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Ask YC: Hiring contractors to convert PSDs to HTML/CSS

12 points by slackerIII ↗ HN
I've got some Photoshop mockups of web pages that I need turned into HTML/CSS. I've seen psd2html.com and sites like elance.com seem to be full of people ready to take my money. Does anyone have any experience/advice after getting a contractor to do this sort of thing? Can you recommend someone in particular?

On a related note, I've been looking at how to separate the presentation of the site from the scripts that power it. My goal is to make sure that it is easy for contractors to update the HTML in the future after it is integrated with our scripts, even if they are using something like Dreamweaver. Something like tinybutstrong seems to be a great solution to this problem (basically, you create standard HTML with things like [var.message] when you want to insert the variable $message). Any thoughts on that?

Thanks,

28 comments

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markessien
It will cost you $30 to do this on rentacoder, if you are going to need so much thought for a small decision like this, how long will you require for the big decisions?

Just do it and learn for yourself if it works for you or not. What worked for random_yc_user_99 may not work for you.

slackerIII
Well, I've got a bunch of pages so it will be a little bit more than $30. And I'd prefer to not have to get it redone multiple times because the quality of the work sucked.

Sure, what worked for random_yc_user_99 might not work for me, but it is also possible it will work great. And starting with some a recommendation for a service (particularly if there is any kind of consensus about who is good/bad) is better than starting with nothing.

rms
I'm really confused as the hostility here. It's a pretty reasonable question, and there really is a difference between the different entities doing this type of service. Sure, it's a good skill to have, but it's rather menial work in my opinion. I definitely don't like doing it, especially the browser comparability stuff.
rokhayakebe
Learn CSS/HTML. I have been through this route a few times and this weekend I said FUCK IT MAN, PAY NO MASS. It may take you a few weeks to be nearly decent enough, but you will be glad you can do it yourself instead of asking "Why S/He doesn't get it"?
ddemchuk
While I agree that the OP should learn CSS/HTML (assuming they don't already know it), I know that for myself, someone who has a very solid understanding of both, that I sometimes find myself saying "FUCK IT MAN, I JUST WANT TO CODE THE APP." When you have to know how to do everything, from concept to front end to back end to deployment, sometimes it's great to just pass off the simple things to someone else.

So I think if you find yourself being the wearer of every hat imaginable, so long as you know what's being done, there's no problem with outsourcing it. Invariably you'll need to make changes once it's returned to make it work with your back end system so you'll need the hacking knowledge anyways. But having the brunt of the slicing and dicing and coding done for you eliminates the potential for one more headache along the way...

poppysan
You may not get many comments. These seem to be elementary questions (unless I missread).

1. You'll get varied experiences through an elance or psdtohtml service. The advise from this board will likely be learn to do it yourself.

2. No need to reinvent the wheel. include an external script in your html/php, then make changes to the external script.

notdarkyet
Do you have links to the mockups or can u give some idea whats going on underneath? I think the price demanded will be somewhat proportional to the complexity of the project. It could take 2 hours or 2 weeks.
pwoods
Oh welcome to my Hell...
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ivanstojic
I find this post to be both insulting and slightly pointless. First of all, "sites like elance.com" have a horde of semi-educated people who might offer half of a decent service, but they sure are not "ready to take your money."
slackerIII
What do you mean? I'm talking about paying them in return for work.
tphyahoo
Yeah, odesk.com, priyanka at smartbuzz has done some work for me.

pretty straightforward.

There's lots of other contractors there too that will bid on your project.

It is a little weird to use these contracting websites the first time, but only the first time :)

tontoa4
This is a legitimate post, I don't know why you're getting so much friction from users. If you do post the project on elance, scriptlance, or hireacoder make sure you don't pick the least expensive one. Never tried the cut and dry services, but I see psd2html advertised at smashingmagazine.
jawngee
Just put it in as a giant jpeg image map. By the time you type up all those <divs> and css styles it'll be the same size anyways. Also, you can be assured your users are getting it exactly how you intended. No cross browser headaches. Almost no code! Ajax is a snap, just swap the image out with one line of javascript code, you won't even need Dojotype to do it.
lee
When we make pages that we want html people to maintain, it's been our experience that it's important that the layout pages are primarily html with the scripting added to it rather than a scripted page with the html in a bunch of concatenated echo statements. Designers really hate the latter, and may charge you more if you expect them to work with something like that.
blacksquare
I've used psd2html and was very pleased with the work, I have high standards. I would use them again.
auston
PSD2HTML is reliable for delivery, but it depends on if you're a css snob or not if you will like their code.

They get it done, and that's it.

shard
You sound rather non-enthusiastic about their work. Could you give a bit more detail about what you mean? I am considering them as one option as well.
auston
I mean they won't provide you with optimized CSS, you may end up with some extra stuff that could be replaced by 1 or 2 lines.

They're good, they deliver cross-compatible xhtml+css.

But is it the smallest size possible? probably not.

tlrobinson
I envy you people with better design skills than HTML/CSS skills. I need the reverse, which tends to be a bit more expensive...
eugenerg
Out of the services I've tried, psdslicing.com was the best and cheapest. They happily made changes if I was not satisfied with something.

I had a bad experience going the rentacoder route (I used elance, actually). For $30/page you get a lot of people who are pretty good but not great, and produce shoddy markup.

theantidote
Be wary of the Indian companies that will do it for pennies per hour. Sure it's cheap but the code is crap, or even worse than crap: they will just slice your PSDs and use Adobe's built in web page creator which will mean your site will consist entirely of images, no text at all.

Also, concurred on the envy I have for those who are good at design. I suck at designing but I love developing. I wish I could do both and I've been getting better (using Kuler and just keeping everything within a color pallete works wonders).