# Self Intro, and website questions (how many pages)



## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

Hi there - first time poster, been reading along for a year or so. First off I wanted to thank tsf as a whole for providing useful info to us during our start up phase. Lots of good people here - Thank you

After searching tsf I was unable to sniff out answers to a couple questions we had, here they are..

Main question: We are designing our website in photoshop (like a mock-up site). We have a solid home page, faq, blog, etc... and we are now building the "Buy" page for each individual shirt we'll be selling. We have about 150 shirt designs, and are wondering if we will have to build out 150 different webpages representing each individual design. Does this sound correct? We'll be using the same template for each shirt, but will add the new verbiage/text and 3 different photos for every shirt. Do apparel websites typically contain hundreds of pages like that? 

2nd question: After the site is completed in PS we will supply a webdesigner with the PS files. Do they just "paint by numbers" at that point? Meaning do they just convert the website designed layout to code and publish?...

We intend to learn about maintaining the website once completed, but didn't want to bite off more than we can chew right away?

Thanks in advance 

-Ghost


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## codyjoe (May 6, 2013)

I'm just for-warning you the prices you're about to face to have a custom website like this built will be astronomical. The other issue with severely customized sites like the one you mentioned is that they're inherently difficult to get properly working on mobile devices (which every site should be able to do). Really all of our websites should be "responsive" to mobile devices meaning they automatically scale based upon the screen size overall.

As for the individual pages it'll really depend on your checkout method. Let's say you have a WordPress site and use WooCommerce to display all of your shirts. All you really need to do is figure out the details for each product along with the meta-data and you'll be set to go. I would really advice you to get a nice WordPress theme and use WooCommerce to implement your shirts. Much easier overall and much cheaper. I can forward you a great web developer that can set you up with an awesome site if you want to do WordPress or go the completely custom route you mentioned.


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## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

Thanks for the reply - I see what you are saying. Am just trying to avoid having the website look generic and/or impersonal. And I happen to have access to a great "graphic" designer (wifey). We have designed the entire site already, we just need a web designer to code it. Just wondering about how many pages the average t shirt website (with 100 or so designs) has in general.


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## monkeystylz (Aug 6, 2012)

There are a few good Facebook store you can get and its easy to setup... I have aaridium and its only $254 for a whole year and it calculares the shipping and everything 

Sent from my GT-I9300T using T-Shirt Forums


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## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

I don't mind paying for someone to plug in the images and content for us. They don't have to design a thing, just convert it to code and link buttons. 

Anyone on TSF have a custom site built?


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## llian (Mar 22, 2012)

As a webdesigner I have to agree with codyjoe. It sounds easy to "just to convert it to code" but TBH it isn't that simple. I now use wordpress and woocommerce for all my clients - it is already coded for ecommerce and search engines and responsive design, so all I have to do is code the design, quicker for me so cheaper for client. Plus they can easily maintain the site themselves.

It may indeed be that your design will lend itself to a wordpress site.

Re. your question about product pages, I would say definitely yes to having a page for each design. In fact I am just building a new t-shirt site and I have set it up with a page for the design and then a link to each product it can be placed on. This means 12 pages per design. A lot of work setting it up but it means that the navigation, search and experience is a lot better for the visitor.


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## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

I guess Wordpress is my only option then... Thanks so much for the input. I did not know it would cost $30K to make a simple Tshirt Website... Now I know


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## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

Jill, would be so kind as to share a link of your portfolio? I would love to see your work with Wordpress. 


Any successful T-shirt entrepreneurs feel like chiming in here? Maybe someone who spent the time researching web-designers and forking over a little cash for a legit looking, personalozed site? There's gotta be someone...


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## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

*Re: Interesting update*

We had a website designer come over and talk to us about building one for us. He told us about Adobe Business Catalyst and how it is integrated with a shopping cart and hosting for $39/mo. He uses HTML5 to build the website is Dreamweaver, then easily transfers the file to Adobe BC and publishes the website. Said HTML5 is a very fast format that is viewable on almost all devices. 

Re: *Individual pages*: He told us that we will not need to build 1 page per each individual shirt, but rather duplicate the customized "buy" page and populate it with new text, descriptions and images - also can have "related products" circulating underneath the main product. And then all the regular bells and whistles like product page, contact, faq, newsletters, subscriptions, promotion pages, search etc...

He is charging us $2500 to build us a fully functional, fast, ecommerce website - (_and doing some videos for us, outside of the $2500_). We had some extra features we wanted like buttons that "activate" certain interactive images (_nothing irritating, just some fun stuff_), he said no problem. 

He _did_ mention that Adobe BC is not open source and not as "deep" as Wordpress, and admitted that Wordpress can perform several functions that BC doesn't have. He did make clear, however, that Adobe is purposely built for e-businesses, and a lot of the "extra" open source WP features are items that did not match any of our criteria for creating a kick-a$$ e-commerce site. And one that we didn't need an Internet Technology degree to operate ourselves _(adding shirts, new blogs etc...)_
Wanted to post this in case anyone had something to add about Adobe BC. Seems like a straight forward solution, that would allow us to focus on staying creative, artistic, and ultimately allow us to focus on marketing our product. 

Let me know what you think about the concept of BC, and if the price is consistent with the platform. I think it sounds great, and it is right within our budget.

Thanks
-G


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## codyjoe (May 6, 2013)

Setup WordPress on the server that's hosting your website and just install a premium theme (there are thousands of nice ones out there).

Once that's done there's an eCommerce system for WordPress called WooCommerce which works great.

I've done all of this myself multiple times now for other people, it's honestly not that hard and is WAY cheaper than doing what this web designer stated.

The best part is that you can get WordPress themes that work great on mobile devices where most Dreamweaver created sites need a separate version just for mobile devices.


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## Fisched (Jun 8, 2012)

FYI, e-commerce does not need to create every single page for the site for each shirt. Usually, e-commerce sites use CMS (content management systems) to pull all the relevant information from a database and load the templates for the "product" page. Easiest solution is probably big cartel -- that's what I'm using now. Other solutions seem too complicated -- you don't want to get bogged down with all the site development; plus, all the extra features might be nice but your paying for it with development $. So, in short, keep it simple. Check out my site if you want to see a big cartel implementation. We don't have a lot of shirts yet but you'll get the idea.

Piece of advice, you would want to know as much of the "back-end" stuff as possible so that you won't have to keep going back to your web designer for updates/maintenance. Will save you a lot of money on the long run.


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## DonkeyRags (Dec 22, 2012)

I'm a software developer with over 15 years of coding experience. Allow me to save you some time and money:

Don't build it yourself from scratch. The wheel has already been invented, and have been improved upon in many ways that would cost you an arm and a leg to reproduce.

To date, the most full-featured, turnkey solution is Shopify. If you spend a hundred bucks to invest in a premium theme, your site will certainly not look generic, and will likely be leagues above what you can come up with in using the PhotoShop/Dreamweaver combination.

Some people think that going with an all-in-one solution will restrict their options to tweak things, but I find that the opposite is true. What you really gain is the ability to focus on the most important thing: your product.

-William
What Inspires You?


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## ghostofmedusa (Mar 12, 2013)

Thank you for all your feedback! it is much appreciated

We actually pulled the trigger on having the pro designer build us a website in Adobe Biz Catalyst. They meet with us every couple weeks (near by) and we are very happy with the way it looks, it is better than we could have hoped and has the exact functionality we wanted. 

I know there are simplified formats and prebuilt templates offered in an attempt to create web-designers out of ordinary people. But we opted to lay everything out in Photoshop, giving us complete control over the look of the site (very easy for us) and have the pro code it to Biz Catalyst... Not for nothing, but Adobe BC is pretty powerful, simple and manageable for people like us, people who have zero website controlling experience. It has almost zero people endorsing it on this forum, but it is a very viable way to showcase, distribute merchandise, and receive payment over the internet.

We don't want to spread ourselves too thin and Captain every aspect of the ship. Sometimes the engine room should be controlled by mechanics, not Captains. It is enough just coming up with sellable designs, maintaining our garment printer, exploring marketing methods... And learning how to build websites on such short notice would just take us away from that..

Thank you all for your input

-ghost


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