After getting some great feedback here along the way, I think I’m done redesigning the homepage of the website I’ve been working on. I’m not a professional and winging it.

Anyone have recs for improving this close to final version? I’m particularly concerned with the desktop version: https://www.theaitable.org/slides

Hi everyone!
I’m a fourth-year Applied Data Science & AI student, and throughout my studies I’ve worked on various projects involving Python, FastAPI, React, APIs, data analysis, and artificial intelligence.
Recently, a small business owner approached me about developing a professional website for their beauty salon/barbershop. This would potentially be my first major commercial freelance project.
I’ve already written two research reports comparing different technologies, booking systems, development timelines, and costs. Before preparing a final quotation, I’d really appreciate some advice from developers with more professional experience.

1. What does the client need?
The client has quite an extensive list of requirements, so I’m planning to divide the development process into several phases.

Phase 1 – Professional Website
Fully responsive website with a custom visual identity.
Homepage, services, team, gallery, about us, and contact pages.
Support for Dutch and English.
Online appointment booking through an existing booking platform.
A CMS that allows the owner to update text, images, and prices independently.
Contact form, WhatsApp integration, and basic SEO.
Hosting setup, testing, and deployment.
Potential Future Phases
E-commerce functionality with online payments.
Dashboards for the owner and employees.
Customer accounts.
Revenue statistics and reporting.
Workflow automation and potentially AI-powered features.
These additional features are not included in the initial quotation.

2. My Proposed Technical Approach
After researching and comparing several options, I’m currently leaning towards the following stack:
Frontend: Next.js / React
CMS: Sanity
Hosting: Vercel Pro
Appointment Booking: Existing software such as Knipklok or Salonized
Backend: No separate FastAPI backend required for Phase 1
I’ve also considered WordPress, which would probably be faster and less expensive to implement.
However, I’m leaning towards Next.js because of its design flexibility and my programming experience.

3. Estimated Development Time and Pricing
I’ve created a preliminary breakdown of the estimated hours required for each part of the project.
My current estimate is:
106 hours for development, testing, and deployment.
16 additional hours as a contingency buffer.
Approximately 122 hours in total.
As a starting freelance rate, I’m considering €40 per hour.
This would bring the estimated price for Phase 1 to approximately €4,880, excluding any applicable VAT, hosting, and third-party subscriptions.
This is not a final quotation yet. The exact scope and required content still need to be confirmed with the client.

4. Questions I’d Appreciate Advice On
Technical Approach
Would Next.js + Sanity be a sensible choice for this type of website, or would you recommend WordPress instead?
Are there any technical risks or important considerations I might be overlooking?
What should I pay particular attention to when securely integrating a third-party appointment booking system?
Development Time
Does an estimate of approximately 122 hours seem realistic for the proposed features?
Which parts of projects like this typically take longer than expected?
Freelancing and Pricing
Would €40 per hour be a reasonable starting rate for someone with several years of academic programming experience but limited commercial freelance experience?
Would you recommend charging a fixed project price or billing hourly?
How would you approach maintenance, revision rounds, additional requests, and ongoing support?

5. A Little More About My Background
I’m planning to develop the project independently.
I already have experience building software through my degree, but I haven’t yet independently delivered and deployed a complete commercial website with ongoing client responsibilities.
Because of that, I want to approach this carefully, especially regarding security, maintenance, reliability, and realistic project planning.
I’m mainly looking for constructive, critical feedback on my technical decisions, time estimates, and pricing.
I want to avoid both undervaluing my work and promising more than I can realistically deliver.
Any advice, personal experiences, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your time and input!

Hi everyone!

I'm a web designer/developer based in the UK, and I've recently built a little tool called PolicyKit.

The idea came from wanting to make one of the more tedious parts of launching a business website a bit simpler: sorting out privacy policies, cookie policies, terms and conditions, and returns policies.

Essentially, you answer a few questions about the business and it generates tailored documents that can be downloaded as PDFs or HTML. It's UK-focused and uses one-off payments rather than subscriptions.

It's still very early days, and I'm trying to work out whether this is something other web designers would actually find useful.

I'd be particularly interested to know:

• When building websites for clients, do you usually handle their legal policies, or leave that to the client?
• If you do handle them, how do you currently go about it?
• Would a tool like this be genuinely useful, or do existing solutions already cover everything you need?

I'm also exploring the idea of offering web designers a trade discount or referral commission, but I'd rather understand how people actually work before developing that further.

The website is https://www.policykit.co.uk/ if anyone wants to see what I've built.

Any thoughts or constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!

https://allofus.click/

Honest thoughts, or tips are greatly appreciated!
(Also trying to get enough karma to post in my towns subreddit)

www.mintycleanbellingham.com

I recently designed this website in Framer for glass, door, and window businesses.

Would love some honest feedback on the design and what I could improve.

Hello all! After many test sites and a lot of headaches I've finally made a complete website and I was wondering if I could get your opinions on it. It is a coffee shop website and I am not going to hide anything here. I want an honest criticism and your honest thoughts! It is based on another coffee shop and since I have no creative design skills I used AI for some background images (I won't use AI when working with actual business though). It is a simple 4 page site (Homepage, About, Menu, Visit Us) made with GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks so it's extremely light. It took me like 2 months since I'm a student and I don't have a lot of time to work on this skill. But almost everything is built from scratch.I have hosted it at KnownHost. My desktop page insight stats are all green with performance even reaching 98-99 while my mobile page insight is all green except performance which hovers around 85 (I optimized the site a lot and I'm not sure if I can get the site any better at this point). It's my "Magnum Opus" as of now even though it might seem like an extremely easy and simple endeavor on the surface (it was a pain in the ass but I learned soooo much). So here is the link:

My Website: instinctowl.com

Inspiration from other coffee shop: littlecollinsnyc.com

Note: I do not take credit for any outside materials I use in the site of course. This is just a practice website.

Thank you all in advance and have a nice day!

I had some clients this year with the same story - they found "greatest expert" on TikTok, paid few k for a “professional website” that looked great in the video and whats then? Then reality hit them with broken responsiveness, no normal SEO, copy-pasted things that make zero sense for their business, and built on some random no-code tools.

Guess the craziest part? The sites look fine at first glance, nothing broken (yeah, sometimes scroll or other state issues 😄) and that’s the whole trick. Say thank you and publish that. But... AI is a tool and can nail some aesthetics faster, but what it can’t do is understand your business, what specific structure it needs, or what your customers actually need to see before they trust them enough to buy.

I don’t even blame the clients, those folks wanted apple .com within 1 day (everyone wants it) I blame the gap between “looks like a website” and “works like a website”. So they just bought an animated presentation.

Wdyt?

I’ve been a self-employed web designer for the past 5 years focussing on Wordpress.

I made a few small sites to start with but then fell into two chunky retainer contracts with companies who wanted on-going changes, new features, etc.

At the end of September these both disappeared, explicitly siting AI and moving to a much cheaper agency overseas as how they were going to run their websites going forward.

I’m left with no income, two young children and very little idea how to proceed.

I’m planning to revamp my portfolio site (I haven’t touched it in years) and present myself as someone who can quickly spin up unique, tailored websites, provide on-going proactive website support, managing content, developing features and recommending new ideas, or provide a rebuild service to those who need to upgrade their current website.

My big fear is that this offering is very limited and ultimately unappealing and on top of that I don’t know where to look for customers and feel like every channel I think if is akin to shouting into a well.

Please help! I’m thinking of retraining as a teacher.

I am building a website portfolio on the hosting site cargo. I want the website that I’m building to also be one of my portfolio projects. How do I effectively and efficiently document my work? Also, what are some tips when building a website?

Give any feedback

Hey! I've been building Aupero, a client portal for digital agencies, and I'd love some honest feedback on the website.

Does the design feel professional? Is the target audience clear? And does the messaging make you understand the product's value?

Website: https://aupero.xyz

Feel free to be brutally honest!

En passant, an upvote on PH would make me very happy 🤭

Hi all,

I want to start my web design freelance business and have been a long time user of Wix Studio. It has a great earning program for businesses should their clients keep their websites hosted in Wix. That’s one of the reasons I want to stay with them. Also, wanted to see if there are working professionals who are using Wix and how it’s going for them.

I have been learning Webflow and the learning was something to get used to. I know that times are changing and there’s so many options out there now. Before committing to learning this platform further I wanted to see if there are better options out there??

* Wanted to add that I have tried showit, framer and Wordpress and they were not it for me 🫠

I spent the last 2 months building Shade Studio, a Framer template for creative studios and agencies. I launched it yesterday on the Framer Marketplace, honestly expecting nothing.

This morning it's #69 trending overall and #18 in the Agency category. I'm a bit stunned.

What went into it:

* A physics hero where the headline letters fall and react as you scroll

* A fluid cursor effect

* An infinite archive canvas you can drag in any direction

* Rocky, a 3D robot contact form that chats with visitors instead of a boring form

* Projects, testimonials and Rocky's lines all in the CMS, no code needed

To say thanks: it's FREE for the next 24 hours. Just comment "shade" and I'll DM you a copy.

I'd also love honest feedback. What would you change or add?

Listing: https://www.framer.com/marketplace/templates/shade-studio/

Hi everyone! I’m building a website for my joint health business, aimed at people looking for information about joint preservation and treatment options.
I’d appreciate some honest feedback on the design and user experience:

• Does the website feel credible and trustworthy?

• Is it clear what we do and who the website is for?

• Are there any sections that feel generic, confusing, or difficult to navigate, especially on mobile?

The website is still being developed, so some content and features are coming later.

Constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks!

https://www.arthroconcept.com/en

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on a new company called Decodability and recently finished building its website.

The idea is to help software companies get more potential customers through their existing documentation by making it easier to discover on Google and AI search.

Here’s the site: https://decodability.com

I’m probably too close to it now to judge it properly, so I’d love some outside opinions.

If you were a software company founder, CEO, or marketing head, could you take a quick look and tell me what you think?

Does the offering make sense? Does the company feel trustworthy? Would you actually consider working with us, or is there something that would put you off?

I’m more interested in how a potential customer would see the website than just the design itself.

Feel free to be brutally honest. Even negative feedback would be really helpful.

Thanks!

I’m about to rebuild the website for my construction company. It’s a pretty standard site mainly used for lead generation. I currently use Wix. It has been fine I have used it for years. Recently with all of the ai additions and fee hikes I am reconsidering if it is the best bet for me. Now would be a good time to make a transition if there is a better suited alternative

What I like:

I run QuickBooks and it integrates invoicing nicely. The customer service for their plugin is actually quite good.
- Ease of use
- Metrics on the dashboard
- I’m familiar with the suite

What I don’t like: (not critical issues

- Slower load times on mobile
- I don’t own the site
- changing fees
- AI being pushed down your throat

I’ve used squarespace and Wordpress in the past. I’m comfortable hosting the site on a 3rd party host.
I’m ok with a learning curve if there is a real benefit.

In your opinion would I be better to set up shop somewhere else or really lean into the wix platform

Curious what you would use if you had to do it all over again.

Hey everyone!

So, I've been working on a little side project called LLM Arena.

I often find myself switching between different AI models just to see which one gives a better answer. It gets annoying after a while, so I thought, why not build something that lets me compare them in one place?

And that's basically how LLM Arena started.

You can pick up to 3 AI models, give them the same prompt, and watch their responses appear side by side in real time.

The fun part is that the model names are hidden while you're comparing. You pick the response you liked most, vote for it, and then find out which model actually wrote it.

I've also added a leaderboard based on community votes, response time and token stats, and a history section to revisit previous comparisons.

It's built with Next.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Prisma, and OpenRouter.

I'm still figuring things out and there's definitely room for improvement, but I wanted to put it out there instead of endlessly tweaking things.

Live site: https://llm-arena-woad.vercel.app

GitHub: https://github.com/Aritra004/llm-arena

It's open-source, so feel free to poke around the code too.

I'd really appreciate it if you gave it a try and told me what you think. Even if something feels confusing, looks weird, or straight-up doesn't work, I'd love to know.

Hello everyone! I’m Rithieishwar, Founder of Oculix. I’m introducing OITS—Oculix Information Technology Services, based in Salem, Tamil Nadu.
We help businesses build:
• Custom websites
• Interactive 360° websites
• WhatsApp chatbots
• AI call assistants
• Custom AI planners
• Workflow automation

Visit our interactive 360° website work, explore sivanfilms.com—a virtual office where visitors navigate rooms to discover the company’s services.

Have a project in mind? Send us a message with your requirements, budget and timeline. We can discuss a suitable scope.

Website: https://www.oits.company

We would also welcome feedback on our work!

I genuinely know nish about coding or making websites but I have claude pro and some shit to sell.

Please hate as much as possible. Thanks.

undisclosedcases.cc

Beforehand, yes the Hero background picture is AI, i am waiting on a golden hour style Picture from my client. Besides that, i worked pretty hard on this site designing it mostly with Astro Build for fast loading. I would like some honest critique what can i do better? Thank you!
URL: https://ilas-photography.com

Edit: FOUND IT! Thank you so much for all the applications🙏🏻

Hi everybody,

I'm currently looking for someone that can help me to fix my website. I own a small business in NYC and I had two guys that didn't really went through the job. I built the aestethic of the website on Squarespace but I'd love to have it finally functional with the shop. This is my website:

https://www.ciaoamorenyc.com/

Please reach out with your contact and portfolio here [ciaoamorestudionyc@gmail.com](mailto:ciaoamorestudionyc@gmail.com)