I am a self-taught website designer. I have been an artist my whole life. I started as a website designer after being retrenched in 2009. I used to work in the South African Conference Industry, as an I.T Technician. I have always had a passion for design and computers. At the age of about 18, I started graphic design and website design as a hobby, and I was eventually introduced to Joomla CMS. I have never looked back and really love this Content Management System.
A website is a collection of interrelated web pages, images, videos or any other digital assets that are stored on a single computer, or website server. A web page is a document displayed on the Internet, typically written in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML).
Web design is a very broad term used to describe the way that website designers layout the content of online presentations, forms, galleries and etc (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web.
The Internet has developed into a primary marketing and communications tool for many businesses. According to predictions, in the year 2011, more than 6 million South African people alone will be Internet users, all within reach of a Desktop, or Mobile PC. Your company's web page, labelled with a distinctive domain name, will ensure that you have 24/7 access to this global market.
Each computer linked to the Internet is identified by a unique Internet Protocol number (IP) made up of four sets of digits. The IP number is the address of the specific computer on a network. A domain name is simply an easy-to-remember alias for an IP number. ( eg: www.southafricanwebsitedesigner.co.za is easier to remember than 74.53.182.127 )
Domain names can be bought, sold and transferred. If registering a new domain name. I suggest a Local TLD, or National TLD, or Top Level Domain Name in the country of principal business (South Africa = .co.za).
If you don’t have a domain name, I suggest registering a domain name now to avoid it from being taken by someone else. Domain names are bought on a First – Come, First - Serve, basis. This helps when you decide, at some point in the future to own a website, you will be entitled to use your, chosen name, or company name as a domain name.
Please Note: Many domain name registries require that name servers are supplied and set-up before registering a domain name.
Approach the holder of the domain name with an offer to purchase. I will either approach the holder on your behalf or assist you in locating the contact details of the holder should you want to contact him/her personally.
Domains are rent-able form as little as R9 per month, up to about R10 000 per month. It all depends on the size, space, bandwidth, up-time, operating system, server and etc needed. The idea is to rent enough space to host your website, and allow for growth. Make sure your host is reliable, and has a good up-time, as you don’t want your website to be offline, or unavailable at anytime.
Yes, this is possible to host your own website, but you will need a permanent fast connection to the internet. Your Computer will need a fixed IP Address, and you will need Server-Side Software, Security, and Operating System, such as Microsoft Server, or Linux Apache. With so many cheap and affordable solutions available, more people host with a hosting companies, than on private servers.
I would like to believe that I am honest, reliable and always on time. I am a Durban based Website Designer, that is passionate about my work. My goal is to offer a creative website design service, with the most affordable, stable, and reliable, hosting package available in South Africa.
I charge anywhere between R3000, and R15 000 South African Rand, for the design and layout of a Content Management Website. My prices are very competitive, and all websites are built on a Joomla CMS backbone, or Content Management System.
Joomla is a free and Open-Source Content Management System that allows you the website owner to easily login to the back-end of your website, at anytime, and edit your website content. The more you know about Joomla websites the more you will be able to do. You can find millions of You Tube videos, or tutorials on the Internet on “ How To Edit Your Joomla Website “.
All the necessary Components and modules will be installed during the setup of your website, to make your Joomla Control Panel more user-friendly.
I charge R194 per month to host and maintain your website. You can also provide your own hosting, but please make sure that your hosting has enough space, reliable security and a good up-time. I personally like to make sure my clients websites are well looked after. I offer more than enough space for the average business website. The space provided is 1 Gigabyte of Web Space, and 10 Gigabytes Bandwidth.
I charge R250 per hour for website updates. Most of my website clients update their own websites. Only every now and again will they actually call on me to edit, or update their website. There are lots of ways to keep design costs to a minimum.
The amount of time it takes to design something, re-size it, download, or upload it, is all taken into consideration. For example the simple design of a logo can take up to 4 hours or more to design. It all depends on how many samples the client has asked for, and the time it takes to make the changes the client wants.
