Website

Discussion in 'Electricians' Talk' started by markysparky, May 19, 2005.

  1. baldelectrician.com

    baldelectrician.com Well-Known Member

    cheers
    ps what's your opinion on the cert

    i presume (probably wrongly) that you are in England/Wales ?
    are you doing the part p thing ?
    us jocks are not but we have other things in the fire
    new building regs, that don't let unqualified people sign off electrical works.

    thanks
     
  2. markysparky

    markysparky New Member

    Well mine have a section on the insturments. make, serial no and calibration dates just above the declaration section. But apart from that a good effort!
     
  3. markysparky

    markysparky New Member

    Me doing the part p thing indeed don't fancy spending the rest of my working life looking over my shoulder!

    And what you have described as new building regs, don't sound much differant to the the p thing here? ;)
     
  4. 01792

    01792 New Member

    The website, by website standards, is frankly poor, it only works in Internet explorer, for 10% of your visitors will not render properly, the colours - well you decide, BUT it does have a charm, is has been cobbled together by an electrician, (haired or otherwise) and doesn't pretend to be anything else. I disagree with the myth that well skillfully designed and crafted websites take a long time to load.

    To be fair if I had to hire a trician, on website alone, I would plump for this one, than a slick one, but you could always make it better and there are many sites the look great and don't mince their words.

    P.S.
    I would keep the colour consistant to allow visually impaired and blind to view your site.
     
  5. Rabbit Rabbit

    Rabbit Rabbit New Member

    Frontpage has improved much over the years to the
    point now where is is accepted in certain circles but
    to get the full benefit of using it you need to have
    Frontpage Extensions available from your host.
    As for using Word - oh ur hum, say no more


    Front Page is absolute c**p Handyman. If one is going to buy a s/w tool then get Dreamweaver it is FAR superior and it works unlike Frontpage)

    "as for using Word" - well it's a lot better than FrontPage that's for sure. And note that Baldelectrician used Word to create his web site and its OK (for Word and better than FrontPage could do!). Nothing flashy but it does the job. By the way I have been using Word and its predecessor/original under Intel ISIS and CPM/80 (as in 1974) since then - 1974.

    [Edited by: Forum Moderator]
     
  6. state-it

    state-it New Member

    In my humble opinion a website for a tradesperson is
    only useful for information purposes such as an
    advert and that's only if people know where to look
    for it such as having it displayed on your van,
    letterheads, cards etc.

    For larger projects (or any for that matter) password-protected client areas are useful in which they can have access to tech.specs, data sheets, photos of how the work is going, any snags etc which are relevant to them - that they can view from wherever they are, even on their holidays if needed.

    It's all part of the service...
     
  7. 01792

    01792 New Member

    Just to put it all into perspective, if I were to use dreamweaver, I'd lose my job, and deservedly so.

    Dreamweaver produces bloated code, and if anything breaks, it can't fix it. Mind you, most of my work comes way of Word, Frontpage and Dreamweaver botchups. So carry on. ;)
     
  8. markysparky

    markysparky New Member

    01792,

    So how much roughy would it cost to employ the services of the likes of yourself to do a professional site??
     
  9. baldelectrician.com

    baldelectrician.com Well-Known Member

    Marky
    The difference in the building regs up here is that you can do almost anything (electrically) in a house up here without informing building control.

    As a guide I signed 5 building warrant jobs in the year prior to end of April.

    It accounted for a very small % of my work.

    You only need to do the building control thing up here if you change the use of a room or modify the house structurally.
    so loft conversions, changing a cupboard into a downstairs loo or an extension or conservatory are all building control jobs.

    Anything else isn't generally.
    such as
    rewires, kitchens, bathrooms..... need i go on.

    All work should be done to bs7671, but there is generally no neet to inform building control for over 95% of your work.
     
  10. markysparky

    markysparky New Member

    Reminds me of the good ole days ;)
     
  11. 01792

    01792 New Member

    For a brochure site (like baldelectrician) the cost is in design and getting the content together, usually about 5- 10 pages. These sites are: -

    - BT/NTL hosting compliant.
    - IE, Opera and Firefox friendly.
    - Meta tags, search engine submittion.
    - Image compression, touch up where required.


    It is also updatable, by the client, through a low-cost online editor such as Contribute 3, which you can pick up for £60-£80. So there are no nasty tie-in update costs, and guarenteed for life.

    I charge around £100. (Under 1/4 of the price for putting power in my garage)

    For big pro-sites, bleeding edge stuff (intranet/extranet, database/XML driven, COM+ components, SOAP interfaces, Smartphone clients, distributed applications)... its per hour, and that depends on how demanding the client is. I charge for quotes, on big jobs, which is refundable on completion, and 50% up front, held in trust. So if I want to walk away, they get it all back, if they want to, I get it.
     
  12. mskelec

    mskelec New Member

  13. baldelectrician.com

    baldelectrician.com Well-Known Member

    mskelec

    looks as if it will be good.
    one question
    why did you go for a non geographic number?

    i find from feedback that people pick my number as they search by std code in the yellow pages from the start.
     
  14. state-it

    state-it New Member

    It's in very early stages at the moment but here you go:

    Keep on keepin' on...

    Unfortunately the links don't work in Mozilla based browsers - only IE :(
     
  15. mskelec

    mskelec New Member

    The 0845 was a tough decision to make.

    1. If I move (which I do often) I don't have the problem of trying to divert a phone number to a new address (I move to different area codes)

    2. I work all over the place, and people don't like to call someone who appears to be from far away.

    3. I can redivert it anywhere I want, and I can also then setup a virtual switchboard if my phone ever gets that infuriating.

    And as most people use IE, I'm not too worried about Mozilla browsers.
     
  16. handyman 2

    handyman 2 New Member

    Lol R-R

    Too many people read old reviews on products and base their opinions on what others say rather than by trying the product out themselves. I doubt many people on here have a copy of Dreamweaver or Frontpage let alone both so any comparison is hard to make from a personal viewpoint

    I have used both and they are both good products, each having benefits over the other in their own right.
    I can also write html code in the raw ie using Notepad and am also pretty well versed in asp having got a 'hobby' site that's currently one of the most popular in it's field in the UK - Successful requests for pages in May alone = 1,185,200

    My Handyman business has it's own site and it is prominently displayed and tied in to the rest of the business through design and does get a fair few page views as a result of this but it provides information and a 'web presence' rather than an interactive, resource or community basis.
    Far too often I see businesses spend fortunes on getting that all too needed web presence and they buy into it thinking that their business world will suddenly shoot into new heights because of it - "if you're not on the net..."

    In reality very few businesses actually gain anything from spending money on having a website built and running it and the ones that do are generally those that are actually selling direct from the site, assuming that they become known

    This is where products such as Frontpage and Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG products come into their own as they allow the novice web-builder to put together something for themselves and each product as I said earlier has it's own merits :)
     
  17. markysparky

    markysparky New Member

    Yes probably many businesses don't benifet. But times are changing as more and more people log on. It won't be long before the phone book and yellow pages will become extinct, as I cannot remember the last time I actually used them myself!.

    Just want to keep up with the times that's all! ;)
     
  18. 01792

    01792 New Member

    Handyman, don't be shy, whats the URL?

    1m requests is something to be proud about, if it was 1m hits, now thats first division, and 1m unique users, that permiership.

    I'm still running http://www.iMadeItLast.com which in its hayday got 1m hits, per day.

    "In reality very few businesses actually gain anything from spending money on having a website", I don't agree with, baldeletrician has proven this, even if he was to invest £100 on a site, that would be covered in the first or second job + all the leads that generates, if he's marketing himself correctly.

    I had to get a plumber in, a young guy, through the internet, he fixed my leak, then letterboxed the street, I know 3 neightbours who are extending, and employed him. Thats one hit, that generated 4 jobs alone. Of course word or mouth on top of that + repeat calls. The internet works more than you give it credit.


    "This is where products such as Frontpage and Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG products come into their own as they allow the novice web-builder to put together something for themselves and each product as I said earlier has it's own merits"

    Microsoft are winding up with hobbist with there Express products.. their free.. and the word is, when released they could be free - £50.

    http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp/default.aspx
     

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