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[url]www.clermontcarpetcleaning.com[/url]

The owner of the company came to my house to clean our carpet. He heard I made websites and asked if I could make him one. Well it's finished and me and my friend got paid $500 to make it.

Our business is really starting to boom. We already got more website deals (one for remodel for $300 and one new one possibly for $600) and a computer build (for $200).

I never thought I'd make more money working on my own than for Denny's.

Not very professional....

Flash for menu -> Very bad.
Flash intro -> Bad.
Poor markup.


Honestly, if you're going to get into web design. Do it properly.

Your html isn't valid

Design's not bad though, just needs better execution.

HTML doesnt always have to be valid.

Except, the fact that you got $500 for that makes me want to cry. Congratulations, but you really really really need to get some design lessons.

Why does a carpet company need a flash intro, transition effects, and animated spinning logos? I'm not picky about markup and whatnot, because as long as the search engines can read it, it only matters how it looks. Your design just screams unprofessionalism.

And 500 dollars is horrifying. I got paid 100$ for a simple frontpage site, and THAT was overcharging.

It's fine for a small town carpet cleaning business... But don't get complacent. Improve.

Good work though, it's pretty good.

OH MY EYES, ARTOO HELP

Um, is that logo photoshopped onto the van? :p

I was going to ask that too. :p

[Oh, and the word super-please? (super)Puhlease.]

Yeah, not very great...you got money, but don't let that make you cocky. You have a lot of people here who have been doing web design for years telling you that it's not that great. Improve, you must.

man, thats ugly at 800x600

*puts res back at 1024*

I dont think you need the flashy intro and the fancy menus. Use some good graphics and simple HTML.

Don't be so harsh on him guys :p

gmail address for your "company"? not very professional. that's like using a hotmail address on your business card.

No, but trying to make my stuff valid improved my skill and knowlege alot.

Yeah it is. The owner bought a new van and didn't have a logo on it yet, and asked if i could do something. It was a quick photoshop, as I need to concentrate more on the other aspects of the page. As you can see on the "Contact Us" page, I photoshopped him in someone's living room. Another quick job, as you can see I did not take the time to smooth out his shoulders or fix the lighting.

Where I am, you find a lot of people desperate for websites. While a lot of you say "that's not the best" I agree. I got a lot to improve on, like I said it's my FIRST professional page. I did it within a week too. But you must remember a lot of people want the site for what it is. He was really impressed with it, and thought it looked good. He likes it, it gets his information across, and that's all that counts.

Oh, and a quick question. Are the meta tags valid (on intro page)? I submited site to about 12 search engines a few weeks ago, and I dodn't see them on there. I know it too about a month before one of my old sites got recognized.

The thing is, Flash does not belong on ANY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE. There's problems with speed (on slower computers), incompatibility, not having it installed (not being able to see it), etc etc.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]The thing is, Flash does not belong on ANY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE. There's problems with speed (on slower computers), incompatibility, not having it installed (not being able to see it), etc etc.[/QUOTE]

Aside from being incorrect, your point is 100% correct.

On the whole Flash shouldn't be used on professional sites, but it does have valuable uses that shouldn't be dismissed.

Anywho, the site shouldn't have a splash screen and it shouldn't use flash, there's just no reason for it. The site should also only have one page. The ability to let customers post their own testimonials is a bad idea, it's open to abuse. It's better to just handpick a few testimonials obtained from asking the customers.

For doing that whole site properly, I would probably charge £300. But I do mean actually doing it properly.

Ooh, detty's (not so) witty retort.

WHO DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMING.

Listen, if you're going to use flash on a site, it's not going to be anything you'll charge under 1000 for, or something you charge ANY amount of money for. Flash has its purposes. They do not include first time "professional" websites.

Well of course the whole thing changes when you start using inverteds. Obviously i'd recommend against kids wanting to make a quick buck making a website from using Flash. It's just common sense, you start with the basics and work your way up to the advanced stuff.

But Flash has very valid uses on professional websites, but if you feel like foolishy trying to argue otherwise, go right ahead.

See, there you are. Finally, you stopped being hypocritical.

Just stupid. (ps, read my post more thoroughly and your last sentence may seem a little foolish.)

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]The thing is, Flash does not belong on ANY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE. There's problems with speed (on slower computers), incompatibility, not having it installed (not being able to see it), etc etc.[/QUOTE]

None of those are reasons to not use Flash on professional websites. My point stands.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Listen, if you're going to use flash on a site, it's not going to be anything you'll charge under 1000 for, or something you charge ANY amount of money for. Flash has its purposes. They do not include first time "professional" websites.[/QUOTE]

Hrmm....

What point are you trying to make here? You're not making a lot of sense to me, maybe I've suddenly switched language or something.

thats good for a first time, but the owner/operator picture is scary!!! I don't want that man cleaning my house...

Make the menus appear about 7 times faster.

I agreed with you. Read. Please.

Grrrr -_-.

Time for my rant on the website!

A. The flash sucks. All of it. Remove it completely.
B. You should at least make your site HTML4.01 Transitional valid. You can skimp on the others if you REALLY HAVE TO, but there are some GLARING errors that need to be fixed, such as:
C. No DOCTYPE specified
D. Flash elements are included incorrectly (easiest fix? REMOVE IT ALTOGETHER).
E. Your images do not have ALTs. This is important, many of those who rely on narration programs to read websites to them will be unable to know the content of an image without those ALTs.
F. You use a table background (With improper HTML by the way) for making a silver color, for no apparent reason. (It looks better as white anyway, and the image isn't necessary for a solid color!)
G. The menu does its annoying refresh every time you click somewhere. INCREDIBLY annoying.
H. You're using a freakin GUESTBOOK to do customer reviews! Bad bad bad bad! Not to mention, the reviews should be checked before posting, or else it could hurt the business!
I. You use tables for no apparent reason. This site could EASILY be achieved using CSS only. (And narration programs would love you for it)
J. Your site is totally useless to Google. It might find the actual homepage (After the intro) but after that, Google will get lost. It will never find your services page, or anything else there. All because you use flash and nothing else for your site. Less content in google's system = less keywords = less chance of it appearing in a search.

Gah. That picture disturbed me. I understand you dont have a real photographer for the guy, but a Blue sky and outdoors scene (like hte normal picture would have been) would have worked FINE. Or hey! Invite him inside to take a photo.

The point is, that was an unneeded photoshop, especially since you didnt finish it.


While true, Its not an excuse to let the site look like crap.


True, but it doesnt get his information across properly. The site is slow to navigate and items are not displayed clearly.


Keep things like this in mind and your next site will come out much better.

If you think getting paid $500 for that is bad, I got paid $6000 to hand-code all of the PHP/MySQL work for a small community portal website (photo library, news script, etc).

Then I got paid $2500 the year after just to maintain it. Keep in mind I never set a rate, this is what they OFFERED me.

The flash intro bothered me when I first saw it, it was kinda ugly with the carpet, but the logo swishing by and cleaning the carpet is kinda neat.

The site doesn't scream "OMG, UBER HUGE CARPET CLEANING COMPANY" for sure, but it does get the information across and it serves it's purpose and fits the small town or small business profile in my mind.

but I do have to agree, the site would get the same info across just as easily without the flash elements, the menu bar takes WAY to long to load up and the into just sits there as a blank page until it's done loading.

I like it for a first attempt, points to improve on:

1. The Flash intro, either remove it, or add a loading progress bar so people don't think maybe their browser froze on them or something before the animation plays.

2. Speed up the menu or remove the flash element entirly.

3. Work on the images and positioning of the text a little, maybe move the images and text in the main content of the page into the center a little, it seems a little wide and open... know what I mean? the image and text hit the edge of the page and then start at the bottom, have a margin i guess is what i'm trying to say.

the images you can tell are photoshoped, they look kinda sloppy, the van is not too bad, but the text stands out in a bad way methinks, and fix the jagged edges and lighting on the living room pic.

4. the spinning logo in the top left corner, the animation seems a little sloppy, you can tell when the animation loops, make it a bit more cleaner and blend easier.

5. if you have a domain name for your "company" use an email for it, not gmail, IF you want to be taken prfessionaly, try and look it, having your own domain name/email will help that a bit more, shows people you have the money to spend on your own site and email and makes you a little more professional, since thats your only link to prospective clients who see that site, they want someone who has their **** together and seeing an email with a gmail account tagged on the end might turn some away, it IS like your business card.

Yeah, nobody wants to see a flash intro for a house-cleaning company. :p

I hate you. I should really learn how to make real html, php, and other pretty web-stuff. I need cash.

<3

I'm self-taught from PHP.net's documentation and the MySQL docs as well. If I can do it, I'm sure you can.

I agree with the flash bit. It's not that great. Personally you should just use a static image. Splash pages are generally useless and it took WAY too long to load and I'm on cable. That should speak volumes. And no, I didn't have network hangups. Splash pages should be quick and moderately flashing. They're attention grabbers but we don't want to wait 30 seconds for it to load. You should drop it or really redo it. Some things that CM mention are helpful but others are just picky.

Edit: Yeah, PHP isn't that complicated. If you can do COG you can do PHP.

Wow, that's a hella of lot a cash!