The question is:Why does everyone keep telling us to restart our site
from scratch and they will do a better job with it?

Please look at our site and let us know your personal
opinion (What you might do if it were your site) on whether or not, we
are going in the right direction regarding the type of code we are
using, the basic formatt, and design of the site.  In the end we just
want to make sure the site is starting our site off on the right foot,
and will be able to grow with us and be upgraded in the future. 
Elance updates thier site all the time.


Some background information, and site url if it helps any.


I recently went on an ousourcing site Scriptlance looking for a
consultant to review our new site.

Our first shot (old version) at the site: 
http://203.200.177.226/biddersworld/html/

Our NEW version in progress.
http://globegetter.com/newsite/

Admin Path - http://globegetter.com/newsite/admin

Platform: Red Hat Linux
Database: Mysql
Scripting Language: PHP
Web Server:  Apache

And what they (the new guys) have to offer, which I think is just
reselling WCWS's "http://www.smarterscripts.com/specials.shtml"
Freelancer script.

Please look at www.outsource4biotech.com 
And www.rolancers.com 
www.meetcontractors.com 


One of the people who responded gave me doubts about our, about 1/3
completed site.  I don't know much about the science behind the making
of a great site i.e, whether or not php is faster than perl, or linux
red hat is the way to go for security reasons, or templated based
sites offer future benefits, or how the admin panel should be
organized.

The person who responded said they have prepackaged Elance,
Scriptlance, Guru, Getafreelancer, Rentacoder, etc... They claim they
have all the functions of the popular sites plus some added benefits
for between $600-$1600.  I know these type of scripts exist and have
looked at several with thoughts of purchasing one to start our site
with, but we went another route and hired an India based development
team to build our site from scratch.  We actually had a completed site
"http://203.200.177.226/biddersworld/html/" already built from scratch
that they (the new team) were suppose to just "fix" and add a few
modifications, because we knew it was lacking in several areas.  They
convienced us to redo the site and start fron scratch again making it
better, that was 5 months ago. Now this guy is telling me his template
sites are the way to go because

I pasted his initial response below for reference.
 
We have already created the best online reverse auction site on the
market today. The site is a complete clone of Elance.com a leader in
this domain and not only that also contractedwork.com,rentacoder,
scriptlance concepts also incorporated inside.

Basically you have two giants in one package incorporated with careful
study of this business industry behind it.

You don?t need any programming knowledge to run this script. 

Apart from great features which are incorporated, we have carefully
implemented every function so that it is easy to manage as well as
modify.

One very unique thing about the software is that we have taken the
Marketing side of things very seriously.

You have at your disposal a very flexible package that allows you to
switch to the needs of your target market without you having to hire a
coder to upgrade the package each time you have an idea or find out
that something else is working? THE SOFTWARE DOES IT ALL.

We have carried out extensive research on contractedwork.com target
market and its users and even when they changed their concept to suit
the market need, they did this after we had already incorporated our
own unique features into the application, so we are always confident
that we are one step ahead at all times.

We have also added other things that contractedwork.com and Elance
don?t have yet, and I am sure after their research and study they will
still add them in their next update.

Some things that Elance software doesn?t include are the following. 

- NDA approvals, which are important for many projects. 
- Salary level acceptance , which is good for monthly contracts 
- Escrow payment system, for buyer and seller security 
- Multilingual capabilities 
- Advanced complaint center similar to Squaretrade 
- Scriptlance doesn?t have the sealed bid option 

These are just a few mentioned? 


THE GREATEST PART IS THAT 


1: You will immediately receive a three year free upgrade certificate
(this is so valuable because we are constantly upgrading, and spending
a lot of dollars on research)
2: You will also get additional software and e-book packages to help
you in your marketing
- Marketing E-books 
- Traffic analyzers 
- Sales Tips from top gurus 

If you will be interested in this special offer we can do your site
for you exactly the way you want for $1600 in 45 days maximum.

or you can purchase our already existing one that contains everything
you need, for $650

Please look at www.outsource4biotech.com 
And www.rolancers.com 
www.meetcontractors.com 

I new to Google.  Please ask any questions you may want answered.

Thanks for any light you can spread on this situation.
Stephen

Dear sublime,

The people who tell you to restart your site from scratch are hoping to
benefit from this advice by winning your business. It is likely that
they do not have your best interests at heart but are acting from the
profit motive. If I were in your place, I would not abort the current
redesign. On principle alone, it is better to stay the course and carry
the redesign through to completion, then wait a while longer before
reassessing the new site and considering further changes. You will make
no progress unless you are resolute in your decisions.

As a practical matter as well, you should stay with the current redesign
because the firm you have hired is clearly on the right track. The least
one can say about the new site is that it is a substantial improvement
over the old one. It is superior in the following respects.

Aesthetics:

    The old site is marred by distracting banner animation, garish
    graphics, juvenile fonts, and glaringly bright blue borders. These
    features may seem interesting on first sight, but they quickly
    grow old and draw attention away from your content in the long
    run. The new site, on the other hand, has a clean and simple
    design that lets content take center stage. The subdued blues and
    modest graphics act as mere decoration for the auction listings
    which are rightly the focus of the home page.

Functionality:

    The new site preserves the best features of the old one and adds
    a few more. An auction listing is in plain sight, which tells
    first-time visitors at a glance what the site is about. It also
    serves a practical purpose by highlighting recent projects, giving
    them immediate exposure to potential bidders. The two classes
    of users for whom the site is designed, namely freelancers and
    employers, are greeted with a pair of large buttons -- I don't
    know for a fact they are buttons, but I hope those central images
    will be clickable -- that guide them to the relevant portion of
    the site.

Where the new site fails to improve on the old one is in the way its
HTML markup has been structured.

Markup:

    The layout of the new site, as of the old, is built of ad hoc
    HTML tables with precise pixel-by-pixel positioning. Although
    the designers were clever enough in each case to ensure that
    their tables render correctly in all major browsers, this
    kind of layout is difficult to upgrade or even maintain into
    the future. Upcoming browser standards, especially for mobile
    devices, are likely to render table-based layout unattractively or
    unreadably. Furthermore, tables promote rigid, unchanging design
    because their form is intimately linked with their content. A
    change in design requires rearranging the content, and a change in
    content structure may demand a comprehensive overhaul of the table
    design. A better solution, increasingly used by websites large
    and small, is to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) layout. This
    formalism separates form and content, making it easy to change the
    look of a page without affecting its content or overall structure.

Although I recommend seeing the current redesign through to the end, you
should insist in a future iteration on a pure CSS design. This will make
it possible to radically refresh the aesthetic qualities of your website
by swapping the style sheets without changing the main HTML markup. For
an example of the design flexibility afforded by CSS, take a look at the
CSS Zen Garden. Notice that as the page goes through a drastic visual
change with each new style sheet, the HTML itself remains the same. Thus,
contributing designers can post a new style sheet without ever touching
the content of the site.

CSS Zen Garden
http://www.csszengarden.com/

You mention your doubts about the technology you have chosen for your
site. I would like to reassure you that you have made an excellent
decision in building your site on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. This
is a well-known combination, usually called by the acronym LAMP, that
offers low cost and top performance. There is absolutely no reason to
regret LAMP as your choice of web platform. PHP is as fast as Perl when
it comes to generating web content, and Linux is a very stable, highly
secure operating system.

The design of the admin panels and an eventual CSS redesign can be carried
out without reference to the underlying web platform, since hosting is
separate from design. You ask about the design of the admin panels, but
it is difficult for me to judge their adequacy since they exist only in
skeletal form as of yet. I find nothing objectionable in what I have seen
so far. Anyway, the important thing about web panels is not their design
appeal but their functionality. What matters to the administrator is that
he be able to manage the back end of the website on a daily basis with
a minimum of fuss, and not whether the accompanying graphics are pretty
enough. A good admin panel should above all be simple in its design,
free of clutter, even minimalistic. Nothing I have seen so far leads me
to believe that your current design team is proceeding otherwise.
    
You include in the text of your question a letter from someone who states
that he has just the thing for you. After reviewing his sample sites,
I conclude that his claims are deeply dubious. He says a great deal about
his "careful study of this business industry", his "extensive research",
and about how he "carefully implemented every function" to make a "very
flexible package", but the results are far from impressive. There is
certainly no sign of flexibility when his three sites look very much
alike in their essential features, differing mainly in their choice of
graphics and fonts.

Compare these two listing pages, for example. Note that both are ugly.

http://www.meetcontractors.com/posted_project_list.php?pid=1 

http://www.outsource4biotech.com/posted_project_list.php?pid=10

Or consider these two top-level category tables.

http://www.outsource4biotech.com/

http://www.rolancers.com/default.php

Is that meant to be a cutting-edge interface? How is anyone supposed
to browse those mammoth overlapping taxonomies, anyway? This kind of
interface design was considered clunky five years ago. I think you
can discount this fellow's claims and promises purely on the basis of
the incompetent designs he offers as testament to the quality of his
work. Each home page has some pretty graphics, but as soon as you start
clicking deeper into the site, you come to see how little substance
there is to it. The fact that he bundles his script with "Sales Tips
from top gurus" and future benefits from his "spending a lot of dollars
on research" inspires no confidence at all. My advice: avoid.

I urge you in general to steer clear of hucksters while you are undergoing
a site redesign. For the time being, just get this job done.  Later on,
you can look back and ask yourself whether it was the right decision. You
should not hesitate in midcourse. In any case, I don't think you'll be
deeply disappointed. Your current team seems to know what they're doing.

Regards,

leapinglizard

Thank You Leaping Lizard. Excellent answer.

Hi 

the older site, I did not like at all, My exact thoughts were - "It
looks like a site made by some high school kid with lot of spare-time"

The newer one seems more business like, but still doesnt make the grade.

imho, for a business, the site needs to be classy. And  the site isnt.
Also, the site is not really consistent. I think. There are various
fonts used, which dont jell together.

hope this helps

Thanks for the comments.

Could you explain what you mean by "classy" a little better.  Perhaps
refer a bussiness site you feel has a classy look.  What portrays
"bussiness like" to you?  We will take action on the inconsistent font
issue.  And yes, it did help a bit. Thanks

You include in the text of your question a letter from someone who  
States that he has just the thing for you. After reviewing his sample sites,
I conclude that his claims are deeply dubious. He says a great deal  
About his "careful study of this business industry", his "extensive  
research", and about how he "carefully implemented every function" to make a  
"very flexible package", but the results are far from impressive. There is
certainly no sign of flexibility when his three sites look very much
alike in their essential features, differing mainly in their choice of
graphics and fonts.

>>> Let me make some corrections to your points 

There is certainly no sign of flexibility when his three sites look  
very much alike in their essential features, differing mainly in their choice of
graphics and fonts.

>>> You see all depends on the needs of the business, and you are just  
looking at things from the surface point of view.

- One, you can change the template design as you want to, it?s all 
depends on you, that is basically a very basic function that almost 
all ready made scripts have. If you even require a test I will also
show  you how I can change this. One feature we also have is that you
can  also change the template to be seasonal for example Christmas,
Easter  Etc... And that template will be saved in admin so with a
click of a  button you have already switched looks

**** When it comes to functionality, I will tell you a bit about the 
diversity which you failed to see.

 - Straight from admin you can change your subscription type so that 
each level can have a certain function, like number of bidding/month, 
how many portfolios are allowed, whether they can place buy now 
projects, the level of projects they can bid on.

- You can choose from admin if you want to make your site a blind 
bidding site so others cannot see what other bidders are doing, or you
 can leave it an open option so that the buyer will choose to leave it
 open or closed.

- Admin can open the salary level option which allows buyer to post 
recurrent projects for hiring bidders on a monthly basis, this 
function works differently when it comes to commissions charged, 
however admin can allow it to be open choice.

- For each project level you can set a minimum price a bidder can bid 
on projects to maintain a standard in that industry where pricing is 
concerned.

- You can set you subscription level to be based on category or just a
 full subscription level

- You can activate the onsite complaint center similar to square
trade, this comes with a complete chat on site that stores records,
and site converts end result of complaint and chat into PDF in an
organized and printable function.

- You can activate the online chat so buyers and sellers can communicate.

- You can change the language and also convert categories to other
languages in admin

- You can choose the type of verification required online, and the process

There are still some others I didn't mention yet, however my point is
that you can use all these flexible business functions to make a
combinations for your business strategy so it meets you target market.

When it comes to beauty of the sites, please look at
www.rentacoder.com this is a very ugly site and looks more or less
like something done in the eighties, however its business strategy has
allowed it to reach top levels... structure and strategy is the key.

Design is very important as well, but achieving this is the simplest
this. You can get a very good design for 100$, or even buy a ready
made template to integrate to your site.

=============================

Dear Stephen,

I wish you best of luck in your new site. If your programmers are
doing the work you desire there is no real need to change, I just made
you an offer on what I had based on your request and your
investigations were wise as this is what any business person needs to
do.

Cheers and good luck.

If any of the above appeal to your strategy you are planning or it's
something you didn't consider please feel free to let your coders
implement this.

We are working from a different point of view, and that is to try and
satisfy as many people demands at once.

Right now you have a different strategy at hand and that is just one
of what we are trying to achieve.

If you need any pointers I will post some for you and anyone to see. I
have really done my homework in this department, that's not a thrill,
it something I can boast of

Cheers Edward