The trial of web page design

[ChefTalk.com]

I had my logo, I had my business name.. and here was the step that I felt would make me commit to the venture. I needed to create a web page.

I try to buy local so found a man named Edmund at E. Curtis design (www.ecurtisdesigns.com). I really liked his style and feel of the projects on his web site. Edmund asked me to look at my competition's web sites and tell him what I did and didn't like. I have found two web sites for commercial kitchens for rent. One was poorly designed and executed and the other one had a country theme. I'm not country but more of a modern type girl. So, I sent Edmund about 25 links to all sorts of colors, shapes, web sites, even just web site headers that I liked. Amazingly, he came up with a design that was 99% exactly what I wanted. This was so easy... I thought.

One of my critical requirements is a calendar where clients can, at a glance, see what times are open and which are reserved, saving me phone calls since I still need to keep my day job until this business takes off. I wanted something like Microsoft's Outlook calendar. Finding that as a free standing program took about 3 weeks. Edmund would find something and I would have issues with it or I would find something and he couldn't make it work with the web site. I was truly tired of looking for calendars when he convinced me that one that I had rejected would work. It has almost what I wanted and was fairly easy to use as a scheduler.

We worked for another 2 weeks on wording, pictures, layout and the reservation email form. I'm was picky once again asking for dinky little enhancements such as auto skip between the date request mm/dd/yy on the reservation page. Edmund put up with it, bless his patience, and has to this date not screamed at me verbally. I'm sure he thought it lots of times. In the end, I love my site. Here it is: www.steelmagnoliakitchen.com. Take a look and let me know what you think. This part of my venture cost me $1,300 which I think is a steal considering what else I've seen.

My pricing for classes is changing. I don't have any idea what to charge so if you have experience in renting a classroom I'd appreciate input. It is a basic room - actually a space rather than a separate room. It can hold about 40 people and will have the basic setup of a 6 burner range, a convection oven and a sink. I didn't want to put in any other heat-producing items because I would have to install a hood.

Speaking of hoods... more to come.


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