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garrycohen
13,914 PointsFreelance Web design Advice!
I am looking to start some part time freelance Web designing soon and have recently offered some free work to help build my portfolio.
I'm just looking on advice on how to deal with clients in terms of finished products and assisting with uploading to host & domain registrations - I know that once i have created some free sites my clients will require the website to be uploaded to a website host and linked to their chosen domain name - All of which i am able to do confidentially but i was wondering if any web designers out there can give advice on how to start with this.. i.e - do i set everything up first for the client get login & password for them then hand it over, or is it common practice to ask for clients existing FTP log-in details so i can upload the new site for them if they already have a host and domain.
What is the best route to follow in terms of managing this side of website design & development?
I aware there are reseller packages for hosting which I may look into further but I'm just simply looking for advice on how to do things right so any advice will be appreciated.
Hoping this topic doesn't seem a silly thing to ask!
Cheers Gaz
Chris Dziewa
17,781 PointsI think it would depend on the client and the amount of trust between you both. The best case scenario I suppose would be to build everything out and then when you have received all of the money owed to you, to transfer credentials. I only have experience with freelance work for my friend's photography website and the current paid work I am finishing up on, and in both cases, I have gotten the username and password to access the hosting cPanel. This was particularly important in the first case for setting up the WordPress database but also in the second case since I had to change the nameserver settings on godaddy to point to Bluehost. On the photography site, after a while Filezilla stopped correctly updating files so it was good that I had the admin information so I could use the built in file browser.
I don't know that my way would be considered mainstream but it has worked thus far. I'm sure I will eventually find a better way. I would be interested in hearing other opinions as well. Hopefully this helped a bit though.
2 Answers
James Barnett
39,199 PointsI generally caution freelancers from getting involved with selling hosting to clients.
Shared hosting providers have outages and if the client is paying you as far they are concerned it's you job to fix it. So unless you like being on call and apologizing for when a hosting provider goes down it might be best to help a client purchase hosting and a domain name for themselves.
garrycohen
13,914 PointsThank you for your advice guys!
Daniel Aguirre
4,498 PointsDaniel Aguirre
4,498 PointsHello , I'm in the webs design business and try everything before working with templates . My advise is you want to make more money is not to become a re seller but to offer to your clients domain and hosting packages includes on their project. In your side . You can buy a hosting hosting package and resell space . You can contact me if you need more info. You buy the domain they want and you keep it private . make the agreement for one year if they decided to change just transfer the domain to them. At the end you finish making more money that reselling.
That's what I do
Take Care
Dan