Do you know anything about hiring a website designer?

To find a a programmer there are many sites on the web that specialize in finding web designers. Like

www.guru.com
www.scriptlance.com
www.guru.liquidct.com

You are going to need a developer that also dose database. You also said you would like to find some one in your area. You can limit your search to a certain distance on any of the above sites.

How much dose it cost depends. It could range from $400-$2,000. Depending on the details and what bids you get. The lowest price is not always going to be your best choose, but it is up to you. I would just check there resume. The only cost of a site is its hosting and starts at around $5 for some hosting companies. Even yahoo has a hosting plan that would probably work for you, but that is more like $11 a month. Other charge may to process credit cards. But systems like Paypal have no monthly charge. The only other charge would be to maintain the site. If the developer dose a good job creating the site you may be able to do this yourself unless you need to make a big change to the site.

Hope that helps.

I'm designer myself so can tell that working in personal with client isn't necessary thing but of course save time and make easier to understand what really client wish to get.

So it's good idea to find someone locally as this way you can control his/her work better.

It could be easy or hard to find someone locally, depending on area where you live.

And regarding building database driven website, it's very realistic, people do it on everyday basis, just be sure to check this with person you're going to hire and make sure that he's not only designer but programmer as well or if it's company that they have designer.

Building custom script could be expensive especially if you live in US/Europe, so people frequently hire people online as they could get good programmer for less money.

If I would have to look for such guy, I would simply try to browse sites related to your city, there is big chance that it was created by someone locally, this way you can probably find what designer company made certain site, find porfolio and see if you like it.

You can also try to search ads on some local site.

Just be sure to check works of person you're going to hire.

My advice is to do it yourself. Because of all the things you need to have on your website, your best bet is to go with a CMS (ie. Joomla). I am guessing your hosting package supports PHP and MySQL. If yes, then install Joomla and browse the Joomla Extension site for all the plugins you need. Play around with it and if you really need help, instead of getting a web designer to 'design' your site, all you need is someone to help you customize the CMS, which is much easier and will cost less.

http://www.joomla.org/

would be pretty pricey because of the login stuff. That means you would need someone who not only knows how to design websites but also knows about databases.

Always check out their work and background before you do anything drastic!