coolest website

[EarthDragon]

having my website redesigned and was looking to give some ideas to my web designer. So I was wondering what makes a martial art website work, what looks good what looks cheesy, please post your thoughts, opinions and some links to what sites look great, thanks

[MasterKiller]

He might not be hiring a professional. Many times, websites get built by students, friends, etc...

I would suggest to keep it uncluttered, and that information be concise. People need to know, in as few words as possible,

What you teach
Where you are
How to get there
Class schedules
How to contact you
How much it costs (optional)


Create a Facebook group to allow people to interact and post pics, etc... The main website is your business card.

[David Jamieson]

He might not be hiring a professional. Many times, websites get built by students, friends, etc...

I would suggest to keep it uncluttered, and that information be concise. People need to know, in as few words as possible,

What you teach
Where you are
How to get there
Class schedules
How to contact you
How much it costs (optional)


Create a Facebook group to allow people to interact and post pics, etc... The main website is your business card.


Yeah, a single page or two, a facebook group and a twitter account is the way to go these days. youtube vids are also good to show the facility and students at work etc.

[sanjuro_ronin]

First thing you have to be clear on, who do you want to attract?

[David Jamieson]

If you are hiring a professional, let them produce a couple of designs for you.

I would give the advice to you that if you are not a designer, do not give design tips.

Usability is far more important than a picture you like for instance.
You will not get the matrix on a low budget and always always remeber the rule of good/fast/cheap

if you want it good and fast it won't be cheap

if you want it good and cheap it wont be fast

if you want it fast and cheap, it won't be good.

having said that, your best and easiest solution that will allow you to do content updates as you desire is to go with a content management system such as joomla, mambo, post nuke or the like.

I personally recommend joomla as it has huge support and many components, plugins and ****bang features that are great.

Do not look for html5 designers, they are few and far between at this time.
don't forget that apple is being a jerk towards adobe flash so if you want the entire audience, stay away from too much flash or your site will render out null on iphones and ipads.

avoid people who use wysiwyg editors, the mix their code all over the place and often none of it validates properly and that in turn leads to browser compatability issues.

You want an xhtml compliant site, you want fresh content often, you want an rss feed for people to follow, you want to marry it to your business facebook and twitter accounts.

You can do all this with a joomla installation. the template the site uses is flexible as well.

check it out, http://www.joomla.org

enjoy.

p.s I have worked for years as a web designer, coder both back end, front end, user interface development and have worked on designing some of the largest web based initiatives carried out by huge corps and governments in my country.

just wanted to add that so you know im not talking out my ass. :)