I was going to add that many services of these can be got very cheaply elsewhere like Vistaprint so you need to add something different like service.

That's what I was thinking of (though with vertical thumbnails). Looks much smarter IMO.

You definitely want an uncluttered site. Too minimalistic and it'll feel like there's no content, so there is a fine line IMO.

It happens if I use any zoom level above 1:1 which pushes it onto two lines. I can't figure out where "Body-C-C1" is defined though. I'm no good with CSS at all...

http://www.arens-beratungsservice.de/index.php

That is the site I re-wrote for my brother-in-law. I'm still waiting for some actual content, but look at the menu bar for an example of what you can do with CSS - only the Bank Partner has a drop-down at the moment, but you get the idea and the CSS is set up to drop-down to 2 layers deep, although more is possible. It is pure CSS, no JavaScript etc. required. I've used that menu CSS on several Intranets, but unfortunately that is the only public facing page I've used it on.

As I said, it is very basic at the moment, he needed me to quickly change some links and information on the page and it was such a mess of HTML files, with no CSS, that I re-wrote and implemented the simplest implementation of CMS I could think of - well, it isn't really a CMS in the Drupal way of thinking, but it allows the site owner to quickly knock up text for inclusion in the site, without them having to know HTML.

I haven't bothered with turning on the path naming, everything is done over index.php and then including the sub-parts of the page, plus the content part.

Edit:
If you are interested, PM me your email and I'll send you the CSS and PHP for the menu structure. It is very simple, the menu structure is set up in a JSON file, which is read in and a few lines of PHP generate the HTML code for the menu.

Here's a nifty little responsive slider, built using jQuery...
http://bxslider.com

For those that aren't aware, Responsive Design is the latest buzz-word that mean one design can adapt to different screen sizes - useful for when viewing websites on tablets/mobiles. Try pulling in the width of your web browser on the above link to see what I mean. The slider isn't a fixed size, it dynamically scales to fit the width of your browser - pull it right in to see how it would display on a mobile phone.

My only reservation is this may be moving you in the direction of adding complexity to your site, something that the text says you're not about - however, saying that, you still need a way to showcase your portfolio, and that's all that these are designed to do. Most are customisable to remove any gimmicky effects and transitions, leaving you with just your content and nothing else! In the link above, try clicking the "Examples" link and you'll see that there are many ways to add/remove the extra features. It can be as simple, or as complex, as you want it to be.

Thanks for that Steve, I'll take a look. I've uploaded a brand new design... only the home page is working, and I am going to re-write it, using Notepad, (or maybe Notepad++, Dave) as I would prefer more control...

There wasn't a price purely for business cards, as that was a package... cards, compliments slips and letterheads. I will re-visit the pricing structure when I re-writing that page though.

I think I used dynamic width sheets in Joomla and set it to 90% so you had a little border and everything kept to scale irrespective of whether you zoomed in/out or were viewing at different resolutions.

Have a look at responsive web design. There's some very good stuff out there on it and it's really the future of the design side of things imho.

http://www.initializr.com/

http://www.getskeleton.com/

Those are IMO a good place to start for a template, especially for a simple template, even the stock ASP.Net MVC one is pretty responsive now

Thanks guys, I'm back in Notepad and will have a brand new design uploaded by Friday.

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Just be aware not to do what they do.

In case 5 they put the images in the reverse order that they refer to them. That's really bad. As in, they say the exact opposite of what they wanted to say:


Actually, it means the "former" image. It had me scratching my head for a while.

Case 9 is missing the images entirely. Broken link maybe? No - actually it's blocked by AdBlock because the link is called "Advert"

OK... update time.

After a massive reworking, the site is now available at:

http://www.johnvella.netai.net

I know that the site has been playing up a bit, but the other test site:

http://vellawebdesign.webs.com

Does not have php, (and it can't be installed on their free servers) so the feedback form part does not work... everything else seems OK, so you can use either to have a look.

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks,

John.

EDIT TO ADD: I also need to add the SEO segment, but I won't do that until I register the site I want to use...

Waaaaayyyy better. At 2am that's currently my only input.