hope someone is happy to help Thanks for reading. Richard

Edited by chownsy
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We're really here to help teach people how to program to supplement the tutorials on w3schools.com. It sounds like you're looking for a freelancer to design your site. You can post whatever questions you have here regarding your site, but it may be difficult to find people willing to put in the time to design and build your site.

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Im happy to do as much of the coding I need to do, but either I need to make a very stylish wordpress or alternative template that is secure or a site with database and then a back end for imputting the text/pics in easier. I got lots of time on my hand and im learning more each day but to do a big site like that is a big job. cant afford a freelancer to build the site, hence asking for help/ pointing in right direction

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If you want to use Wordpress you'll need to update it regularly, so that may effect how much you customize or add to it. A copy of Wordpress that doesn't get updated is not secure, there are new vulnerabilities discovered for it all the time. Even the current versions have unfixed vulnerabilities. But you're right, it's a big job. The first step would probably be to work up a graphical layout about how you want the site to look, and a list of the features that you want it to be able to do. You may be able to look around and find something premade that supports what you want to do, as long as you want to keep it updated, or you can break down your list of features into individual things and tackle them one at a time.

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if u want to built a website i suggest reading up on html, css n php, and in my opinion wordpress is more of a blog type cms, dont get me wrong it do pull off some nice websites which arent blogs but the template you have there appear to me as a blog. also your words are too big, u need to make them a little smaller not too small but a nice size where its readible n seeible.

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I have made websites and getting lots of help improving them www.achownscontracting.co.uk and www.repsolhondanc24.co.uk are the sites that I have made. But my review website needs to be really high spec looking.I really want to start from scratch on it but i use notepad to edit everything and inserting <br/> every line would make the reviews far to long winded. Unless there are some other publishing programs out there which are not blog based but still enable content posting easily

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I have made websites and getting lots of help improving them www.achownscontracting.co.uk and www.repsolhondanc24.co.uk are the sites that I have made. But my review website needs to be really high spec looking.I really want to start from scratch on it but i use notepad to edit everything and inserting <br/> every line would make the reviews far to long winded. Unless there are some other publishing programs out there which are not blog based but still enable content posting easily
thats where the design comes into place, you need to have some kind of knowledge to know how you want the site to look, and how your going to design it, you can create the template within photoshop, grimp, and w.e else ppl use to do their designs. once you design the template you need to take those images and place them within the html website, etc etc etc and then you should have a better looking website
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Just make sure you have a reason for everything in your site. "Professional looking" will always be in the eye of the beholder. So, give yourself permission to be different. People buy differences not similarities. If you want big print use big print and have a reason for it (though DDs1 is probably right unless you have a credible reason for big print. You don't have to fill all the space unless you have a reason!). There's only one real limit. You can't afford to be ignored. So, stop looking for the rules of thumb. Reality is the only thing that's knowable is what worked or didn't work in the past. Since the internet, past's connection to the future has become quite worn or completely non-existent. So, just invent with eye on creating value which is the difference between the benefit someone gets from your work and what they had to pay for it. I only have one caution for you. If your client is under producing so will your work. Don't allow yourself to saddle someone else's sick horse. As you will (or have) discovered, there's about five things you can do with a sick (or dying) horse, but you'll always have to get off in the end and all your work won't count for very much. IMO.

Edited by niche
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thanks for all the input. I dont know whether PHP nuke or Joomla would be a better choice than wordpress for making the site base?Im really looking for something with the following: Static homepage.Review sectionTechnical sectionNews pageSponsors pageContact form and donate pageVideo pageVCRA Act page (explains the law on airsoft buying and selling) I want it to be SEO optimised as at the moment I dont think it is due to the low volume of traffic compared to the wide range or advertisement and product reviews I have on there (I dont understand SEO fully. I know you need varied content, lots of links, videos, photos to help but what else) I want the layout to be pleasing and easy to navigate I have a few ideas rolling around in my head but they all start with me coding a site from scratch which seems a big NO at the current moment as I have only just mastered the very basic, and i mean basic as I cant make side bars, the ones on my site were made from the help off here. I think in the Ideal world a website with no database would be the most secure but the hardest to edit.

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