Welcome to Motuweb Design

Hi! I'm John Potter; a freelance web designer based in Auckland, New Zealand.

WordPress Websites

My main work is developing and maintaining customised WordPress weblogs, which allow users to publish updated news, information and articles on the internet themselves, even if they only have basic computer skills. I also offer training & support to administrators of existing WordPress sites.

POSH Websites

However, if all you need is an online brochure, I'm also happy to build you a Plain Old Semantic HTML site (in the trade we prefer to use the acronym POSH).

The pages on this site have information on how to evaluate the work of someone you are considering hiring to a design a website for you. Naturally, I'm making it available because I believe my work measures up well against current industry standards.

Of course, in addition to the technical factors there is the question of what sort of relationship you want with someone who is promoting your business or service.

Free visit to discuss new sites

If you are near Auckland, I'm happy to come and meet you. You'll discover that I communicate well, and that I'm easy to get on with. I'm good at giving people what they want or explaining how their ideas can be enhanced. I tend to develop long-term partnerships - many of my customers re-employ me to do more work for them.

Valid, accessible, cross-platform code

How will you benefit from hiring an experienced HTML & CSS coder like me, instead of using a cheap, off-the-shelf solution, or even DIY?

You get a site which works properly for everyone, including:

  • people with disabilities
  • visitors using a range of browsers
  • visitors with small-screen devices such as I-Phones or Pocket PCs
  • visitors with low bandwidth
  • non-human visitors such as search engine robots

Building a web page is not particularly hard; my daughter Judith has been making them since she was eight. Mainstream browsers are very forgiving of mangled code - which is sometimes described as "tag soup".

Web Standards

Busineses or organisations, on the other hand, need to project a professional image and demonstrate an ongoing commitment to best practice. The first step should be to ensure their web site code complies with current Web Standards.

read more about the specifications my website designs offer.

Updating and maintenance of your website

The most important decisions to make before commissioning any web-design work, are how often your site will be updated, and who needs to be able to do it.

The initial build cost of a website could be as little as 10% of the total lifetime cost if you make lots of changes and employ a web designer to do them all.

Publish yourself using WordPress as a Content Management System

If clients want to update their site regularly (highly recommended), or have Web2 features such as comments and discussion by site visitors, I install and maintain WordPress for them, customised to their specific requirements. If you have enough computer skills to send an e-mail, you should have no trouble learning to publish web pages using WordPress.

Updates by me

If a site is intended to be updated less than once a month, and does not require interactive features, it will be more economical to build a POSH site and pay me to add any new material.

Support and Tuition

If you have a website made by someone else, and are not happy with the service you are receiving, I'm happy to have a look and see if I can sort things out for you.

If you have an existing WordPress site, I can modify your theme, install plugins, provide tuition on how to use some of the more advanced features, and help troubleshoot errors.

more about Updates, Support and Tuition.

Hosting Charges

Over the last decade, I have used over a dozen different web hosts, some free, some extremely cheap and some of professional standard. I've learned the hard way that you get what you pay for, and that many budget hosts offer plans with limited functionality; preventing sites from working properly and sucking up hours of de-bugging time. Other important factors are the number of other websites sharing the server (and their popularity), and most important of all - the level of support you can expect when things go wrong.

If you know what you are doing, and wish to organise hosting yourself, I recomend the main NZ host that I use: webfarm.co.nz.

If you'd rather avoid the learning curve and the stress; let me manage hosting for you. I can help you use the advanced features of each site's Ensim Control Panel.

Fully managed hosting

I offer the following plans. All include free domain registration.

Static HTML - POSH

Web server location:
Auckland, NZ
Per month on invoice
from $20.00
Automatic Payment
from $15.00

Wordpress

Includes regular database optimisation and backups, WordPress upgrades, plugin upgrades and general site maintenance.

Web server location:
Auckland, NZ
Per month on invoice
from $50.00
Automatic Payment
from $45.00

Budget Hosting

Yes, that long length of cable does make a difference - this U.S. server is noticeably slower to download pages, and at some times of the day can struggle to keep up with visitor numbers. If, however, you have a very large site, or if minimising costs is your primary objective, hosting overseas is much less expensive.

Web server location:
Houston, Texas
Per month on invoice
from $15.00
Automatic Payment
from $10.00

Free Hosting

If you are looking for a low-cost site for a community organisation, or a place to share your fascinating personal obsessions, I suggest you register for a free site at WordPress.com and learn how to do it yourself.

You are welcome to hire me if you get stuck or need advice. If you have a successful WordPress.com site and want to upgrade to a self-hosted version, I can migrate the database for you, and build a customised theme.

please check out some examples of my work.