My website is ridiculously out of date and I might be looking to finall replace it in the next month or two. I don't see any reason to go with someone local for something like this, and wanted to see if anyone here does this.

If so, PM me! I'd ove to see samples and get an estimate!

PM'd.

Mark, nothing wrong with your website in my opinion.

Mark has a website in your opinion? He's more talented than I thought.

Randy, I think you must be looking at the wrong site!

Mine is horribly outdated. It's been on my list of things to do for three years, yet I've (thankfully) been too busy to change it.

I've decided to go for something much smaller yet use Flash, etc.

So you are resorting to flashing your prospective clients, I would think this would scare them away

Actually, I'm hoping they'll be really, really impressed.

I'm wondering now about templates...I had never really considered them before!

The biggest problem with templates is choosing one. There's a lot of good work out there.

Have you considered running on Wordpress too?

I haven't.

I'm blissfully ignorant of web stuff. Eight years or so I hired a web guy and let him do what he needed to do. Even if I went with a template setup, I'd STLL likely hire someone to put on 4-5 hours getting it set up, take care of the details and manage it. At the very least, I'm seeing amazing templates for photography, and some OK ones for videography, but nothing great yet that has both. So I'm likely to need some tweaking / extensions to templates as well...

My mind is running in a thousand different directions as I'm trying to first determine which is the best path to take.

Your recommendation was fantastic Sandy, and I very much appreciate it. I haven't contacted him as of yet because I don't want to waste his time till I determine that direction first!

If you're looking for a low-budget solution, I highly recommend Wordress with a professional template. There are many available for very reasonable prices (<$100). When I was setting up my wife's website, I purchased a template called Thesis from http://diythemes.com/ and have been very happy with it. I've only customized it a little bit, but you (or a hired web designer) can do a lot more tweaking. (See the samples on the diythemes page.)

The benefit to using a professional template with blogging software (e.g. Wordpress) is that all your pages are easily editable by you from your browser.