Re: Would anyone like to offer to design a simple charity website and a shop a bit later?

On Mar 6, 7:21 pm, me here <h...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm going to have a play with Dreamweaver to see what I can learn, but
I don't intend to create the 'live' version of the site or even have
my code used by the eventual author.  

www.parrotaid.org.ukandwww.parrotaid.co.ukneed content!

 Parrot Aid in Northampton is a small charity dedicated to the welfare
of parrots and similar birds. It is not a "rescue" organisation per se
- the primary aim would always be to "rehabilitate" the bird and its
owners so that they can stay together.  It also has an active
educational program with schools and similar.   It is not able to
register (yet) with the Charities Commission as it cannot demonstrate
an income of more than £5,000pa (it has outgoings more than that, but
these have been funded, in the main, by the individual who runs the
charity).  When the provisions of the Charities Act 2006 are finally
implemented (hopefully later this year)   it is intended to register
the operation as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation.

Part of the strategy (a grand word for such a small operation!) for
the charity is to use a website to improve awareness of its existence
and remit and - of course - to be a vehicle for fundraising.

Here's an idea of what we want:

A simple website likehttp://www.glutenfree-crawley.org.uk/orhttp://www.leicesteranimalaid.org.uk/ would be adequate to begin
with, and although it is probably within my personal competencies to
create such a simple site, I would be unable - for example - to
incorporate even a  modest "shop" which would be a short-term
objective to assist in fund raising.  I would not want to create a
basic site and then hand that over to someone else to implant the
shop, as that is a recipe for confusion and cost!

We would like an offer for creating a site similar tohttp://www.glutenfree-crawley.org.uk/orhttp://www.leicesteranimalaid.org.uk/, hosting same and implementing
a modest shop.   As far as the shop is concerned, there might be a
maximum of 20 categories and no more than 1000 items - but items per
category is probably not a basis for costing anyway.  We will NOT want
a forum or even a guest book; we will want email forms (or, more
accurately a method of contacting us by email that is somewhat
protected against spam or address harvesting),  a POP3 mailbox (or
several if they come at no additional cost, as I would expect within
reason), a 'paypal donate now' button supporting gift-aid declarations
You are asking a heck of a lot hear, unless you want to add the 1000
items to the shopping cart yourself?
It is a lot of work to add content to a site generally, but to add
heaps of items to a shopping cart will cost a lot, as the images will
all need to be re-sized and added in etc.
I could do the actual design of the website for free, as a part of my
Free Web Design Online project, but the shopping cart, like forum
software or anything else will need to be done with another software
package, such as Zen cart, useing such a software package would allow
you to add content yourself, but then you have the issue of exactly
how people are going to pay you. So I might suggest just useing PayPal
for the lot, as if you get a bizness account you can use the shopping
cart system and people cam then pay you directly, I actually have
access to Paypal myself, so I can use it for hosting clients. Although
I tend to include the domain name as a part of the hosting package
(cause it is just nicer for the client as they can get everything in
one package.

I would want to do the maintenance of the site and shop by ftp (or a
CMS if provided at no additional cost) once created;  the domainswww.parrotaid.co.ukandwww.parrotaid.org.ukare already registered
with 123-reg.co.uk.
Well, you kind of want to different things hear, a shopping cart and
the website.They are different, as with a shopping cart, you need an
SSL certificate (which means you will need a dedicated IP address,
which all costs extra money, unless you use the Paypal option (as they
provide the payment system.

It is our intention that it be an information site, not an
entertainment site: in other words effective content is FAR MORE
important than flashy yoof-oriented exciting design - which is why we
liked the Gluten Free site. No Flash, thank you. No music, thank you.
No tricksy buttons, thank you.  Maybe one animated gif in a 'Kiddies
Corner' but that's about it.

Take a look at my portfolio http://freewebdesignonline.org/portfolio.php
 The one issue I have with these two 'baseline' sites is that they
appear to be designed for fixed-width browsing: I would want our sites
elegantly to reflow according to the viewers preference for browser
width (well, within reason. What is reasonable?  I have no idea yet)

Well, that question is rather tricky to answer as it varies, depending
on personal preference.But you are clever for at least thinking of
that, as a lot of web designers don't even get that concept.
But my website design should fit your needs for the most part.
But a few things you must look out for when chooseing a web designer,
does their website validate as HTML 4.01 Strict, or XHTML 1.0 Strict,
if not then they are useing HTML that is out of date, that will
probably not work as well in some browsing environments. The site
should also be accessible, in other words, test the site with a text
to speech reader, or text only browser, if the site does not work in
such an environment, then I would not hire them.
As it is law in the UK and other countries under the DDA, that your
website needs to be accessible to people with barious disabilities.
I should point out that I have been makeing some changes to my own
site recently, so one or two pages may not validate, but I can tell
you that I know the specific problems, and I can also tell you that
the errors will be no affect on how the pages display in a web
browser, as the issue is with a meta tag (which I will remove very
soon.
--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesignonline.org

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