Hire a web designer to help you with custom features if you need them

Often, if you’ve purchased a web design template, you need a few things such as getting the navigation bar to have the correct names of pages on your site, maybe having the tabs (if any) to have the correct names, add your own photos, maybe you want to change the overall colors a bit, things like that.

You’ll need to hire a web developer to do those things unless you know how to do them yourself – but the good news is that most of that sort of work takes just a few hours or if your site is larger or your changes a bit more complex, maybe a few days. You might be looking at anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a thousand or so, again, depending on what you want.

WordPress has TONS of fantastic free widgets that you can install yourself, in minutes – with just a few clicks!

Believe it or not, your WordPress platform allows you to click a few buttons, like 2 or 3, and install new features, free, all by yourself!  Just go to your WordPress Plugins menu insde your Admin Dashboard, and click ‘Add New’:

Your search will return a bunch of results and all you do is click the “Install Now” link next to the plug in you want to try and WordPress automatically downloads the plugin to your server, unpacks it, and installs it for you.

If you don’t like it after you give it a try, just delete it and you’re done. If you like it, have fun – you just took advantage of the amazing power of WordPress!

There are lots of places to find a good freelance web developer at an affordable price

If what you need  a feature you can’t seem to locate on the plugin search (above), or you need help customizing your site in some way but don’t know how to do it, try sites like these – you post your needs and you will get bids from a bunch of web developers that can help you get the job done, normally at VERY affordable rates :

• freelancer.com
• guru.com
• elance.com

The cost depends on what you need and whom you hire to do the work

If you hire offshore developers from India, Pakistan or Ukraine for instance, you will pay less for the work itself. But there is a language barrier and time barrier you will have to deal with. Is it worth it? Could be. I personally like working with the offshore developers and have build up a good understanding of their strengths and weaknesses over time, but I’ve got a few horror stories too. You’ll pay less, but it can take longer.

Will the quality of an offshore developer be better or worse than hiring for your own country? Again, it depends. There are hacks in every city, and great developers too. Do your best to check all their past work and get to know them before proceeding on a project – you’ll be glad you did.

Here’s a simple idea of how much various types of sites might cost (all prices are US$):

Simple personal sites:  free – $2,000

Moderately complex business sites:  $2,000 – $6,000

More complex sites such as ecommerce, social community etc.:  $5,000 – $50,000

The cost depends on your timeline

If you need things in a hurry expect to pay more. Also if you need things in a hurry, be SURE your developer can really do it.

The most common problem in getting a website done, is that the developer takes longer than they originally said they would to get your job done.

The cost depends on the size of your site

Big sites cost more. Plain and simple.

A small site is one that starts off with 10 pages or less. A medium sized site might be 30 to 60 pages. A large site will be something closer to a hundred or more.

The cost depends on the platform you choose to build your website on (hint: use WordPress unless there’s a strong reason not to!)

Without a doubt, WordPress, which is free, is the most powerful website publishing tool of our time, or any time! It’s free, easy to use (similar to using a word processor), has tons of free plugins to extend the features of your site, and most developers are very familiar with it.

Even some of the biggest most well-known sites in the world use WordPress – so make sure your developer really works hard if he wants to talk you out of building your site on WordPress. But there’s always an exception…

Here’s the exceptIon: if you only need a really simple site you might wish to try Wix.com or Squarespace.com – they have excellent free website builders if you don’t mind the site being hosted on their servers and don’t have any plans to add special functions someday that they don’t offer, and also, if you don’t mind being charged extra each month for functionality like audio or video that WordPress does for free.

These easy-builder sites really are great if you just need a really simple website and are willing to be stuck with their tools, their rules.

How to find a web developer, and how to know if they are good or not

There are lots of places to look for a web developer to help you make a web site — here are a few:

• CoolHomepages Find A Designer search
• craigslist.com
• your local phone book
• your local city Wiki (if you have one)
• ask your friends and colleagues if they know anyone good
• freelancer.com
• guru.com
• elance.com

How to hire a GOOD web developer

If you locate someone you think might be good you’ll want to do some homework and really check the developer out.

Start with their past work portfolio. You should see a lot of work. Not just 3 or 4 sites, but hopefully 5 or 10 or 20.

Their past work should look good to you generally… past history is always indicative of future performance!

Ask for references and call them to find out how the projects went, and whether they were delivered on time, and at the expected cost.

Be sure to ask if the person who did all the work on their portfolio is going to be working on your project. Occasionally you’ll find that the person who did all the nice looking work doesn’t work there anymore – so if that’s the case you should know about it.

There will be changes – what will they cost you?

Ask about their policy on changes.  You simply can’t get away from the fact that you will find things you want to change, even if you’re the best planner on the planet. Changes come with the territory, so ask your developer what they will charge for changes.

Normally they should say “small quickie changes are free, but if there are things that take a while, we will have to bill you at our normal rate”.. that would be a pretty reasonable answer.

There are a lot of options for person who needs a website – and understanding them can be a little confusing but we’ll try to take the guesswork out of it and explain your options as clearly as possible.

Which type of website do need:

1. A fairly simple blog type site, personal site, informational or educational site
2. An ecommerce site that sells something
3. A community type site with message boards and other social features
4. A application type site that does something for the users like help them create resumes, or search for the best prices on cars
5. A photo gallery site to show off photos

What are your options:

• Fully custom design and programming (expensive!!)
• Hire a designer to create a custom design for you (expensive!)
• Use the free and incredibly powerful WordPress platform (cheap and available with all web hosts these days)
• Choose a web design template/WordPress theme for about $65 
• Use an easy-builder like Wix or Squarespace (the limited feature sites are free, and you’ll pay a monthly charge for various other features)

The good news: WordPress does it affordably!

WordPress is a great, largely free technology that allows you to get most of these types of web sites with incredible professional level functionality – for free.

All web site hosts offer WordPress free with any hosting account these days. Normally a WordPress hosting account costs around $5 a month. Get a WordPress hosting account here >>

Apply a new design theme to your WordPress site easily

It’s incredibly easy to change your WordPress design luckily — literally, you go into your Admin Dashboard area, click “Themes”, click “Install Themes” and follow the simple prompts to upload your new theme and apply it to your site.

Literally within a few minutes, your entire site look and feel will be changed! It’s really amazing. You might need to tweak a few things but it’s just incredible how easy it is to change your entire site design with WordPress themes.

Here are some great sites that sell gorgeous, yet affordable WordPress themes:

• GetWebTemplates
• WordPressThemesDirect
• CoolHomepages Web Templates

If you tried to do this with a regular website you would be looking at thousands of dollars worth of bills – but WordPress makes it all really simple.