Building/Designing/and Maintaining a Website

[onefootoutthedoor]

So I'm looking to launch my own real estate appraisal business in the near future here. Is there anyone here on the links that is familiar with web design and such? Or perhaps you could point me in the right direction? Any help and/or suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

[CaboBrian]

I've built quite a few websites and have been thinking about writing a tutorial on how to do it. You can visit my site and it has some links to other sites I've done. I've worked on personal sites and on eCommerce sites. I'm not trying to solicit my services, I'm just going to offer some advice.

I'm not sure what kind of site you are looking for, but I would recommend checking out Joomla (http://www.joomla.org). It is a content management software package that is free. Once you have it installed, you can manage your website and change/add content very easily without knowing anything about HTML or programming. There are a lot of free templates to base your look off of and a lot of extensions for various applications. I think there might even be some extensions that are specific to real estate sales.

Depending on how technical you are and what all you want, there's a lot you can do on your own, or you can spend a lot of money having someone else do it.

[Mikey Metalhead]

I have done several , but I dont get to high tech, they are all personal.

I wont get into design much, as said, depends on what you know and how much you want to do. There are several GUI programs that you just drag and drop and save your page. You can also design an entire web page in MSWORD and save it as an HTML document... with hyperlinks and all.

some things that may help.

1. Find what company you want to purchase the domain name and space from. or if you have space, you can buy a domain for about $2 a month and forward people to the space you own. I use namesecure.com to purchase and for space.

2. The fastest way to get you files uploaded is FTP, if you are not FTP wise, then just make sure you are using windows XP... it has it built in, you just drag and drop you files.

[blfrd]

So I'm looking to launch my own real estate appraisal business in the near future here. Is there anyone here on the links that is familiar with web design and such? Or perhaps you could point me in the right direction? Any help and/or suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

I am a web developer. It really depends on what features you want. If you need a database of users or database of other info, it can get pricey real quick.

Managing your own site with content management system is fairly popular.

check out http://pageflakes.com

that is an example of a truly unique site.

[Bob_R]

I've built quite a few websites and have been thinking about writing a tutorial on how to do it. You can visit my site and it has some links to other sites I've done. I've worked on personal sites and on eCommerce sites. I'm not trying to solicit my services, I'm just going to offer some advice.

I'm not sure what kind of site you are looking for, but I would recommend checking out Joomla (http://www.joomla.org). It is a content management software package that is free. Once you have it installed, you can manage your website and change/add content very easily without knowing anything about HTML or programming. There are a lot of free templates to base your look off of and a lot of extensions for various applications. I think there might even be some extensions that are specific to real estate sales.

Depending on how technical you are and what all you want, there's a lot you can do on your own, or you can spend a lot of money having someone else do it.

Isn't Joomla primarily template driven yet highly customizable?

Can you provide more Joomla derived website links?

Thanks.

[Axxman300]

I can't tell you what drives me away from a real estate website.

I want to see the houses that you're listing WITHOUT signing up and giving you all kinds of personal info. I don't mind a site filter where I can select a price-range and style of house, but I'm not giving you my name or e-mail because I have enough junk mail as it is.

There's nothing worse than trying to get info and having to sign up. I mean, you wouldn't ask people who are looking at the listing cards in your window(assuming you're at an office) for their names and phone numbers, you'd scare them away.

One cool thing that I like is the mortgage meter, where you can get an estimate of your monthly payment based on amount vs down payment. That's a great help.

Good luck either way. I'm suprised there isn't a real estate seminar on websites, they have them for everything else.

[Dr5115]

I am a web developer. It really depends on what features you want. If you need a database of users or database of other info, it can get pricey real quick.

.

I too am thinking of building a web site, how much are we talking for a data base that can sort photos?

[rockyvanheineken]

I've designed two.

www.howl-a-dayinn.com
and www.cinbaddfishingcharters.com

[Bob_R]

I've designed two.

www.howl-a-dayinn.com
and www.cinbaddfishingcharters.com

Joomla?

[rockyvanheineken]

Photoshop and Dreamweaver

[CaboBrian]

Isn't Joomla primarily template driven yet highly customizable?

Can you provide more Joomla derived website links?

Thanks.

Yes, it is template driven. There are quite a few free templates out there and you can customize any of them pretty easily. I like it because you can add content and features without doing any programming or know any html. I've created several sites from scratch writing a lot of PHP and HTML and just don't have the time to mess with that much anymore.

Here's a few more that I've done:

http://www.creationsbynid.com
http://www.klenklen.net
http://www.danlandisinc.com
http://www.mistymountainrevival.com

I've done several eCommerce sites also using osCommerce. It's a pretty powerful solution also, but I've not been able to get any of the right without having to do some custom PHP programming.