How to Find a Reliable Web Designer?

[waddsy]

I currently have a website however I want to totally revamp it. At this time my web designer I feel has caused more problems and consumed more time and money then it should. Even the site hosting that they are partnered with has been down an average of one time a week (even up to 11 hours at a time) They have made my site with php 5.0 and in windows. I believe that is to entrap me so i have knowhere else to go. I'm sorry im ranting but the question I have is do you guys know what are the TOPPP web designers out there (cost effective) that I can contact?

[hdpt00]

Switch hosts to something reliable, you pick it. You can get everything you want for virtual hosting for $15 a month, if you don't need too much bandwidth you can get some sweet deals at $8 a month, most of them tap into ev1 anyhow.

Try elance and rentacoder to find a designer. Most of them will be awful but you may find that lucky gem. I got lucky and found someone I am really happy with and have been using his team on and off for a year now. Make sure you view a lot of their past sample work and it isn't just bogus templates from templatemonster or what not.

See if you can talk to old clients as well. If you are suspicious at all or feel they won't work out, don't do it. There a million and a half web designers from outside the USA that will do anything for $400.

Best of luck!

[2by4]

I've given up on finding a technically competent web designer, the safest route is to hire a designer for the site look and feel, then hire somebody to actually code your site using that design template. Use designers for what they're good at, design, and use programmers/coders for what they're good at. This is how most major sites are done, it works really well, you avoid the bad design most programmers tend to put out, and you avoid the bad coding most designers tend to put out.

Get your own hosting, don't do it through the designer, that's a recipe for disaster, also make sure you control your domain names and all that.

[engine]

There are some ideas in this thread. [webmasterworld.com...]