Decent web designer.

[manarak]

it's not that simple.

the best websites aren't those which look fresh and modern, or those who have great design, or those who use a responsive template nor those who don't have any HTML errors....

the best websites are those which best fulfill their objectives, which can be getting views, selling products, etc.

personally, I feel that well-done "old style HTML design" is well suited for most businesses in Thailand, provided the page is responsive and correctly coded.

777designz has a number of good looking websites in their portfolio.

@OP: decent webdesigners won't be interested in doing a 5-10 page site for cheap. I make full websites for about 30k, unless it is really very simple and small, in which case 15k can be enough.

Hosting has to be with me, and costs 500 baht a month which includes 1 hour of work per month for whatever maintenance or change requests there might be, 1000 baht/hour after that.

I am a retired IT specialist, creating websites is a piece of cake, but so is everything when you know how.

In the past I used to offer to create websites free for family and friends, but never again. No problem making a website, I can knock up a basic one in a couple of hours and making changes is just a matter of logging in, the amendments that can be done in minutes. But what used to happen is that the people I created the sites for considered their sites my responsibility for then on, each time they had a problem or wanted amendments they would contact me and ask, when am I going to sort it?

You are correct to charge just for the agro involved. Sometimes it`s like owning a restaurant where whatever you serve or how you serve it to some customers is never good enough. I couldn`t be bothered anymore, not even for the fees you charge.

From what I have encountered, the majority of people have limited knowledge how to use software and solve problems on their computers. The most can use emails, facebook, play games and after that it goes above their heads. If people that want websites fall into this category they have 2 choices, either expect to pay through the nose for them or learn how to make websites themselves, that is much easier then they think. It just takes patience, enthusiasm and the interest to do it. Even my 11 year old nephew knows how to make a website. Loads of freebies around for beginners with instructions and templates to practice on.

I'm with you for the trouble involved, but about creating websites... theres more to it than to smack a template on the screen and filling it with content. There are some SEO principles to follow, install stats, sitemap, and the CSS necessary to make the site responsive isn't quite that accessible. Add multilanguage support and URL rewriting, possibly some code to have the site send emails through SMTP - since emails sent through sendmail often get stopped in the spamfilter of large providers such as outlook, gmail and yahoo... and adding a proper PTR and SPF record to the MX domain... Many don't even have their A records setup correctly, lol.

And what to say about server security, backups...

The whole package has to be good for the website to work correctly.

Edited November 6, 2015 by manarak

[cyberfarang]

it's not that simple.

the best websites aren't those which look fresh and modern, or those who have great design, or those who use a responsive template nor those who don't have any HTML errors....

the best websites are those which best fulfill their objectives, which can be getting views, selling products, etc.

personally, I feel that well-done "old style HTML design" is well suited for most businesses in Thailand, provided the page is responsive and correctly coded.

777designz has a number of good looking websites in their portfolio.

@OP: decent webdesigners won't be interested in doing a 5-10 page site for cheap. I make full websites for about 30k, unless it is really very simple and small, in which case 15k can be enough.

Hosting has to be with me, and costs 500 baht a month which includes 1 hour of work per month for whatever maintenance or change requests there might be, 1000 baht/hour after that.

I am a retired IT specialist, creating websites is a piece of cake, but so is everything when you know how.

In the past I used to offer to create websites free for family and friends, but never again. No problem making a website, I can knock up a basic one in a couple of hours and making changes is just a matter of logging in, the amendments that can be done in minutes. But what used to happen is that the people I created the sites for considered their sites my responsibility for then on, each time they had a problem or wanted amendments they would contact me and ask, when am I going to sort it?

You are correct to charge just for the agro involved. Sometimes it`s like owning a restaurant where whatever you serve or how you serve it to some customers is never good enough. I couldn`t be bothered anymore, not even for the fees you charge.

From what I have encountered, the majority of people have limited knowledge how to use software and solve problems on their computers. The most can use emails, facebook, play games and after that it goes above their heads. If people that want websites fall into this category they have 2 choices, either expect to pay through the nose for them or learn how to make websites themselves, that is much easier then they think. It just takes patience, enthusiasm and the interest to do it. Even my 11 year old nephew knows how to make a website. Loads of freebies around for beginners with instructions and templates to practice on.

I'm with you for the trouble involved, but about creating websites... theres more to it than to smack a template on the screen and filling it with content. There are some SEO principles to follow, install stats, sitemap, and the CSS necessary to make the site responsive isn't quite that accessible. Add multilanguage support and URL rewriting, possibly some code to have the site send emails through SMTP - since emails sent through sendmail often get stopped in the spamfilter of large providers such as outlook, gmail and yahoo... and adding a proper PTR and SPF record to the MX domain... Many don't even have their A records setup correctly, lol.

And what to say about server security, backups...

The whole package has to be good for the website to work correctly.

I know exactly what is involved and for what you described can take several days to set up and I wouldn`t let this frighten people off by blinding them with science. For a big company or government websites, will probably want a state of the art website with all stops and whistles, but for the average small time commercial operator, clubs, organisations or for personal use, a simple wordpress site will suffice, that if created properly can still be impressive, professional looking and fulfill all their requirements for what they expect from a website.

Would I pay someone from 15000 baht upwards of the sky`s the limit not including rental and adjustments costs for a site that is never going to be under my control? Not on your Nellie.

[DLock]

it's not that simple.

the best websites aren't those which look fresh and modern, or those who have great design, or those who use a responsive template nor those who don't have any HTML errors....

the best websites are those which best fulfill their objectives, which can be getting views, selling products, etc.

personally, I feel that well-done "old style HTML design" is well suited for most businesses in Thailand, provided the page is responsive and correctly coded.

777designz has a number of good looking websites in their portfolio.

@OP: decent webdesigners won't be interested in doing a 5-10 page site for cheap. I make full websites for about 30k, unless it is really very simple and small, in which case 15k can be enough.

Hosting has to be with me, and costs 500 baht a month which includes 1 hour of work per month for whatever maintenance or change requests there might be, 1000 baht/hour after that.

I am a retired IT specialist, creating websites is a piece of cake, but so is everything when you know how.

In the past I used to offer to create websites free for family and friends, but never again. No problem making a website, I can knock up a basic one in a couple of hours and making changes is just a matter of logging in, the amendments that can be done in minutes. But what used to happen is that the people I created the sites for considered their sites my responsibility for then on, each time they had a problem or wanted amendments they would contact me and ask, when am I going to sort it?

You are correct to charge just for the agro involved. Sometimes it`s like owning a restaurant where whatever you serve or how you serve it to some customers is never good enough. I couldn`t be bothered anymore, not even for the fees you charge.

From what I have encountered, the majority of people have limited knowledge how to use software and solve problems on their computers. The most can use emails, facebook, play games and after that it goes above their heads. If people that want websites fall into this category they have 2 choices, either expect to pay through the nose for them or learn how to make websites themselves, that is much easier then they think. It just takes patience, enthusiasm and the interest to do it. Even my 11 year old nephew knows how to make a website. Loads of freebies around for beginners with instructions and templates to practice on.

I'm with you for the trouble involved, but about creating websites... theres more to it than to smack a template on the screen and filling it with content. There are some SEO principles to follow, install stats, sitemap, and the CSS necessary to make the site responsive isn't quite that accessible. Add multilanguage support and URL rewriting, possibly some code to have the site send emails through SMTP - since emails sent through sendmail often get stopped in the spamfilter of large providers such as outlook, gmail and yahoo... and adding a proper PTR and SPF record to the MX domain... Many don't even have their A records setup correctly, lol.

And what to say about server security, backups...

The whole package has to be good for the website to work correctly.

I know exactly what is involved and for what you described can take several days to set up and I wouldn`t let this frighten people off by blinding them with science. For a big company or government websites, will probably want a state of the art website with all stops and whistles, but for the average small time commercial operator, clubs, organisations or for personal use, a simple wordpress site will suffice, that if created properly can still be impressive, professional looking and fulfill all their requirements for what they expect from a website.

Would I pay someone from 15000 baht upwards of the sky`s the limit not including rental and adjustments costs for a site that is never going to be under my control? Not on your Nellie.

Manarak is right.

There are 2 designs to worry about - the first design is how good it looks, flows and works. The second design, mostly behind the scenes, is for Google.

The days of building a simple website with a domain name that included your kind of business, i.e. www.villarental.com, and Google ranking you on page 1 are long, long gone.

Building for Google as Manarak says, is the key, and if you are not going to invest the money to satisfy Google, then you are wasting your time...and it's an ongoing cost as Google is fickle and changes algorithms frequently. A website design should be upgraded from time to time as well...they get old quick.

Also long gone are the $500 web designers...or at least good web designers for $500. If you want a crap Wordpress site with little to no SEO and Googlyness, then best to do it yourself, otherwise, raise your budget, do it properly and look at that as an investment in the business.

A good site that ranks well will pay for itself in no time....a crap site will languish on page 246 of Google never to be found again.

False economy.

[manarak]

I am a retired IT specialist, creating websites is a piece of cake, but so is everything when you know how.

In the past I used to offer to create websites free for family and friends, but never again. No problem making a website, I can knock up a basic one in a couple of hours and making changes is just a matter of logging in, the amendments that can be done in minutes. But what used to happen is that the people I created the sites for considered their sites my responsibility for then on, each time they had a problem or wanted amendments they would contact me and ask, when am I going to sort it?

You are correct to charge just for the agro involved. Sometimes it`s like owning a restaurant where whatever you serve or how you serve it to some customers is never good enough. I couldn`t be bothered anymore, not even for the fees you charge.

From what I have encountered, the majority of people have limited knowledge how to use software and solve problems on their computers. The most can use emails, facebook, play games and after that it goes above their heads. If people that want websites fall into this category they have 2 choices, either expect to pay through the nose for them or learn how to make websites themselves, that is much easier then they think. It just takes patience, enthusiasm and the interest to do it. Even my 11 year old nephew knows how to make a website. Loads of freebies around for beginners with instructions and templates to practice on.

I'm with you for the trouble involved, but about creating websites... theres more to it than to smack a template on the screen and filling it with content. There are some SEO principles to follow, install stats, sitemap, and the CSS necessary to make the site responsive isn't quite that accessible. Add multilanguage support and URL rewriting, possibly some code to have the site send emails through SMTP - since emails sent through sendmail often get stopped in the spamfilter of large providers such as outlook, gmail and yahoo... and adding a proper PTR and SPF record to the MX domain... Many don't even have their A records setup correctly, lol.

And what to say about server security, backups...

The whole package has to be good for the website to work correctly.

I know exactly what is involved and for what you described can take several days to set up and I wouldn`t let this frighten people off by blinding them with science. For a big company or government websites, will probably want a state of the art website with all stops and whistles, but for the average small time commercial operator, clubs, organisations or for personal use, a simple wordpress site will suffice, that if created properly can still be impressive, professional looking and fulfill all their requirements for what they expect from a website.

Would I pay someone from 15000 baht upwards of the sky`s the limit not including rental and adjustments costs for a site that is never going to be under my control? Not on your Nellie.

Manarak is right.

There are 2 designs to worry about - the first design is how good it looks, flows and works. The second design, mostly behind the scenes, is for Google.

The days of building a simple website with a domain name that included your kind of business, i.e. www.villarental.com, and Google ranking you on page 1 are long, long gone.

Building for Google as Manarak says, is the key, and if you are not going to invest the money to satisfy Google, then you are wasting your time...and it's an ongoing cost as Google is fickle and changes algorithms frequently. A website design should be upgraded from time to time as well...they get old quick.

Also long gone are the $500 web designers...or at least good web designers for $500. If you want a crap Wordpress site with little to no SEO and Googlyness, then best to do it yourself, otherwise, raise your budget, do it properly and look at that as an investment in the business.

A good site that ranks well will pay for itself in no time....a crap site will languish on page 246 of Google never to be found again.

False economy.

yup...

Although there are 2 types of websites: the alibi website and the business enabling website.

The alibi website is a website that is created for managers and business owners to be able to reply when queried: "of course we have a website".

This is a website that loosely supports the business, it usually provides address, phone numbers, a map, a presentation of the company and sometimes even products and services.

The alibi type of website won't rank on page 1 of Google for any search queries except the specific company name or product name, meaning only people who already know about the company or the product will visit it.

The business enabling website aims to bring additional business to the company, which makes a good google rank necessary as well as well designed content and interface, plus getting SEO relevant details right (h1 to h3 markup structure, img titles and descriptions, etc.). Off site SEO is mainly done through social media and partnerships.

Nowadays, there are more visitors using mobile devices than there are computer users, so at least a responsive template is necessary, or more than 50% of traffic will not be properly addressed by the website. Another thing is that google has begun downgrading websites without a mobile friendly template on their mobile searches.

Of course, not every business needs to have the second category of website - here I am thinking about local brick & mortar shops with a limited sales radius and which products or services won't be sold online, such as a butcher or hairdresser, for which the first type will cost less effort and be effective enough.

On the other hand, any business either targeting nationwide or international customers or aiming to sell products online absolutely needs a type 2 website.

I'd like to add that the internet has changed a lot in the past 5 to 6 years - roughly the time when what DLock said happened:

"The days of building a simple website with a domain name that included your kind of business, i.e. www.villarental.com, and Google ranking you on page 1 are long, long gone."

I am more of a website programmer than a designer and made my websites around older PHP frameworks, my programming style is explicit and procedural to allow for easy code maintenance and modification.

Then I got caught in a triple catch-22 when three things went against me at the same time:

1- templating techniques changed a lot. where before tables and smarty were enough, came in the tableless designs using inextricable DIVs with tons of intricate CSS on top and sometimes quite obscure rendering engines where it's difficult where the content comes from.

2- explicit procedural coding style was abandoned and coding leaped towards highly abstract object-oriented code. I think this was the result of an unconscious effort by programming professionals to lock-out beginners from coding. the consequence is that CMS/frameworks such as Joomla or Drupal now require a high level of skill to modify (I mean really modify, not install modules). In addition, many communities for CMS under GPL have dropped their forums - how is that for conviviality.

3- the mobile revolution made responsive templates necessary

So I had to make my own revolution and break out of my "old HTML style" coding too... a steep learning curve.

Edited November 7, 2015 by manarak

[innerspace]

Unconscious effort to lock out beginners? Doubt it.

Beginners will learn oop as easy as you learnt procedural, my early days were all goto rather than functions, terrible looking backed but worked.

With software developers are on an escalator in reverse. Moving forward is essential to staying steady... Got to move fast to actually advance.

Oop was made standard to help speed work up and reduce errors and repetition. I remember the days before but quality is much better now. That is partially from better experience but better standards that oop encourage play a big part.

[manarak]

Unconscious effort to lock out beginners? Doubt it.

Beginners will learn oop as easy as you learnt procedural, my early days were all goto rather than functions, terrible looking backed but worked.

With software developers are on an escalator in reverse. Moving forward is essential to staying steady... Got to move fast to actually advance.

Oop was made standard to help speed work up and reduce errors and repetition. I remember the days before but quality is much better now. That is partially from better experience but better standards that oop encourage play a big part.

Quality may be better, but diversity of functionality was reduced by 80%. Not a victory from my point of view.

[puukao]

i need a website that is as functional as amazon... can pay 400 baht.

[manarak]

i need a website that is as functional as amazon... can pay 400 baht.

I can do it !!!

the only requirement is that the screen be switched off and you will see no difference - the design will be responsive too.

[flyDelight]

i need a website that is as functional as amazon... can pay 400 baht.

Fiverr.com

Value for money

(seriously I sell and buy via that site and know some serious but inexpensive guys)

[DLock]

Great points again Manarak.

We come from opposite ends...you as a Programmer and understanding what needs to happen behind the scenes, and me as an End-User that has needed many websites over the past few years and having to find Designers, Programmers, SEO, social media experts, content, PR etc just to stay ahead of the curve...it's not as affordable as it once was.

The game has changed so much, and continues to change. Some of my new companies are defined by the domain name I can actually buy - as opposed to being able to buy the domain that my company is called.

Adwords are no longer cheap unless you are very creative, and Google is super smart - black hat is a short cut to the sand box, and reciprocal back links are not as useful as they once were, and can be negative...there are few short cuts. Forget the Indian sweatshops for $199 for "200 reciprocal back links".

All this adds up to having to continually refine and rethink SEO and content strategies, as website designs - what was modern 2 years ago looks decidedly dated very quickly. Matt Cuts is close to a God.

You chose the right occupation my friend...your future is assured.