Hi The Menace,

I don't care that they use templates. It makes no difference to me. I'm a Hair Stylist by the way. You see now you are getting too technical and a bit rude. There is nothing personal here I'm just saying with your own words:"for cheap, crappy websites" I wouldn't pay more than that. You're very suspicious...

Hi Enzo,
That's right I could have bought that for a very cheap price but then what do I do with that??? Useless to me. I wouldn't be able to use the template to do a site myself. I don't want to know what goes on under the hood! Thanks for your reply though and for trying to be helpful.

Thanks Abby for the reply. No, you did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. I am just curious. You mentioned:

To me, it sounds like you are the mad one. They just made an easy few hundred % markup. You just paid them about $700 an hour. Probably a little more. I dream of the day when I make that a day.

You also mentioned that you have been doing some EXTENDED research into web design companies. Of all this research, you didn't think to research how simple it would be to add your own contact and about text into a file and have the template serve it up for you? Honestly, I wouldn't have even charged you. Had you asked here, I'm sure we would have all helped you.

I am glad you are happy with your design. Really I am. I am just saying that we offer a completely different service.

What was the site ripe set up for you anyway? I'd love to see the template you bought.

__________________
Web Design | Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management

My price range would be in the 3-5k range depending on the creative requirements.

I wouldn't ask you anything even if you were doing it for free as you are too arrogant and rude. I really hope that you don't treat your customers like me. You offer a completely different service David (Redfly Studios). Anyway don't bother answering as I won't be coming back. It looks as if I'm not really welcome around here. Thanks to all the rest for your help.

Oh, Abby. I was not being rude at all! In fact I was applauding you coming here and giving us a review of Ripes service. I really am genuinely happy that you are. I do not see how I (Or the others) came off rude.

I was just wondering if you would care to share the site that you paid almost a grand for. Seeing they do not offer any SEO services I thought you might want to get some links back or something.

Seems you do not want to share your site, and that's cool. Just don't go off saying I am being rude when I am not. I treat all of my clients with the utmost respect.

My price range would be in the 3-5k range depending on the creative requirements.

Ok, i'll put it this way, just like with a car you want what's under the hood to be in working order, you don't want it breaking down on you. A badly designed site will break down on some computers.

I take your point that you wouldn't know what to do with the template, it's just a pity you didn't know someone who knows more about web design who could help you.

No harm, put it down as a learning experience.

But do come back here in future if you want help, i'm sure there'll be lost willing to help you.

__________________
CSS Templates
emcguinness.ie

Okay fair enough. But it's the quality of the templates that worries me. It should worry you too as a paying client. The templates are inaccessible, not built using best practice, not future-proofed in any way, not optimised for search engines, etc.

Sorry for coming across rude. I certainly wasn't having a go at you - and I accept that you're a client and not someone working for Ripe trying to make a quick plug At the end of the day, it would be great if you could come away from this thread with a little more knowledge of what you should be expecting as a client. You should give Ripe a call and ask them why your site isn't accessible or optimised, as best as can be, for search engines. There are very minimum quality benchmarks that Web agecies should be striving for. Ripe is miles off the mark to the point of being utterly incompetent cowboys. Even for the money you paid, you should have expected a professional service. If Ripe can't deliver a professional service, then they should stop pretending they can... regardless of how cheap they are.

Not really Abby. I'm trying to be as transparent as I can. Like I said, you should have gotten more for the money you paid. Nobody should be selling professional web services, for any price, unless at least some effort has been made to make the site accessible, optimised and moderately secure.

I'm on your side!

__________________
Web Design | Flash Development | Property | Irish Fitness Forum

Yeep, such prices. I'm increasingly irritated that the only commercial project I did (wrote a backend and did database migration for a largish property website) took months, nearly drove me mad (I didn't really have the time to be doing it at all, what with work and college) and paid 2,500 euro. In fairness, it was largely my own fault; I agreed to do it for a friend, who was doing the frontend, and didn't really look over just how large it was going to be at the time. Set me against the whole business for life, though.

__________________
Blog | FindMeATune.com - Mysterious generator of money | politicsInIreland.com