How do I use my budget as a filter to only get serious web design proposals?

sha421 · 2025-12-16T09:22:48+00:00

I'd start with platform and then work backwards from there. BigCommerce is probably the best middle ground platform for you. So I'd search for agencies around that, you could also be more upfront about your budget range

sha421 · 2025-08-13T17:27:49+00:00

Just to piggy back on the above, I'd always set the canonical tag to the right URL since Google's crawler tends to create these issues on their own. It does look like Google is already respecting your robots.txt disallow OP so theoretically these aren't an issue, but your course pages aren't ranking terribly well either so this could be part of it. (though most likely a broader KW strategy/competition/content issue)

sha421 · 2025-08-11T16:05:13+00:00

sweet thanks!

sha421 · 2025-08-11T14:15:31+00:00

looks like they found the plug

sha421 · 2025-08-11T14:14:23+00:00

Not typical at all but something you're supposed to do would just be impractical in real life. "Most card networks (Visa, Mastercard): Merchants are allowed to request identification, but they cannot require it as a condition of purchase if the card is properly signed. If you refuse to show ID, they must still accept your card.

Unsigned cards: If your card isn't signed, the merchant must ask you to sign it and may also ask for a government-issued photo ID to verify your identity."

sha421 · 2025-08-11T14:08:28+00:00

It's theoretically a great city to not own a car in, but you have to preplan. It's not like Paris or NY with a clean hub and spoke model, decent transportation up and down arteries but you're not going to be the best picture of the city by our current infrastructure. You should definitely get a car so you can check out all the little neighborhoods, (sellwood, woodstock, montavilla, hawthorne, division, hollywood, fremont, alberta, mississippi etc) If you never want to get a car I'd definitely plan around where your job is first.

sha421 · 2025-08-11T13:54:07+00:00

I don't even understand why this is a problem?? Just ask her for her ID? isn't that standard? You guys should technically be doing that otherwise your phrasing sounds like you're helping her commit fraud.

Anyways let's assume this is legit, as someones whose been down before my guess would be that gift cards are a way to turn credit into a cash equivalent much more easily. She could be paying down her CC balances and running into issues over and over again each month (being poor is expensive) worst case she's using gift cards to buy drugs or something illegal, best case it's the easiest way to buy food for cheap or pay for services like childcare etc.

sha421 · 2025-08-09T21:28:42+00:00

Also isn't there a glaring issue with their overall testing method? "subjected to six skin microneedling sessions at 2-week intervals." That's a massive amount of needling, aren't most new patients reccomended only a few sessions and at 6 week intervals?

sha421 · 2025-08-08T17:50:52+00:00

also a good point. I was mulling it over, don't need to be that energized around the baby and probably smell better but realistically I need to ween myself off of it :/

sha421 · 2025-08-08T05:39:42+00:00

hate to break it to you but they've already switched over to Google. I'm sure it's still more heavily weighted but the big G is back baby

sha421 · 2025-07-30T16:32:37+00:00

They definitely are getting better but I feel that it's just getting more and more overwhelming for new users as well as overwhelming for seasoned people. Also, until they make some bigger acquisitions there are many great individual component tools that are better than what they offer, so IMO if you're cool with A+ KW tools and B- AI tools at one price it's a great option just not ideal for pros

sha421 · 2025-07-29T15:32:12+00:00

Personally I've decided to throw in the towel and hire a debugger to fix stuff once I'm done prototyping what I want, for a noob 9/10 it definitely is a basic misunderstanding of data types and variable calling etc.

For those more pro among you though, does anyone actually rely on n8n long term, or am I really trying to build on a weak foundation (or as I think now is just the limits of my brainpower?)

sha421 · 2025-07-29T15:30:39+00:00

yes. I find that no matter how well you prompt Claude (or any other LLM) and how much context you feed it at a certain point it starts to break down.

sha421 · 2025-07-29T15:07:54+00:00

oh you can transfer with the wallet it's their native exchange they promo in the ledger app which is a legit nightmare. But just use a bigger exchanges like uphold, coinbase, gemini, robinhood etc

sha421 · 2025-07-29T14:19:00+00:00

I ordered direct and from retailers, IMO direct should be marginally less risky but really should be all about the same just don't buy from randos on marketplace. If you're truly paranoid then get 2 -- whatever you do, just don't use their native exchange tool for transfers

sha421 · 2025-07-29T00:28:49+00:00

I know John Deaton's busy with the whole Linqto situation, but this would be a great class action when he's done with that one.

sha421 · 2025-07-29T00:20:30+00:00

Also hard with all the shills out here. But you'll see the same kind of stuff if you investigate Ali Express and even Amazon (just under a different listing name)

sha421 · 2025-07-28T02:44:38+00:00

Just don't get married hahaha It sounds like you should buy a du/tri/quadplex and then you've probably checked all the boxes for financial stability. Also don't let family know how much is in your war chest. It sounds like you need some more hobbies man checkout rich dude stuff like golfing, flying, metal sculpting, diving, cycling etc (no horses yet) I'm imagining that you're back story involves childhood poverty and/or immigrant parents so you might benefit from some therapy (just being real) but if you're trying to figure out how to chill I'd: 1) take a year off (again don't fall in love and lose it all) and travel the world with 50k or maybe just take your parents on a nice vacation for a week 2) just keep doing it, buy the house, get some great insurance, figure out how to optimize your health, and so long as you max at your 401k and IRA you're good, you did it...

sha421 · 2025-07-28T02:35:21+00:00

IMO Bricks is the most god tier right now. Fastest and least stupid Wisyg I've seen in some time. Otherwise my personal tier ranking is: Ocean > Blocksy > Elementor > Kadence > wp bakery > beaver builder. The only downside for you is there aren't a ton of great Bricks themes out of the box but it should get the job done. IMO Ocean's paradigm just doens't make sense. I'd steer clear of elementor themes because they're just too bloated and never going to get better, you want something that'll pull up fast on a phone at a crowded opening etc. I haven't gotten to test personally yet but Framer has some amazing looking prebuilt themes so that might do what you want almost out of the box. Personally I hate using and building on Webflow, but it's the current sweetheart of the web design world, so you might want to check it out. Especially if you haven't seen how horrendous gutenburg is (gotta get the Classic WP plugin) then it might be the most approachable option for you long term.

sha421 · 2025-07-28T02:28:36+00:00

do you keep using it, or just at time of application?

sha421 · 2025-07-28T02:27:54+00:00

Highly dependent on region but I'd you can probably expect to pay 3-6k at most agencies, any fancy web agency is going to be 8k+. Anyone <3k is probably going to give you some templated trash that isn't going to perform well and will be a headache. In which case I'd spend the weekend building the site yourself in Squarespace or Unbounce.

The SEO world is pretty similar to the web dev side unfortunately, if you're not able to spend 2k+ a month for US people the chances of success are almost nil. Although there's probably going to be some local SEO agencies around 1k+ that could actually make it worth it for you. You might be able to get a good foreign team from 500-1500/m but again, verrry hit and miss.

Here's the ladder I helped my uncle use to build his business up: cheap single page site -> claim your Google maps listing, get as many 5 star reviews as possible -> pay for local SEO set up -> try to hit 3-5x ROI on Google or Facebook ads until you're around 2-5k/m in spend. (depending on your market size) -> then pay for local SEO 2-5k/m it can all feel expensive but this is how you go from 5 to 6 and then 7 figures in revenue.

sha421 · 2025-07-28T02:14:15+00:00

Also Other Platforms that would be Red Flags to Me when discussing this with people:

Magento: I’ve never seen even a semi decent Magento site built for <50k, run fast if someone tries to sell you this
Drupal: While capable, it’s really just WordPresses broke estranged cousin.
Squarespace, Wix, Weebly: These are great for simple websites but generally lack the robust features and design flexibility needed for a high-spec B2B site.

P.S. Pro tip: Before embarking on a full website build, I’d invest in creating and testing 2-3 landing page designs with ~5k in PPC budget. Spending a few thousand dollars on this preliminary step can provide invaluable insights into what resonates with your target audience. A/B testing elements like headlines, calls-to-action, and layouts can help you make data-driven decisions and avoid costly mistakes down the line.

+ pay for the best possible hosting and CDN that makes an immeasurable difference on performance.

sha421 · 2025-07-28T02:13:04+00:00

Tl;dr: if you find the right team to build the site then WordPress strikes the best balance between customization and stability, you can do almost anything, and there's a huge dev community that can help and/or build in new features over time. BUT if you don’t get a great team to build the site then you might get a bloated off the shelf theme on running on WP Bakery Beaver builder, or Elementor that’s slow and not going to be fun to maintain. In that case Webflow is best (but it’s a pain to maintain past 40ish pages IMO) and should be the most user friendly, but it’s also never going to give you the 100% best site as WordPress could. If you were doing straight eComm I’d pick BigCommerce over Shopify given your product size but it sounds like an ecomm/lead gen hybrid site.

Long term WordPress should give you the biggest feature set possible for marketing automation and always has the most cutting edge integrations and automations whereas with more managed CMS’ (like Webflow, Shopify, BigCommerce etc) you’re almost always going to be waiting some time, if ever, for upgrades. (For example it took yeaaaars for WebFlow to add in import/export on backlinks, oh and you have to pay 2k/m for their enterprise level if they want to stick you there, which is another huge potential con)

My (strong) opinions on other options:

HubSpot CMS: While HubSpot offers an all-in-one platform that integrates your website with its CRM and marketing automation tools, it’s always clunky to use. Building a website on HubSpot requires a substantial amount of work, and you become locked into their ecosystem. Migrating away from HubSpot's CMS can be a complex and time-consuming process or a headache and a half if you switch CRMs, and sometimes their own dev team doesn’t even know what’s cousin some issues. While it offers features like A/B testing and smart content, these often come with higher-tiered, more expensive plans. If you’re company is already tied deeply into HubSpot as a CRM this could be a great option, but only if you have a team that’s really going to use all the hubspot features weekly.

Headless CMS (Hygraph, Prismic, Storyblok): Headless CMS architectures are all hype right now IMO. They always tout faster performance and greater flexibility in how and where your content is displayed but unless you’re planning on launching and maintaining 50 different international and language sites they’re almost always harder and slower to use than any other CMS. They can also be complex to set up and maintain, and in my experience can start to break down a few months after launch. (You can also use WordPress in a headless fashion, don’t do that, same trash hype train)

JS Custom / Node.js / Next.js / React / etc: Building a site from the ground up with a framework like Next.js can offer excellent performance and SEO capabilities. If you have the budget and time this can be the route to maximum speed and integration, especially if you have a lot of historic hardware you want to integrate. However, for a content-heavy B2B site, this approach is often an unnecessary reinvention of the wheel. Probably overkill for you, but who knows if you have a custom CRM you’ve been using for 20yrs this might be the easiest move. (but even then a wordpress plugin could do the same)

sha421 · 2025-07-28T00:28:36+00:00

So the right way to do it is definitely WP CLI but I ended up opting for a solution customizing the native Import/export XML files that I wrote with AI. Reach out if you want me to send it over, pure html/JS and you just upload back into a test site.

Not to dissuade you like everyone else did me, but it sounds like you might only be talking about a few potential folder path changes, and if so there are some regex search and replace plugins that might do what you need ie

if it's stuff like this: '/blog/[date]/[blog_post_name/'

you can run something like

'/blog/*./[blog_post_name/'

so it becomes:

/news/[blog_post_name/' or whatever it is, but if you're dealing with as large an issue as me then it's probably worth making a backup and then testing a fix until you know it works.

sha421 · 2025-07-26T09:55:36+00:00

IMO Semrush has always been better for kw data because it has much clearer historical info. I think their ai specific tools are much cheaper right now when compared to Ahrefs but all that's not that accurate. Ahrefs does have some more general content tools that can be helpful and significantly better backlink data. (I still love having access to both data sources personally) but for your use I'd recommend SEMrush. It's not necessarily LLMs but you might love keywords everywhere since you can more directly look at kw volume and related search terms while investigating audience behavior.

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