JOHN HOLLISTER WEB PAGE DESIGN, SCANNING AND GRAPHICS

WEB PAGE PRICES

I have have been a computer programmer for over 15 years and have been creating web pages for about five years. My rates are a flat rate of $35.00 per hour. There is a one hour minimum for the initial work. All subsequent work will be billed by 1/4 hour increments. I can also scan slides and photographs and do graphics, based on the rates farther down.

If you look at some of the sites I have designed, you will notice a basic style: attractive, easy to navigate, relatively fast to load and lacking fancy stuff which slows things down. You will find sites with animated images which, while they look "cool", generally add nothing to the site except longer download time. I figure the basic purposes of websites are to sell a product and/or dissemination of information. People want to see what you have without having to go through a bunch of extraneous stuff to see it, nor do they want to wait forever. While many people now have DSL, cable or other fast connections, most of the people viewing your site will not. Each site is designed to the individual needs and the extent of information, variety of product offered, etc. Some sites have just a few species of one type of animal, others have many types of animals, related products and other considerations which require a different arrangement from a simple basic site.

A basic page doesn't take much time. What takes the time are such things as fancy graphics and complicated logos.

Some of the sites which I have created and maintain are:

Feel free to take a look. Email them for references.

Some of the advantages of my maintaining your pages are:

SCANNING PRICES

I prefer to scan from slides, rather than photographs, as the quality is better and they scan faster.   For cropping out small portions of a picture, slides are considerably better than photos.
I will do some cropping of the photos if desired.   They will be scanned at a high resolution, then reduced to 72 dpi for viewing.   They will also be sized for viewing on a monitor.  Unless specified differently, files will be saved at approximately 45 Kb - 55 Kb in size and saved in .jpg format. Scan time is about 24-25 slides per hour. Thumbnail sketches of the images can be easily made and saved in .gif format.
SCANNING RATES: The scanning will be done at a flat rate of $30/hour. If desired, I can also make .gif format thumbnails of the pictures.
Approximately 20 photos saved in .jpg format at 72 dpi resolution and 500 dpi width will fit on a 3.5" floppy. Over 1000 will fit on a CD ROM
Add $3.00 for return postage, $5.00 for a CD ROM. If loaded to floppy disc, the disc will be free.  Turnaround time should be 1-2 days, unless I am out collecting and photographing.
A WORD ABOUT THE SIZE OF PICTURES AND PAGES

An example of file size: a photo saved in .jpg format at 600X469 dpi, compression factor 4 will be 93KB in size, but at 500X391 dpi it will be 78 KB. On monitors with lower resolution, the larger picture would require a lot of scrolling to see it. Also, the download time would be much greater, particularly if several photos are on the same page.
Many people will leave a site if the download time is too great or too difficult to maneuver. I assume that the reason for most web pages is to get people to see and read about what is being offered. Since many of your potential viewers have slower modems, slower phone lines, smaller resolution monitors and slower computers, the size of the files being downloaded should be a major consideration.
GRAPHICS

These are some of the graphics I have done. The rate for graphics work is also $35.00 per hour. The time required depends on how involved it is and how easy the basic graphics supplied are to work with. For instance, the following logo banner took around eight hours, owing to the number of pictures which had to be selected, adapted, sized, moved around and applied. Other banners can be done in an hour or less. On this logo, each picture or text can be clicked on to take you to a page for that subject.

The following is a print ad which I did for Ralph Curtis Publishing. An ad such as this will cost $100-$150. More graphics and a fancier ad will contribute to a higher cost.

Email me with queries at: webmaster@herpo.com